Lee Hae-rin is a City Desk reporter at The Korea Times, covering social issues, tourism and taekwondo. She is passionate about speaking up for the rights of minorities, including women, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities and animals as well as discovering the latest makgeolli trend in town. Feel free to reach her at lhr@koreatimes.co.kr.
Seoul’s landmark soup kitchen faces threat as neighborhood gentrifies
Volunteers hand out lunch boxes and daily necessities to elderly and homeless visitors during a street Christmas service organized by the Babfor soup kitchen in Dongdaemun District, Seoul. Dec. 24, 2025. Yonhap
By Lee Hae-rin
As neighborhood transforms, debate intensifies over elderly poverty and support
A yearslong legal battle over Babfor, Seoul’s most storied soup kitchen, has ignited a debate over the rising pressures of urban redevelopment and the fraying of Korea’s social safety net.
Last month, a court blocked the Dongdaemun District Office’s attempt to demolish the site, handing a temporary reprieve to a Christian charity that has served as a lifeline for some of the city's most impoverished residents since 1988.
The conflict comes as Korea grapples with the highest elderly poverty rate in the developed world, with nearly 40 percent of those over 65 living in relative poverty.
Against a backdrop of low public social spending, Babfor — Korean for "sharing rice" — remains a critical stopgap, feeding up to 1,000 people daily. Yet as the neighborhood gentrifies, the charity’s future remains precarious, reflecting a broader tension between Seoul’s drive for modernization and its obligation to its most vulnerable citizens.
In this May 2, 2006, file photo, elderly and homeless visitors have lunch at Babfor, a soup kitchen run by the Dail Welfare Foundation. The event served 1,500 portions of bibimbap, or mixed vegetables with rice, at Cheongnyangni Station Square in Seoul. Korea Times file
The friction has intensified as Cheongnyangni, a neighborhood in northeastern Seoul, sheds its reputation from a gritty transit hub to luxury high-rises and surging property values. As 10 rail lines converge on the neighborhood’s central station, newer residents have increasingly cast the soup kitchen as a relic at odds with a gentrifying image. Complaints from nearby luxury complexes have fueled a campaign against the charity, with neighbors citing noise and hygiene concerns as the influx of the city's destitute clashes with the demands of the new professional class.
The legal battle began in earnest in 2021, after the foundation added two prefabricated wings to the site to meet a spike in demand. The expansion provided the district office with a technical opening to order a demolition, turning a land-use dispute into a high-stakes referendum on who belongs in the spruced-up neighborhood.
The main building of Babfor, the soup kitchen run by the Dail Community, and its left prefab wing stand in Seoul's Dongdaemun District, Jan. 17, 2022. Yonhap
In 2022, city and district authorities issued conflicting mandates over the center’s expansion. While Seoul city officials initially signaled their blessing through a "donation-in-kind" land-use agreement, the Dongdaemun District Office pivoted, labeling the construction illegal and levying a 283 million won ($217,000) fine. The move, which the charity’s lawyers characterized as a betrayal of prior administrative assurances, set off a three-year court battle that has now reached the Supreme Court.
Although two lower courts have sided with the foundation — ruling that the government’s prior stance created a "legitimate expectation" of protection — the victory has felt hollow. Relations between the charity and local authorities have soured, with volunteers reporting a tactical withdrawal of government support for crowd control.
As the district pursues its final appeal, the dispute has laid bare a fundamental urban tension: a charity that functioned for decades as a de facto social safety net now finds itself characterized as a public nuisance by the very government that once leaned on its services.
"Some residents even call us a 'nuisance facility,' and they have also raised complaints with schools, saying it is not good for children to see homeless people coming and going," said Ju Min-kwan, secretary-general of the foundation. Some residents have even called for boycotts of local shops that donate food or send volunteers, he added.
Older adults have a warm meal during a Parent’s Day event at Babfor soup kitchen in Dongdaemun District, Seoul, May 7, 2022. Yonhap
Experts say both sides need to move away from confrontation and toward compromise.
"Some inappropriate behavior by a few older visitors clearly has the potential to trigger complaints, and Babfor must work harder to minimize harm to its neighbors," said Jung Soon-dul, a social welfare professor at Ewha Womans University.
"At the same time, new high-rise complexes cannot simply demand the removal of an existing facility." Residents, the foundation and the local government should "meet in the middle" and design a model that protects vulnerable people while safeguarding the community, she said.