Campaigning for housing rights of urban poor in Seoul.
When I first arrived in Seoul three million people lived here. By 1980 there were 12 million residents. Rural families hoped to find a better future in the big city, at least for the children through education and possibly business prospects.
The rural to city migration created massive problems as regards housing, transport and employment.
I wish to describe briefly how the poorest of the rural migrants fared in the scramble for housing and the role of the local Church in seeking justice for these people.
Many hills ring the city of Seoul. The City Council owned the land but no one was using it so poor families needing housing moved in, built their homes on the slopes but never acquired legal title to the land. In the late 1970s the City Council began to implement a policy of redeveloping the illegally occupied land on the sides of the hills and along some riverbanks. The injustice they planned to perpetrate was to remove thousands of poor families from their homes without due compensation.
They went about doing this in a piecemeal manner. In 1982 they arrived at the place where I was parish priest. Residents had already been violently dislodged from other slum areas and had begun to organise and protest the City Council's policy of redevelopment. Our area was next to go in preparation for the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988.
Local leaders approached me to ask for the use of the church for meetings as there was no other place large enough. About 50 leaders representing a few thousand residents began to meet. My only role at the time was to be present and offer support.
In due course the church would also become a place of refuge for protest leaders being sought by the police who would not enter the church to arrest them but surrounded the building in order to capture them as they left. Despite protests the City Council achieved their objective and those who lost their homes received little or no compensation.
Six years later I was living and working on a hillside in another part of Seoul. Private companies engaged by the City Council to clear slums and rebuild multi-storey apartment blocks employed a variety of nasty tactics to wear down residents.
Many families left one by one for a variety of reasons, such as fear, the shame of the children who felt they could not invite their friends to their home, the accumulation of rubbish as houses were left vacant.
When it came for the moment of the definitive eviction, gangs of thugs entered the area accompanied by bulldozers. As soon as the thugs had dragged family members from their home, the bulldozers flattened the house. Over a 20 year period my home was bulldozed four times.
However, the residents’ organisations gradually won the right to various kinds of compensation, but this more comprehensive approach to residents’ rights was not legally finalised until the year 2000.
Some residents owned their houses but most were renting and the economic loss incurred by both groups was eventually acknowledged and compensated, at least in part.
It was a long struggle and even though the so called slum clearance has now finished, there is still much to be done in the housing apostolate. To develop this pastoral outreach in a coordinated way, in 1987, Cardinal Kim, Archbishop of Seoul, set up the City Poor Apostolate.
A North American Jesuit and university lecturer, John Daly, with a Korean layman, who was a bricklayer, initiated the work of church solidarity with slum residents seeking their rights. Subsequently, other Jesuits, Columbans, Franciscan Missionaries of Mary and lay people joined the struggle and continue to organise under the umbrella of the City Poor Apostolate.
Locally we might organise ecumenically as was the case in my second hillside parish, where I collaborated with the local Presbyterian minister and residents.
The minister called a meeting in his church where we elected a coordinating committee. I was elected to do and present a monthly audit of our funds.
There were four neighbouring areas that were similarly affected by the City Council’s redevelopment plans at the time, each with its own internal organisation. In two of the four areas the construction company’s pressure tactics resulted in all the residents leaving before demolition of their homes.
In the other two areas we organised successfully for a compensation fund to build temporary housing further up the hill at the back of the construction site. However, in our area, by the time we were ready to relocate, only 50 out of 170 families were still living in the area zoned for redevelopment.
We thought we would be in temporary housing for about three years but it turned out to be five.
There the 50 families worked at community development. We developed a friendly village-like spirit among residents. We set up a credit union and ran courses on human rights. We helped residents grow in confidence and in their ability to grip the reins of their lives and not be pushed around by bullies, whether they be employees of government or big business.
After more than 20 years involvement in City Poor Apostolate one thing remains clear. For all the changes in society over these years, ‘the poor we still have with us’, and will have for the foreseeable future. Presently I am living and working in a small community of such people.
My involvement with these people gives me a feeling of doing what the Gospel proclaims. Together with others, what we live and do gives witness to our faith in Christ. Our involvement makes it clear to others that the Church is not simply about prayer and religious celebrations. Our neighbours and others can see that we of the Church are interested in the issues that affect their lives.
Fr Robert Brennan has been a missionary in Korea since 1965.
Read more from The Far East, August 2012