(51) Mapo Apartment Complex: change in dwelling style

This file photo taken in the 1960s shows the Mapo Apartment Complex. The complex consisted of 10 six-story buildings and housed 642 families, marking the beginning of a housing revolution. / Korea Times

By Andrei Lankov

Seoul is a city of high-rise apartment complexes and office towers but this was not always the case. Smaller buildings

are being gradually pushed into oblivion by the unstoppable spread of new multi-story giants. However, like many other changes in Korea, these alterations to the cityscape have happened with lightning speed and within the living memory of many not-so-old Koreans. Only 50 years have passed since the first apartment complex was constructed in Seoul.

In old Seoul there were no multi-story structures, not a single one. The royal palaces, the finest old Korean architecture, were built on one level. All 42,870 houses in Seoul in 1899 had only a ground floor and a mere 20.2% boasted a tiled roof (the others being thatched).

The first multi-story buildings were built in the 1890s by Westerners, usually for their own use. These were foreign missions, offices and hotels. Soon they were followed by government agencies and the residences of some affluent Koreans.

Nonetheless, in 1945 a high-rise building was still a rare sight in downtown Seoul. The vast majority of Seoul’s one million inhabitants lived in derelict huts without sewage or running water. The Korean War (1950-1953) exacerbated the situation. Nationwide, about 600,000 houses were damaged or destroyed by fighting, amounting to about 20% of all Korean housing. Crowds of refugees flooded the cities. They lived in huge camps on the outskirts where a tent or a dugout was the most common type of accommodation.

The first multi-storey residential complex in the newly independent Korea was built in 1958, but for some reason its construction did not attract much attention at the time (due perhaps to its small scale). The real history of Korean apartments, known by a Konglish word “appat’ŭ,” began a few years later with the construction of the Map’o apartment complex from 1961 to 1964. The Mapo complex consisted of 10 six-story buildings and housed 642 families. It marked the beginning of a revolution.

Like all revolutions, it did not progress smoothly. Initially, the architects wanted to create 10-story structures but these would require elevators. This option was opposed as outrageously uneconomical. It was claimed that elevators would mean an extravagant waste of electricity. Electricity was in very short supply so the architects gave in and the project was downsized, to eliminate the need for those “wasteful and unnecessary” elevators.

Another trouble spot was the heating system. Initially the designers intended to have a central heating system which would serve the entire complex, but once again this plan was axed as wasteful and improvident. Thus, every flat had its own coal boiler and people feared the fumes and possible gas-poisoning. There were even some problems with water-closets. The Map’o complex was the first to have modern flush toilets and sewage, and many residents did not know how to use these contraptions.

Initially, it proved difficult to sell the flats, especially on the upper levels. Very few Koreans were ready to live at the dizzying height of the 5th or 6th floor! During the first year of sales the occupancy rate did not exceed 15%. Apart from height, people did not like other features of the new life-style. The early apartment complexes lacked the customary ondol heated Korean floor and were warmed by radiators. Thus the new apartments were considered unsuitable for families since it was assumed that children would freeze if they slept on the unheated floor. The scarcity of larders where housewives could store kimchi also scared away many tenants and buyers.

By modern standards the Mapo complex was primitive and uncomfortable. The coal boilers were clumsy to operate. The flats were very small at between nine and 15 pyeong (30 to 50 square meters) each. In 2005, the average Korean apartment was 32 pyeong, more than double the size of the largest flat in the Map’o complex. However, unlike its predecessors, the Mapo complex did herald a new era in Korean construction.

The unease which was typical of Koreans’ attitude to the new type of dwellings, evaporated soon. President Pak Chung-hee, true to his well-deserved image of a dictator for development, eulogized the new housing as an embodiment of progress and modernity, and the movie makers began to use the complex as a backdrop when they needed to show a sophisticated environment.

Nonetheless, the early high-rise buildings were rather primitive. The first apartment complex which would be seen as reasonably comfortable by present-day Seoulites was probably the Hill Top Foreigners’ Apartments built on Namsan Mountain from 1967 to 1968. The complex was very special for the times and, as its name suggests, was erected for foreigners who could afford to pay for their comfort. All necessary equipment had to be imported from overseas (it came largely from Japan).

Around the same time the Seun complex, a shopping mall which doubled as a residential building went up in downtown Seoul. These two sites launched the era of high-rise apartments. Elevators and central heating were not seen as an extravagance any more...

The real boom in the construction of multi-storey housing began in the early 1970s. In 1971 the Banpo apartments became the first complex with traditional heated floors rather than Western-style radiators. In the 1970s the heated floors were normally installed only in bedrooms but when the necessary technology became reliable and cheap the entire living space came to be heated in this traditional way. This made apartments even more appealing to Koreans.

By 1980 the large and new apartment complexes had become a symbol of the modern and affluent lifestyle. The Korean middle class, as well as the country’s movers and shakers, differ from the Western middle class lovers of suburbia in unquestionably favoring apartment complexes. This preference for apartments is still growing. In a 1992 poll, 41 percent of respondents said they would choose apartments over other types of housing. In 2000, 77 percent gave the same answer. In Korea, high-rise apartment complexes do not have the stigma often attached to them in Western countries and have not developed into mini-ghettos. Fortunately, Korean cities scarcely have areas which could be plausibly described as ghettos anyway.

The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a construction boom of unprecedented proportions. It is difficult to believe that a mere four decades ago the tiny Mapo complex generated such publicity. According to a recent study, some 80 percent of all Korean housing has been built since 1980 - within the last two decades! An increasing share of these buildings are apartment complexes that grow everywhere, often being in the middle of paddy fields many kilometres away from any large city.

In 1990, only 22.9 percent of Korean families lived in apartments. By 2005 this share more than doubled: by that time, more than half of all Korean families (52.5 percent, to be precise) were apartment dwellers.

According to the official definition, apartments are large complexes of more than four stories. Modern apartments are usually much higher than the prescribed five stories and some 15 stories is closer to the current norm. However, there is also a scaled down version known as yeonlip.

The yeonlip is a watered-down version of the apartment inspired by the popularity of flats. Under current regulations a building is officially considered to be a yeonlip if it has less than four floors but its total floor area exceeds 660 sq meters. It usually also lacks the facilities of real apartments which include playgrounds or underground parking. These buildings are inhabited by people who would be happy to live in apartments but cannot afford them. However, the share of yeonlip in the Korean housing market is quite small. In 2005 they housed a mere 4.3 percent of Korean families.

Well, and what has happened to the old good Mapo apartments which began all this minor revolution in housing? Alas, the pioneering complex was demolished in 1991 to give way to a new complex. This is typical of Seoul, a city where everything is changing so rapidly.