But anyway, as I wrote: “Wells probably does not track the monstrosity back far enough.” Remember, the series in general is about Gin Lane, an early-18th century phenomenon, when massive migration into London resulted in what I think we would all agree as squalor — inadequate housing, many people packed into rooms at night, mass poverty, scrambling for work. London consumed people like, well, like Godzilla. But people kept coming, seeking work. This created a situation where what Wells describes could even emerge, though Ihe himself didn’t note that. And that is a parallel with Korea. Remember, as The Korean points out, that Korea was so poor 40 years ago that Sub-Saharan Africa was kicking its ass. However nicely refurbishable those townhouses proved to be later on, the mass migrations into the city in Korea during its hyper-accelerated period of industrialization absolutely exhibit parallels in the period in English history I’m discussing… which is the point of this whole series.

But as I say, later posts in this series will show that I’m (mostly) talking about a far different kind of “squalor” anyway, and it won’t make sense if I try to summarize it here, so, if you’re patient, all shall be revealed in time.

I haven’t replied for a while — I got busy — but I think once you see the rest of my discussion, you’ll see my point is more about a different kind of “squalour” than you’re talking about. More later…

(And, for that matter, in Saskatoon, where the mayor recently declared that enough is enough, and it’s time to stop converting every damned apartment into a condo, else students and young couples will have nowhere but dingy basements to live in. Which, if you ask me, might do some good if it drives people out of the province, collapsing the housing market and sending some of the greedy sons of bitches into bankruptcy. There’s no bloody reason it should be harder to get an apartment in Saskatoon than in Toronto, or more expensive.)

I don’t know much about Winnipeg — though my sister seemed to like it, bike paths and all — but I know from experience Montreal is more livable than Seoul in part because of design. Having a fast subway and long, fast commuter trains helps, too.

This has me thinking it’d be interesting to look at the historical development of Seoul, and of London as well. Though I think Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling would be more qualified, and has done a lot of work on Seoul already, anyway.

But all that is somewhat beyond the ken. For whatever reason — but probably, both in London and Seoul, because of the rapid development that went on in the relevant periods — squalor certainly was (and arguably still is) a feature of the experience of migration into both primate cities (or, for many. to the more affordable satellite cities).

It’ll become clear how that matters a little bit later on in this series, when I talk about village sociality, social networks, and the drinking ritual here.

Yeah, not entirely offbase — I did link squalor and housing with squalor and rapid urbanization, and rapid construction, and ugly construction. Just tangential to the whole soju & gin thing. But not offbase, and it’s worth sorting all that out, I guess.

There is subsidized housing of a sort in some parts of Seoul — one of the people involved in SeoulPodcast lives in subsidized housing, if I remember right from a recent podcast there; sort of like a kinder, friendlier sort of housing project, really — and the government does offer loans to those who don’t look like investment risks to cover the ridiculous amount of “key money” needed for most apartments — but my impression is generally that apartments are bought outright, or rented out by owners. I’m not exactly sure where the companies come in: in an apartment block called “Samsung apartments” or “Lotte Castle,” I’m not sure what role Lotte or Samsung actually play once construction is finished. But I do know that apartments are bought and owned, sold, rented out, and so on.

Certainly, high-rise apartments seem — from what many have told me — to be the height of personal convenience, and are much preferred to the privacy and relative isolation of a house. Poorer or monied bohemian types live in houses or junky apartments, while those of means live in nice apartments. And the limits to what is considered livable are sometimes pretty horrifying. I know one woman who lived in an apartment slated for demolition, but her employers took their time finding her a flat. I heard there was fungus growing in the walls, and sometimes, after going away for holidays, it could be found even growing upon certain walls! Ugh!

I don’t know enough about American construction to compare to British — it could be that 19th-century British construction is worse, I don’t know. I have heard from many friends who’ve spent time in London that many an old apartment has crap heating, crap insulation, and is frigid and humid in the winter. Never having visited the UK since early childhood (or Washington, ever, for that matter), I’ve no idea how they compare.

But I’m with you on hating the “pour concrete on everything” school of architecture, and on how badly buildings since the 60s age. Personally, I find much of the architecture in South Korea rather depressing. The exception is the neo-trad houses like the one the House Concert series is held in. I quite like that house, and could happily live in such a place, even if it is a bit on the small side by my standards. But it’s also in a pricey part of town!

I’ve no doubt that living in a cramped brownstone would have been uncomfortable. Still, I’m impressed with how well they are made, and I’ll give the heartless Anglo-capitalists points for that. There are people living in townhouses here that are at least as old as what Wells described, if not older. I’ve just always been impressed with how well the buildings age, and how (relatively easily) they can be retrofitted. Those big concrete monstrosities so beloved by Le Corbusier and other visionaries, they don’t age so very well, and any building made in the last 50 or so years is rarely able to be converted to different uses.

I heartily disagree with the attempt to decouple this phenomenon from the economics of land development. Land development in Korean cities is different from land development in London in the nineteenth-century, but not so significantly that Wells’ point doesn’t adhere: there’s a lot of land-grabby, heavy-profit-pursuit, and a great paucity of choice among tenants.

Frankly, it long ago spiraled out of control, and nobody seems able to stop it. There’s a reason that some of modern Korean literature finest work is about working people and families being shunted out to slums and suburbs of Seoul, struggling for housing. A couple of texts you could check out are translations of The Dwarf by Cho Se-Hui and A Distant and Beautiful Place by Yang Kwi-Ja both of which I’m currently partway through, and both of which constantly turn to this issue.

Not for nothing: cramped train rides into Seoul have reminded me constantly how far away some people are willing to commute from — Incheon, even! — daily in order to live in a home they can afford but work in Seoul.

As for comfort, the bit I cut from the Wells would probably disabuse you of the notion of comfort in those houses he’s describing: it’s been a long time since 1890. Here’s what I omitted, with bits from before and after so you can locate it in the original context.

… an infinite supply of prosperous middle-class people to take the houses provided. Each had an ill-lit basement with kitchen, coal cellars and so forth, below the ground level. Above this was the dining-room floor capable of division by folding doors into a small dining room and a bureau; above this again was a drawing-room and above this a floor or so of bedrooms in diminishing scale. No bathroom was provided and at first the plumbing was of a very primitive kind. Servants were expected to be cheap and servile and grateful, and most things, coals, slops, and so forth had to be carried by hand up and down the one staircase. This was the London house…

Doesn’t sound so comfortable to me, and certainly looks like it was based on a way of life that, if not by that time, then soon after was about to become wholly unfeasible. In any case, I get the impression you’re talking about “old brownstones” dating from a later period, or perhaps (in rare cases) which have been overhauled rather thoroughly.

Indeed, in London and Seoul alike, it’s probably the innovation of self-contained housing units where toilet plumbing was added that changed the whole landscape, and made high-rise buildings feasible. (And indoor facilities was unarguable improvement in quality of life here, as it was in Saskatchewan when the evils of Socialist central planning under Tommy Douglas brought indoor toilets to many farmers’ homes.)

But the plumbing, in Korean buildings dating back even to the early 90s, remains relatively primitive — indeed, almost as if designed explicitily to aid in the introduction of vermin into the home, in my experience. And in the experience of some friends of mine, shoddy even in a building built in the last few years: it took weeks for someone to do something about the fact that somehow the sewage piping was venting fecal gas straight up into the air vent that opened onto their bedroom.

And this was all in relatively nice and new buildings — they looked shoddy and old, but relatively speaking, they weren’t: the whole area had been rice fields only a decade before, and families (sometimes with a few kids and a grandma in tow, in which case it was clear they were the working poor) were even so paying the equivalent of $30-50,000 for the privilege of living in a cramped one-room apartment so small that it would drive most couples nuts.

As a counter-example, I know a couple consisting of a Korean and a Canadian, and they live in an apartment that, to me, seems downright palatial: but then, the Canadian wife’s income is a good bit more than I make and several multiples of what your average young Korean starting out makes. When you factor in her husband’s income, it obviously puts them in a class rather different from the average. So comfort is to be hand… but for a price, and even so, they’re considering moving since the rent/key-money on their apartment is probably going up at some point in the future. And will continue to go up. If even people in that socioeconomic class are reduced to moving every few years in the wake of rising housing costs, how do you think the average Korean does?

The answer is none too comforting at all.