David Webber, Columbia MISSOURIAN, September 8, 2023
Seeing a new situation often allows you to see the familiar differently. So, it was when I visited South Korea in June and paid particular attention to their homeless residents.
There are several similarities with America’s homeless crisis, with one major exception — there are no tent cities or run-down RV parks like those in San Francisco, Seattle and Phoenix. However, there are unhoused Koreans staying in tiny shanties where I would not want to stay.
Koreans gave me an idea about how to resolve the debate over the preferred terminology for referring to people who have no regular housing fit for human habitation. Several native Koreans explained to me that the most common Korean term for a homeless person is “nosugja,” which means “person sleeping on the street.” However, in one conversation the bilingual translator interpreted it as “displaced persons.” That led to a discussion of how homeless people are displaced — displaced from houses, from jobs, from families, from hospitals, from social groups, from their hometowns. Historically, displaced person usually meant someone forced out of their home because of war. But the current use of “homelessness” is too narrow a term.
South Korea in 2022 had an official estimate of 8,986 homeless people out of a total population of 52 million. Compared to the United States’ 600,000 out of a population of 335 million, Korea’s homeless rate is about one-tenth that of the U.S. Of course, definition and counting methods may vary, but the general conclusion is valid that we have many, many more homeless.
I suspect the No. 1 reason for such a huge difference between the two countries is America’s history of drug use. South Korea is often considered to have among the harshest anti-drug laws. Additionally, Korean men have two years of compulsory military service that probably focuses their transition from high school to independent living.
The Korean government estimates that about half of the homeless population is in Seoul, with 83% of homeless people staying in local shelters and the remaining 17% — about 2,000 people — on the street. It’s estimated that 75% of those on the street are in Seoul, the nation’s capital.
Seoul Station, similar to Grand Central Station in New York City, is the epicenter of homelessness with several hundred drunken and unkept humans, probably 90% men, lying on the sidewalks, “flying a sign” and panhandling as train and subway passengers walk nearby. A few had umbrellas rigged up to provide shade, but most were cooking in the hot summer sun.
A change I noticed from my last trip to Seoul in 2015 was that the metro system stations and adjoining pedestrian tunnels are virtually free of homeless people. In 2015, I frequently walked through a pedestrian tunnel that had several men and women living in cardboard boxes, on which commuters would leave food and change. These makeshift homes are gone.
This June I received a closeup view of Seoul homelessness after having the good fortune of meeting Hee Jung Lee, who is a visiting scholar at MU’s Asian Affairs Center. She arranged for me to meet Pastor Choi Seong-won, director of the Seoul Station Homeless Rehabilitation Center.
Choi estimates that 80% of Seoul’s street sleepers are former prisoners and 20% are mentally ill. Alcohol is, or becomes, a big problem. About 3% to 5% are young people, with the oldest he knows of being 86 years old.
As in the U.S., homelessness services in Korea are a mix of nonprofit and government assistance. Pastor Choi operates a food pantry and a soup kitchen, where he serves about 200 people a day using his personal pension for funding. Choi is innovative in helping the homeless. Korean government aid often depends on applicants having some sort of job. Choi started a job center with smoking cessation and alcohol and drug rehabilitation programs. He has an informal program where homeless people start by collecting discarded cardboard on the street and after three months can move up to a clerk and record keeper before Choi sends them off to a job interview. Choi estimates he has helped more than 400 Koreans find jobs.
Occasionally, rural shanties that appear to be home to a person or two are visible from the train as you pass through villages in the Korean mountains, but I would call that rural poverty, not homelessness.
More disturbing was the density of homeless people living in “jjokbangs,” which means “divided space” under overpasses and bridges in southern Seoul near prosperous businesses and hotels. Pastor Choi drove me through a site under a bridge that had several hundred residents staying in jjokbang shacks where they hardly had space to stretch out. A typical jjokbang unit, of which there are more than 3,000 in Seoul, is about the size of a 4×8 sheet of plywood, or 32 square feet. Most of these shanties are privately owned, with the residents paying rent, so the incentive to keep dividing them into smaller units is great.
Across Seoul these shacks have been sold and demolished for economic development, sometimes for public housing but more often for private development. That means more unsheltered people will be headed to Seoul Station.
One root of Korean homelessness is the 2008 economic crisis that eliminated thousands of jobs and displaced men to the streets. Perhaps even a larger cause is the high cost and low supply of affordable housing — like the U.S.
Because they lack housing security, homeless people often lack financial services. In the U.S, we debate the role of the private sector and payday loans, which charge very high interest rates. In Korea, savings accounts and small loans are available in government post offices.
Addressing homelessness requires a balancing of expectations and compassion. South Korea’s balance is probably too harsh for most Americans, but South Korea offers lessons for our homeless service providers.
David Webber joined the MU Political Science Department in 1986 and wrote his first column for the Missourian in 1994. He now writes twice monthly.
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