Proceedings of EAAC2012 - Hong Kong, 10-12 December 2012

From Hanoak to A-pa-tu. Korean Urbanism in the XXth Century

Pernice, Raffaele
Lecturer, Department of Urban Planning and Design, XJTLU - Xian Jiaotong Liverpool University, China

Abstract This paper focuses on the striking contrast between the memory of the traditional architectural and urban elements of Korea and the characters of the contemporary urban landscape which is essentially composed by new high density collective housing complexes integrated with new urban facilities and well maintained green public spaces. It briefly addresses some important issues related with the development of contemporary Korean urbanism, such as the influence of political decision and other economic factors over social aspects of the planning process, the relation between the plans of recent new towns aimed at the creation of a network of modern, technologically advanced and efficient multi-functional urban clusters, designed and built to foster the formation of a larger super-urban structure in the country to better compete in the global economy and stimulate the national economy, and the consolidation of the Korean middle class.
Keywords: Korean Urbanism, New Towns, High-rise, Hanoak, Korean Architecture

Introduction Koreas impressive process of fast modernization and urbanization and the consequent radical re-shaping of its traditional urban fabric and urban network of cities in a span of just 50 years during the last century have gained the country the definition of Republic of Apartments, with the capital Seoul praised as an efficient model of Giant-Radiant-City. During the second half of the XXth century construction technologies, design elements and planning schemes, taken and adapted from the discourse of architecture and urbanism proposed during the XXth century by the most advanced nations, notably Japan and Europe, have achieved successful results. This fast process of economic development and rapid urbanization have promoted the formation of an entire new model of urban life and social transformation which have stimulated the design of an urban environment which has been mostly localized either in the large urban metropolitan areas of Seoul and those of Daegu, Ulsan, Busan, or in several new towns which served as response to many problems (social, economic, political) mainly caused

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by the excessive concentration of functions and people in the few main conurbations of the country. This trend has been accompanied by the total rejection of precedents in Korean urban and architectural traditions in favour of imported economic, design and planning models.

Urbanization in Modern South Korea The contemporary features of the Korean urban landscape may appear as one which is typically found in many other dynamic cities of Pacific Asia which are thriving from the economic boom of the last decade. Indeed the massive scale of multiple high-rise housing blocks which front the multi-line streets of Seoul are a powerful image of the astonishing economic development that prompted South Korea to speed the efforts to fill the gap with other industrialized nations so that the country metamorphosed from a poor, developing country-level in the 1950s to a super technological power in the recent decades.1

The fast pace of economic growth of the nation started after the Korean War (1950-1953) and was promoted and supported by drastic changes in the general urban landscape and planning approach which gained considerable momentum during the military dictatorship of the president-general Park Chung-hee.2 South Korean cities became the centers of new economic and urban polices which followed a well-established path that was laid out a century earlier by the former western industrial powers and Japan, which was the only nonWestern country to successfully implement a comprehensive transformation of the nation by means of a progressive industrialization of its economy and westernization of its society. Indeed the Korean government, aimed to foster the modernization and the industrialization of the nation, promoted an economic policy which linked the development of a basic industrial infrastructure to the progressive urbanization and further planning of some cities, in an extreme effort to close the development gap in relation to developed countries. Historically the process of urbanization in South Korea is a phenomenon which has peaked only in the last century. Until the beginning of 20th century the nation has always been essentially a rural country with only a fraction of the population (less than 10 %) living in relevant urban settlements and towns and the majority of living in small villages scattered along the hills and mountains.3 The urban growth of the cities in modern times started with the

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Japanese invasion but only during the last four decades it has reached very relevant proportions, beginning with the beginning of industrialization during the 1960s-1970s.

During the Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945) new industrial factories and basic transportation facilities were built to serve as main logistical networks to connect Japan to the Chinese border of Manchuria. During this stage the cities of Seoul and Busan became the main terminals for freight and industrial sites in the Korean peninsula, and automatically served as poles of attraction for immigration from the countryside and rural areas. After a series of economic reforms which ruined the poor farmers in the agricultural lands of many provinces, a first wave of emigration moved towards the main regional cities causing among the other problems a sudden and acute housing shortage. These problems worsened after the end of the Second World War and the Korean War, as even more people fled to the main urban centers, especially in Seoul, as the influx of refugees and the exodus of more immigrants exacerbated the severe conditions of the already ruined cities. As the inefficient facilities of the crowded cities couldnt cope with this mass of newcomers and homeless, shanty houses and illegal settlements (otherwise known as Moon Villages) dotted the peripheries of the urban fringes of the big cities, where people lived in very poor conditions without any basic service such as water, gas, electricity and sewage.4

Industrialization and Urban Development in South Korea The great number of squatters, the lack of basic urban infrastructural provisions, coupled with the constant risk of a destructive conflict with the Communist North required the Republic of Korea to enact extreme, rapid and effective policies that addressed the necessary reconstruction and modernization of the country. In 1953, after the armistice with the North, the Republic of Korea was generously and strongly supported by American and European governments in this task, and goods, materials, technology and expertise were largely imported. However the extreme poverty of the country after many decades of armed conflict delayed an effective national recovery which prevented any real economic growth for several years.

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In 1961 the First Five-Year Economic Development Plan was implemented. This marked a phase of progressive development of the light industries and sowed the seeds for further economic growth by driving or promoting the development of new or larger factories and industrial plants near the main urban areas.5 The strategy was to localize the production areas in some sites and thus create a kind of industrial parks where different factories were able to share some facilities and services; this strategy resulted in further economic growth as it promoted local economy by attracting new workers and eventually new consumers. While the earliest rural-to-urban migration into Korean cities occurred when large numbers of poor peasants were displaced by the Japanese invasion, this process continued until the end of Korean War. Urbanization of Korean cities was thus first promoted by the massive numbers migration of poor farmers and peasants from the countryside and other poor rural areas during the Japanese invasion and then continued with the end of the civil conflict with many other fleeing from Communist North Korea. However by the middle of the 1960s this process was accelerated considerably and was essentially fuelled by the development of an increasingly stronger industrial system which exerted a strong attraction towards large segments of the population who moved towards the cities in search of better jobs, better salaries and more exciting life quality and activities in a new and modern environment, a wellknown process of economic and social shift which already characterized all the more advanced urban societies of Western countries and Japan.

At the beginning of industrialization the most pressing and urgent issue confronting local authorities and the central government was housing the masses of new urban immigrants in small and already congested cities. The presence of illegal and poorly built shelters where the majority of the urban population lived was a direct consequence of a number of factors: the great number of immigrants; the generally bad condition of the economy at the end of the armed conflict and the weaknesses of the still-developing industrial sector; the lack of a modern urban infrastructural systems, as well as up-to-date technologies and construction materials, and the lack of modern architectural design and city planning methods that could be used to plan such larger urban projects. Most of the urban residential areas of the cities were composed of low-rise courtyard brick-and-wood houses with traditional curved tiled roofs, a typology known has Hanoak, which shaped the typical character

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of the cityscape with a strong impression of a flat, horizontal skyline. The urban landscape of cities like Seoul and Busan was composed by prevalent low-density, low-rise buildings built in a vernacular design and this condition was the norm long after the 1960s. In addition the limited scale of the economic recovery with marginal transformations of lifestyles helped to preserve most of the original urban lay-out and the physical image of the traditional city and its urban districts with networks of fine grain of fragmented urban tissue composed by narrow alleys. During the process of industrialization of South Korea many cities still retained an urban fabric many centuries-old with a street lay-out designed as grid of orthogonal street blocks containing traditional dwellings, in part destroyed during the recent wars. The reconstruction with traditional construction methods to restore the historic original forms of the areas and the buildings destroyed (as was carried out in in post-war Warsaw in Poland, for instance) was not possible for economic and cultural reasons. Hence, the key development policy of the government was to prioritize modernization of the country based on the construction methods and therefore, built forms, of the advanced western capitalist countries, so that the nation had to embrace tout-court a radical process of industrialization and cultural transformation of the society.6

Modernization of the Mass Housing Architecture The modernization of the Republic of Korea thus became a vital priority of the state, which fostered the change of many aspects of traditional Korean society and culture in many fields, from the economy, to the arts and lifestyles. The planning of large urban communities and small neighbourhoods inside the city, as well as larger innovative urban housing complexes received a particular attention as they related directly with the necessities of larger redevelopment projects in the cities to be planned and organized in connection with the creation of new urban infrastructures and in the general industrialization of the country. In this context the first projects aimed to design and build high-rise residential buildings, a logical choice for a country at the start of its development with few materials and economic resources. This building type - the multi-family apartment block - then became the forerunner of a new type of low-cost housing in South Korea. A more extensive use of this new model of urban housing faced many difficulties though attributed to the

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overall economic situation of Korea during the 1960s and 1970s, and the few that were actually built presented many shortcomings due to the low quality of the design and the technological solutions implemented. For instance elevators were not provided because of the excessive costs of electricity; these high-rise developments also lacked efficient water pumps that provided sufficient water pressure.7 The key cultural factor that prevented the fast diffusion of this new building type was the strong resistance of Koreans to live in this totally alien environment that presented by these collective housing complexes, which was a model unknown to most people, because it had the fundamental defect of lacking the traditional floor heating system (ondol) and was designed to suit a westernised lifestyle.8 Even though the technological problems were soon to be resolved with the economic growth in Korea, the cultural gap for most people in accepting the shift from a tradition-based way of living to a westernised life-style, in particular the transition to a model of collective-multi-family housing typology, proved to be very significant. People just did not want to abandon the old patterns of village-like social life possible in the traditional single family house dwelling heated by the traditional ondol.

The governments complete and open support of the new high-rise apartment complexes, and their progressive improvements in building technology and design, provided the impetus for its increasing popularity from the early 1970s. They were increasingly presented as a symbol of national modernization, economic success and social advancement to the people, and especially important was the display of the latest luxuries (the western style kitchen and bathroom, the upgraded floor heating systems) for the spaces in the apartment unit. The improvement in the design of the new types of high-rise apartment complexes were especially encouraged as the A-pa-tu Tanji, as Koreans called them, became also complementary to development of a strong construction industry and the formation of an important middle class to sustain the growth of South Korean as an industrialized country.9

Design and Characters of Modern South Korean Apartment Complexes (A-pa-tu) The very first model of apartment complex developed in the Republic of Korea, the Mapo Apatu, was built in Seoul during the period 1962-1964, and it was designed as an urban system of clustered six-story towers even

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though the original project called for ten stories towers. These contained various facilities such as playgrounds, elderly houses, gardens and shops, some key elements that marked a first important difference with similar and contemporary urban renewal projects in Europe and America. Although as a first experiment it didnt proved to be especially successful (most of the apartments were still vacant years after the construction was completed), indeed the Mapo Apartments Complex, with its mass towers that were out of scale with the surrounding lowrise/low-dense urban fabric, served as a reference and model for newer housing blocks for the time being.

As correctly noted by several scholars, the general formal characters of the architectural design and urban planning lay-out of the site of this collective housing suggest a strong link with some of the most important architectural and urban design theories developed in the first decades of the 20th century. The general floor plans and the functionalist profiles of the towers generally borrowed their design from the European CIAM and post-war Le Corbusier, while the lay-out and distribution of the functional zones closely resemble the experience of the Anglo-American garden city and neighbourhood unit movements. It is obvious that the models behind Mapos scheme were imported, and it is important to note that even though some modernist architectures were built in the Korean peninsula in the first half of the 20th century, Korean architects were still marginal in the international context, so in this phase all the main modern architectural and urban design instruments were of foreign origins. According to the French geographer Valerie Gelezeau the role of Japanese architects and planners was pivotal in diffusion and circulation of modern urban and architectural in South Korea, as they were directly influenced by Europeans architects who were then involved in the international debate about the issues on the new architectural language of the time; in fact by 1941 the Korean Housing Office was established in Seoul, which actively promoted new schemes and models of modern design for local professionals. It also established contacts with Western experts, especially American professionals, during and after the Korean War.10

After independence in 1945, the national debate about the modern style towards architecture and planning began slowly, and this debate had also to address the economic and technological gaps of the country. As a matter of the fact the ideological crisis of the modernist theories and in general of the functionalist approach to

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design did not have a vast echo among Korean architects and planners then, as the immediate practical problems they had to face were the post-war economic recovery and the progressive urban growth driven by rapid immigration. It can be noted that between the late 1960s and early 1970s, Europe began to reject the urban and architectural models that have been proposed a few decades earlier by the masters of modern architecture. These were criticised for the lack of architectural quality, their often inhumane scale which had resulted in alienation and the loss of traditional life-styles, and the ruinous effects on many historic and valuable districts that were bulldozed to make room for several questionable renewal projects. In South Korea it was precisely the typical high-density high-rise urban blocks designed with towers in the park that began to spread and strive. A fundamental reason for this was the peculiar characters of the Korean high-rise apartments blocks and for its special relation to the housing policy of the national government.

Most of these complexes show a familiar and direct aesthetic resemblance to some early Rationalist projects. In particular was Ludwig Hillberseimers design of the Vertical City proposed for Berlin (1927), also Le Corbusiers Radiant City (1931) and especially Unite dHabitation (1949). Other precedents projects were Walter Gropiuss project for a group of ten-storey dwellings (1935) that were also extensively proposed also in the urban plans for Amsterdam by Van Eastern in 1930s, and Brasilia by Costa later in the 1950s. However the housing realised by in Korea did not aimed at any kind of social experiment nor proposed a mixture of other functions in the residential towers, and so their forms were the simple imitation of successful and popular prototypes designed and refined by the European masters and further adapted to the progressive technological improvements of large industrial production. In general the single residential towers, built as white or grey colour concrete blocks whose front and rear were closed by a continuous surface of glass skin, were grouped around green areas (and eventually parking lots) according to a planning organization that recalled the Immouble Villas by Le Corbusier. However, at the scale of the neighbourhoods lessons from the American planners and especially Clarance Perrys concept of the Neighbourhood Unit model (1929) were clearly evident. The lay-out of the apartment complex of the A-pa-tu Tanji was based on the assumption that the elementary school or the middle school is the core element of the community which socially and physically

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bonded the residents of the apartments around, hence built within a walk-able distance to the school as well as to small shops, civic and public buildings and public green areas and gardens which then became an integral part of the residential complex.

Apartments Blocks and New Towns As the modernization and industrialization progressed, the Korean housing policy enacted by the national government put the housing ownership on the top of its social and economic agenda, aiming to increase the capital of most of the population, essentially what was supposed to be the new Korean middle class, composed of office and service-related workers. With this target, through various financial and tax incentives, the government strongly supported both the first-time buyers and also the new construction companies which soon will develop into a competitive national construction industry. It is clear that the high-rise, high density apartment complexes were without doubts the best option that was available in that historical moment to support the growth of the country. What really made possible the achievement of a higher standard of life for the population was that the Korean apartment complexes from the beginning were designed with an intent that was very different from their Western counterparts. They were not intended as social housing for the lowincome segment of the population; were concerned regarding the quality of the architecture and surrounding spaces, which contained many basic facilities (playgrounds, gardens) and services (shops, nursery) for the community. It is also important that almost all the apartments were for sale and rarely for renting, a point that helps to explain the general higher standards for these buildings if compared with similar projects in the West, so that much of the criticism of the large residential European and American estates projects and their unsafe, alienating environments did not fit the Korean case. This trend found greater impetus with the design and the construction of several new towns according to a policy that was inspired by the experience of British new towns. In 1963 the Comprehensive National Land Development Planning Act passed, and it marked the start of a strategy of urban and industrial dispersal aimed at the decongestion of the excessive population, industrial and service activities of the big industrial cities, especially Seoul Capital Region, and their redistribution on new areas of the country11. The new towns were built from the late 1960s and became effective tools especially after

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1990s in the creation of poles of economic growth and practical solution in the attempt to relieve the housing shortage of the overcrowded urban areas of South Korea. In these new urban entities the apartment blocks became the most common and successful residential typology, giving the definitive boost to the image of South Korea as Republic of Apartments. There are several reasons for this. First, from the very beginning the apartment complexes were planned as high-quality dwellings that were to be sold, which is a big differentiation with the traditionally poor built high-density social architectures in Europe and America. Second, the target group for this typology of apartments was the workers employed in the industrial and service sectors with an average salary that was far higher than other categories of workers. Third, the central government promoted the development of apartment complexes essentially as it represented the best solution in terms of cost and benefits to resolve the severe housing shortages which had plagued the country until not long ago, and as an instrumental elements in the process of building a strong system of construction companies and create a more solid construction industry and to create a firm foundation for the political consensus and economic growth thanks to some focused housing policy (home ownership). Fourth, even though the first models of apartments showed some limits in the design and functionality of their organization and caused on more than one occasion the loss of some urban districts of historical value and their social networks, the location of their sites was functional to the design of new zones and to the regeneration of some underdeveloped or obsolete areas filled with sub-standard shelters and critical inefficient infrastructures.12 Fifth, the new apartments became genuinely an effective symbol of the concrete efforts to modernize Korea and a strong persuasion in this sense was promoted by the central government over the population to move in these buildings. The availability of new building technologies imported from abroad and especially from Japan during the 1970s allowed the proposition of a hybrid housing models where the western style bathroom, the Japanese LDK system (Living, Dining, Kitchen) and the Korean traditional ondol heating system could be integrated.

In general the evident limits in the formal exterior design and interior layout of the apartments, which lack of innovative style and originality in their monotonous and repetitive presence and same basic spatial organization in several parts of the big cities and regions throughout the country, seems to be balanced by the soundness of

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the structural technology implemented for high-rise buildings, also these mostly derived by Japanese precedents in architectural design. With regards to the organization of the clusters of the residential towers, it is from the Anglo-Saxon tradition that many planning elements are derived, especially in the use of a model of organization that recalls the neighbourhoods unit (Clarence Perry). Nonetheless at the scale of the local community and the neighbourhood, the Korean high-rise complexes did show some degree of adaptation and proposed a hybrid model which re-elaborated on an imported system of urban organization designed for low to middle density housing typologies with high density towers. The fast economic growth and the shift from a light industry system to a heavy industrial system of production naturally accelerated the need to resolve the housing crisis and the development of new urban infrastructures and services for a growing population. The apartments became the main answer to these problems also because the presence of high density residential complexes near industrial parks or other logistical areas (transportation terminals, railway station) created a mutual relationship between the residences of the workers and their jobs and also fostered the creation of a larger market where retailers, small shops and other service activities could thrive and grow.

Final Remarks In South Korea a series of peculiar factors have contributed to the first stages of urban growth but especially 3 elements can be seen as essential contributors: first a pragmatically approach to urban and architectural design to face the enormous housing shortage during the 1960s-1970s which prevented new research for urban residential models suitable for the local environment; second the presence of a strong centralized government which directly and indirectly promoted effective housing polices; and third a strong dominance of imported European, Japanese and Anglo-American ideas and methods in the planning of urban settlements and architectural design. Especially effective in the definition of the new urban landscape of the Korean cities was the use of a system of building technologies suitable for fast construction of high-rise apartment complexes whose design of the single unit was based on the use of LDK floor-plan developed in Japan since the 1940s, so that in Korea the prevalent urban skyline of the main metropolitan cities and of the new towns is that derived from the strong

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presence of mass housing apartment blocks made by high-rise slabs interconnected by a network of wide streets and low-density shopping area (keunseng) at main cross-roads.

Acknowledgements This research has been supported by the Bisa Research Grant of Keimyung University in 2011-2012; Special thanks go to Mr. Lim Wei Siang Freddie for his comments and suggestions in the revision of the present paper.

Figures and Illustrations

Fig.1. View of a typical apartment complex in Daegu, South Korea (Source: the author)

Fig.2. View of a typical apartment complex in Daegu, South Korea (Source: the author)

Fig.4. View of an old Hanoak residential area in Seoul, South Korea (Source: virtualtourist.com)

Fig.3. View of a new residential area in Daegu, South Korea (Source: the author)

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Notes and References

1

The GDP of South Korea (Republic of Korea) grew at a pace of more than 8% annually between early 1960 and late

1980s, marking this rapid economic growth as Miracle of the Han River.
2

General Park Chung-hee took the leadership of the government with a putsch in 1961 and remained the president of the

Republic of Korea continuously till 1979, when he was assassinated. The modernization and industrialization of Korea, at the cost of the limiting of democratic rights, was among the foremost achievements of his policy.
3

See: Kim Yong-Woong, Industrialization and Urbanization in Korea, Korea Journal, Autumn 1999, pp. 35-62; Gun

Young Lee, Urban Redevelopment: Life and Culture, Korea Journal, April1989, pp. 19-26.
4

See: Seong-Kyu Ha, Substandard Settlements and Joint Redevelopment Projects in Seoul, Habitat International, N. 25,

2001, pp. 385-397; Ha Seong-Kyu, Urban Growth and Housing Development: A Critical Overview, Korea Journal, Autumn 1999, pp. 63-94.
5

Yi Ki-Sok, The Impact of National Development Strategies and Industrialization on Rapid Urbanization of Korea,

Korea Journal, December 1981, pp. 32-43.

6

Valerie Gelezeau, Changing Socio-economic Environments, Housing Culture and Urban Segregation in Seoul, in:

EJEAS - European Journal of East Asian Studies, N.7.2, 2008, pp.295-321.

7 8

See for instance: Velerie Gelezeau, Seoul, ville geante, cites radieuses, CNRS,Paris, 2003. The ondol is a floor-heating device and one key elements of the traditional house in Korean history, similar to the roman

ipocastum. An interesting observation is that of architect Kim Sung Hong, which argues that the use of the ondol prevented the development of multi-level buildings in Korean architecture. See: Generation of Contemporary Korean Architects, extracted from: Kim Sung Hong and Peter Cachola Schmal Eds, Megacity Network Contemporary Korean Architecture, Jovis, Berlin, 2007, pp.49-53.
9

Valerie Gelezeau, 2003, op. cit. ibid. Phillips D., Yeh A. G., New Towns in East and South-East Asia, 1987, pp.109-113. See for instance the process of development of large apartment complexes in the Gangnam area and other districts of

10 11 12

Southern Seoul during the 1970s (See: Andrei Lankov, Development of southern Seoul, Korea Times, 18 February 2011).

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