Vol. 10, Issue 02 February 2010 
The Hairdresser’s House – Life in a “Slabijib”
Feature
Nine halmoni (할머니, the polite form of address for elderly women in Korean) sit cross-legged on the linoleum, a shallow dish of kimchi and some rice between them. As the food dwindles, their chatter undying, one rises, slides open the screen door, and unhooks her barbers’ shears from a peg on the courtyard wall. Amid eager gestures from the other women, a second halmoni seats herself before the mirror and lets the hairdresser pin a robe under her chin.
By Miriam Ho
Nine halmoni (할머니, the polite form of address for elderly women in Korean) sit cross-legged on the linoleum, a shallow dish of kimchi and some rice between them. As the food dwindles, their chatter undying, one rises, slides open the screen door, and unhooks her barbers’ shears from a peg on the courtyard wall. Amid eager gestures from the other women, a second halmoni seats herself before the mirror and lets the hairdresser pin a robe under her chin.
Geum-soon (not her real name) has lived and worked in the neighbourhood behind Yangdong Market for thirty years, running an unlicensed hair salon out of her home. Her customers are her long-time neighbours. In these colonies of low-rise houses dating from the 1960s, a largely aging population supports itself on simple skills. Fortune tellers’ poles pierce the air, flapping canvasses delineate makeshift restaurants, and parked outside a few gates are metal wheelbarrows, used to collect scrap materials and garbage from around the city.
These neighbourhoods are a vestige of industrializing Korea. During Park Chung-hee’s 1961-1979 dictatorial rule, rapid economic expansion brought a influx of rural workers into cities like Gwangju. At the same time, traditional chogajibs (초가집, thatched-roof house) were ubiquitously standardized with widely available industrial materials under Park’s Saemaul (New Village) Movement.[1] Using the new slabijib (슬라브집, slab-roof house) prototype, housing for migrant workers could be built quickly, economically and en masse. Concrete block replaced vernacular wall assemblies of straw-bale and rice paper, and concrete or corrugated metal also replaced the thatched roofs that had to be rebuilt every summer in a chogajib. The efficiency of slab construction superceded other classic building methods, including the giwajib ( 기와집 , adobe house) and the neowajib (너와집, wood house).
In these settlements, where the urban lower and middle class live today, Saemaul’s motto “Diligence, Self-Reliance, and Cooperation” is still evident. Tenants grow enough food for their own use on rooftop gardens and in communal vegetable plots, and generously share their harvests with friends. Geum-soon, who serves a complimentary meal with her 8,000-won haircuts, tells translator Nam-il and I that she has minimal expenses: “I don’t have to pay [a separate] rent for the shop, or taxes. The food I grow outside, some of it my neighbours give to me.”
Several halmoni sit out with us on the courtyard porch, and we laugh, talk, and pass snacks back and forth while we watch Geum-soon perm her friend’s hair through the open window. A slabijib follows certain essential principles of Korean house design: the main building 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 socialize 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 of it.
Geum-soon’s home is modernized and well-maintained. She has lacquered furniture, a flat-screen TV, and her 29-year-old daughter, who lives with her, has a computer with high-speed Internet. The interiors are dim, with only small windows facing the courtyard, to keep cool in the summer and to minimize heat loss in the winter. She 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.[2] This is largely attributed to a paradigm shift from traditional family structures. Where aging parents once depended upon their grown children to support them, this is far less common today. 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. In the neighbourhood behind Yangdong, tenants pay a mere 150,000 won a month for rent.
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-sustainable, and have familiar old friends. Geum-soon is content with her home, her neighbours, and the profits from her business. Her many children and grandchildren visit often.
Generally viewed as bland, outdated structures, as well as a painful reminder of a period of political oppression, these tenements have nevertheless acquired their own character through decades of inhabitation. Renewals and repairs have transformed the standard building envelope, and even as they are abandoned – presumably for the conveniences of modern apartment living – the structures take on the beautiful texture of decay. On our morning amble through the neighbourhood, we noted that at least 10% of the dwellings were unoccupied. Without maintenance, they deteriorate rapidly: built to embrace the environment, wild grasses and vines easily take root in cement crevices, rapidly turning a house into a site of ecological succession.
From the courtyard, a concrete staircase reaches the roof. I asked Geum-soon if I could climb up. Navigating kimchi pots and other clutter on the steps, I attained a platform with a vista of neighbouring roofs undulating up the mountain. One advantage of the slab roof is that each tenant has access to his or her own roof terrace; useful for drying laundry and for outdoor food preparation in the city. On Geum-soon’s roof, hot peppers are spread out on a mat between utility pipes and vents, and laundry and fish dry on the same line. It is the visibility, though, of this elevated world that I find riveting: neighbours can see one another as they go about their daily chores on the roof, holding conversations over the barriers of their cement walls. The roof makes a lively second tier of community space.
The view of the Saemaul colony – bright peaked roofs, crowded terraces, all the texture of life and decay sparkled in the afternoon light. Between the houses, there are maze-like corridors that switch back and forth, informally reinforcing the mountainous Korean landscape. Though a product of industrialization, in their use, disuse, and gradual disintegration, these settlements have a strange kinship with nature.
Interview by Ko Nam-il
Story by Miriam Ho
The conditions and the future of slabijib living is the subject of an exhibition entitled “Disappearing Gwangju,” featuring documentation from architect Miriam Ho and photographer Cho Dae-yeon (Gwangju University), on exhibit at the GIC GAIA Gallery from February 6th – March 5th. Attend the opening and artists’ talk at 2:30 p.m., February 6th.
Footnotes
[1] See Gwangju News January 2010
[2] “The relative poverty ratio among the elderly people over the age of 65 in Korea was 45 percent in 2006, indicating almost one in every two elderly households live in poverty.” The Korea Times, November 8, 2008. Relative poverty means that one’s income is less than half the average household income of the nation, which was 3.5 million won per month in 2008. (Korea National Statistics Office, http://www.korea.net/News/News/NewsView.asp?serial_no=20091120008)
