The rise of ‘Gangnam style’: Manufacturing the urban middle class in Seoul, 1976–1996

Abstract

Focusing on the case of urban development in Gangnam, this article explores how middle-class identity based on residence in apartment complexes was created in South Korea beginning in the late 1970s. I argue that state policy, speculation, and exclusion were key ingredients in the making of the middle class in Gangnam. Many white-collar families became apartment owners through a government-subsidised apartment lottery programme, and subsequently climbed the economic ladder more rapidly than others because of skyrocketing housing prices. Their rise to middle-class status, facilitated by chance and furthered by their willingness to engage in real estate speculation, was seen by many as illegitimate. In the face of scepticism about their status, Gangnam residents strived to cultivate cultured, modernised, and Westernised middle-class lifestyles so as to distinguish themselves from non-Gangnam residents and justify their economic success. This paper emphasises the dialectical process – both top-down and bottom-up – of middle class formation during the Gangnam boom. Based on a year of field research conducted in Korea, I analyse the lives and experiences of the middle class and their strategies for upward social mobility in the housing market.

Speculative homemaking: Women’s labour, class mobility and the affect of homeownership in South Korea

“…By situating women’s speculation work in the context of their work and family relations, this article illuminates the deeply gendered labour of what I call speculative homemaking – an activity that merges household management with the complicated work of real estate speculation, such as gathering information about different neighbourhoods, predicting future housing values, mobilising resources from kinship networks for credit and deciding when to resell. While such speculative work has been documented as the ‘informal activities’ of urban middle-class women (Kim, 1992; Yang, 2018), I find that the practice is not limited to the middle classes. Rather, it is widespread across class lines, as it represents an opportunity for upward mobility.…”

“…While living and investing in high-rise apartments emerged as a measure of class distinction and as a means to accumulate wealth for the new urban middle classes (Abelmann, 2003; Nelson, 2000), such speculative logic has been diffused among people of various social classes as an opportunity for upward mobility. Although women’s real estate investment and household strategies among the urban middle class have been well documented (Kim, 1992; Yang, 2018), previous scholarship has not examined how speculative logic extends to women beyond the middle class, producing distinctive affective investments that propel their engagement in speculative practices through their everyday labour.…”

“…Sunjông’s story of homeownership and investment does not fit the stereotypical image of bokbuin , women of the nouveau riche class who have been subject to public criticism as possessing ‘excessive desires’ that harm the nation (Nelson, 2000), or even the typical portrayal of urban middle-class women who employ various strategies for investment with ease (Yang, 2018). Because of her working-class background and constrained resources, Sunjông had to deploy particular strategies that those who are more privileged did not have to, such as renting out rooms within the house, managing personal loans from extended family members and children, and staying put and living in the midst of demolition.…”

Fabrication of space: The design of everyday life in South Korean Songdo

“…Tellingly, Songdo came to be called the ‘Second Gangnam’, and this description surfaced in our interviews repeatedly. The Gangnam development in Seoul illustrated with the unprecedented force how such developments formed the new middle-class and its values of convenience, security and distinction (Park, 2013; Son, 2003; Yang, 2018). From the very beginning, the majority of residents in new Gangnam housing complexes were from high income groups (Lee, 2017: 58).…”

“…It is said to be a strong indication that programs of ‘smart cities’ built from scratch often correlate with large-scale land acquisition and their utopian, quasi-futuristic discourse conceals the often inequitable socio-spatial effects (Bunnell, 2015). In the South Korean context, the top-down effort of the state to ‘manufacture the urban middle class’ is reported (Yang, 2018), one that is critically linked to normalisation of ‘enclave urbanism’ which typically mobilises the ‘globalisation’ discourse in order to more efficiently cater to local middle class desires for individual safety and collective distinction (Murray, 2017). These critiques fitted the discourse of ‘smartmentality’, that is, a new governmentality of disciplinary smartification (Vanolo, 2014) realised through strategies of ‘enterpreneurial urbanism’ (Shin, 2016) which has become widespread in the context of East Asian ‘compressed modernity’ (Kyung-Sup, 1999; Ochiai, 2014).…”