What does alternative housing look like in Korea, 'the republic of apartments'?

Janseowanseokru in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province, designed by E Il-hoon of E Ilhoon Studio for Free Media / Courtesy of MMCA MMCA's 'Performative Home' zooms in on Korea's residential landscape beyond high-rises By Park Han-sol It’s no exaggeration to say Korea is a land of high-rise apartment blocks. According to 2023 data from the Statistics Research Institute, apartments indeed dominate the country’s housing market, making up a staggering 64 percent of all homes. The first multi-dwelling unit built after Korea’s liberation from the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule and the 1950-53 Korean War was the now-gone Chongam Apartment in Seoul’s Seongbuk District, constructed in 1958 primarily for society’s elites.

Starting in the mid-1960s, as the city industrialized rapidly, Seoul saw a boom in residential construction to accommodate its soaring population. Apartment complexes soon began to spring up across the urban landscape, gradually replacing the remaining “hanok” (traditional Korean houses), single-family homes and postwar shanty towns known as “moon villages.” So popular that this form of dwelling became in the country that by the early 2000s, a string of domestic construction companies started their own “branded apartments.

” Today, these brand names are common sights in the high-rise cityscape and are even regarded as symbols of status — Xi (GS E&C), Hillstate (Hyundai E&C), Raemian (Samsung C&T), Prugio (Daewoo E&C) and The Sharp (POSCO E&C), to name .