Seoul set to demolish last remaining slums near city’s glitzy Gangnam district
Shantytown Guryong has a population of 2,000 and is a symbol of income inequality
Close by the luxury high-rises of Seoul's most expensive neighbourhood, 80-year-old Kim Ok-nyo burns charcoal to heat her two-room shack in Guryong, a shantytown of 2,000 residents.
Demolition of Guryong, the last slum in Seoul's glitzy Gangnam district, is expected to start this summer after redevelopment plans were mired for years in squabbling among the city, district and developers, and even battling residents.
Left behind by South Korea's economic miracle, Guryong is a grim symbol of growing income inequality in a country where nearly half the elderly live in poverty, the highest rate in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) grouping of countries.
Kim, a widow who shares her cramped wooden dwelling with one of her sons, is ready to leave the fire-prone slum, where the church she attended burned down about five months ago.
"I am scared that I will continue to live here and die here," she said. "I want to die in a slightly better place."
After her husband died of a heart attack nearly 30 years ago, Kim moved into the farmland-turned-slum, doing temporary work at building sites, and once even cleaning at one of the nearby high-rise apartments.
