Fewer apartments please
By NB Armstrong
At the beginning of the millennium the most plangent fact of life in Masan was there were no empty apartments.
It was said that the origin of the apartment central intercom system was as a real estate tool to acquire market information, to eavesdrop in on family conversations for possible news of home moves. In the early 2000s there was a waiting list to get on the waiting list for units in certain buildings.
So the city's wise heads got together at City Hall, which for one day was no longer just a very considerable reference point for taxi drivers, and decided to get building. A long time at that meeting was spent on deciding which adjectival condition to satisfy in the numerical extent of construction. Modest, sufficient, generous, overflowing, and even “teeming” were some of the candidates tossed about over machine coffee. In the end they went with a noun: glut.
Our senate house pulled through and was as good as its word. And its word, as we have seen, was glut. Masan’s stunning but tricky hilly topography has been subjugated by apartment buildings.
But just as population projections indicated that the city's number of residents would hemorrhage, so exerting downward pressure on the demand for units, so our Senecas and Gladstones counter-intuitively persisted with a policy of transforming every patch of top soil that dare show itself to the sun into something rectangular, 23-story, and beige.
In response the property market has been voluble, and there have been more bubbles in it than in the rest baths at a hippopotamus bean eating competition.
Land is so beautiful and valuable; it is no wonder estate agents do what they do. For example, over by the sea in Masan is an absolutely splendid plot. I have spent more time fantasizing about what glories it might host ― a Center Parks-style sport and nature resort?
It is a horticultural/wildlife reserve that I have doing housekeeping in for the seven years it has been empty. Seven years during which taxi drivers informed me that the deed owner, a lady with political pull at a national level, stuck to her desire that come hell or high water, apartments it would be.
Now they tell a different story (“they” being taxi drivers). They talk of relenting and compromise and park space or something nature related, something municipally owned and not, in the first instance, obviously profit centered. We look at each other in astonishment, the taxi driver and I.
What good-sense serum has been added to that machine coffee at Masan City Hall? So there is renewed hope for Masan’s esthetic, for a place to take a stroll on a Sunday afternoon, and for one lady with political pull at a national level’s immortal soul.
Each and every civic meeting place established in the time I have been here has been a runaway success. People have filled them, all of them ― parks, plazas, pools and picnic places ― on spring days, summer dog days, Saturdays and Sundays. There is a natural and obvious hunger for non-commercial land usage in the people of Masan.
So now what about that big empty plot right next to the giant new apartment development at the other end of the city? It surely isn’t true what they say about it being more apartments, is it?
And the patch that used to be a timber yard near the port? And the nearby acres that get used only once a year for a festival? What about some houses with gardens, an industrial training center, a K-pop museum built to the exact shape and scale of Psy’s head, an athletics stadium for kids, a place for old folk to...?
Robert C. Gallagher said, “The three major sources of apartments are death, divorce, and transfer.” Let’s now seek to cut down on all three by building fewer.
NB Armstrong’s book “Korean Straight Lines, joke lessons in South Korea” is available now. His email address is aex_nba@yahoo.co.uk.