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After flood deaths, will South Korea President Yoon Suk-yeol follow through on vow to ban ‘Parasite-style’ basement flats?
- Seoul will immediately stop issuing permits for construction of such homes, known as ‘banjihas’, and aims to phase them out over 20 years
- President Yoon Suk-yeol, Seoul authorities face mounting public pressure after a family of three drowned in their submerged underground flat
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South Korean capital Seoul’s infamous semisubterranean homes – similar to the dwellings depicted in the Oscar-winning film Parasite – have come sharply in focus following this week’s record downpour in the country.
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On social media, numerous anecdotes and videos have been circulating on how the country’s most vulnerable people who live in these homes, called ‘banjiha’, were trapped in their homes as floodwaters rose.
A widely circulating video showed three men struggle to break open a window with a fire extinguisher and a spanner to save a man trapped in one of these homes.
Lee Seung-hoon, 28, tried to escape through the single door of his underground flat but strong water pressure from the flood kept the door tightly shut.
His neighbours in the Sillim-dong subdistrict had no choice but to take matters into their own hands and rescue him.
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Seoul’s emergency rescue services were stretched thin this week by what President Yoon Suk-yeol called Seoul’s heaviest rainfall in over a century.
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