Director Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning film Parasite has brought “banjiha,” a cramped
semi-basement apartment in Seoul to worldwide attention. In the movie, the poor Kim family
has to go down a set of stairs to their banjiha, with “ban” meaning “semi” and “jiha”
meaning basement in Korean. Parasite juxtaposes the Kim’s squalid semi-basement flat against
the rich Park family’s airy mansion to mirror the wealth gap between the Kim and Park families.
Parasite is a work of fiction, but banjiha is not. Outside Bong’s fictional world,
banjiha is a housing option that has provided homes for urban dwellers hunting for affordable
housing in South Korea, mainly in Seoul. This week Korea Now will look into the banjiha,
where hundreds of thousands of people end up living, while they work hard and hope for
a better future. The history of semi-basement flats dates back
to 1970, when the government mandated basement floors in construction projects. Some foreign
media reported that the banjiha originated from an air-raid shelter created by the danger
of war with North Korea, but it was not confirmed. As the city’s population swelled in line
with the country’s rapid industrialization, the underground spaces eventually became an
inevitable alternative. In 1984, the government relaxed regulations, allowing basement flats
to be built higher, with half of them being underground and half above ground, coining
the term “banjiha.” The move was seen as legalizing underground residences, which
had already become a regular housing option for the needy.
Decades later, banjiha is still a cheap housing option in the city where median apartment
prices have topped 900 million won (almost US$760,000), while the minimum monthly wage
stands at 1.8 million won (around US$1,500). There were more than 360,000 households living
in basement or semi-basement flats in 2015, accounting for 1.9 percent of all households,
according to the latest data by the state-run Korean Statistical Information Service. Some
62 percent of these basement flats were located in Seoul, reflecting the staggering property
prices in the capital where one-fifth of the national population lives.
In South Korea, banjiha typically represents the lowest social class or poverty. Some even
argue that the existence of banjiha is a proof that Seoul’s gap between rich and poor is
serious. As seen in the film, banjiha is not the most pleasant place to live in. The family’s
toilet, which ironically sits higher than other areas of the house to prevent flooding,
nonetheless spews out filthy sludge during a flood. Light is a scarce resource with sunlight
touching the house only in limited times of the day, causing the walls to mold. The well-off
Mr. Park frowns at Kim Ki-taek’s stench, which his daughter later sums up as a smell
the Kim family will only be able to get rid of when they move out from the moldy flat.
But things are changing, albeit slowly. First of all, the number of these basement flats
is actually declining. A rush of urban redevelopment projects are bringing down old buildings with
these semi-basement flats. There has also been a shift in how some banjiha dwellers
think about their homes. A quick search on social media, using the hashtag #banjiha,
fetches thousands of photos of semi-basement houses renovated in style. For them it is
no longer something to be ashamed of. Therefore, critics point out that it is inappropriate
to magnify the existence of banjiha to the extreme inequality in South Korea or simply
generalize banjiha residents as being poor. On the other hand, however, it is also true
that moving up the ladder still seems to be quite difficult as we can see the Kim family
eventually going back to their own place in the movie. What are your thoughts on this?
Please let me know in the comments below and thank you for watching Korea Now.