Miriam Ho
Several halmoni sit out on the courtyard porch, laughing and passing snacks back and forth while Geum-soon perms her friend’s hair. A slabijib follows certain essential principles of Korean house design: the main house and several outbuildings are positioned around a central courtyard, which is an open-air living room. In the city, this is often a narrow, unbuilt gap. Geum-soon’s neighbours socialise in her covered courtyard, but it also doubles as a utilitarian space, crowded by wash basins, cookie tins and soda bottles, extra furniture and old appliances. A modern washroom, a charcoal briquette furnace and two storerooms open off it. Geum-soon’s small home is modernised and well-maintained. She has lacquered furniture, a TV and her 29-year-old daughter who lives with her has a desktop computer with internet. The interiors are dim, with only small windows facing the courtyard, to keep the house cool in the summer and to minimise heat loss in the winter. Geum-soon has upgraded her windows to durable double-glazed units. In a vast contrast, less prosperous homes in the same neighbourhood rely on styrofoam, plastic bags, and other found materials to seal cracks against wind and rain. Some staple green garden netting over the translucent rice paper window screens, traditionally designed to mediate light and humidity, for reinforcement. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that almost one in every two elderly households in South Korea live in poverty, making South Korea’s elderly poverty rate the highest amongst OECD nations. 1 This is largely attributed to a paradigm shift away from traditional family structures. Where aging parents once depended upon their grown children to support them, this is less common today. The national pension, instigated in the mid- 1990s, does not service a previously retired or self-employed population. Slabijibs are a low-rent accommodation choice in the city centre, in the vicinity of transportation networks and employment opportunities. Occasionally, a young family moves in to save money, but the predominantly elderly population has lived here for decades. Despite a prevailing cultural desire for the old to live with their sons, some choose to remain in these communities where they are independent, self-sustaining and have familiar old friends.
63
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator