Reconceptualizing Conventional Subdivided-Units and New Empirical Evidences

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to redefine the concept of ‘conventional subdivided-units’ and identify households living in the revised subdivided-units using empirical data. The term ‘subdivided-units’ with low-end small rental often has been used in policy language in official documents so far but it has yet to be formulated. In this paper, considering objectification and measurability, the “subdivision-shaped units” that modified the ‘conventional subdivided-units’ was defined as “dwelling where the area of indoor space used by a household for residential uses is less than 7㎡ or those units that are not self-contained. Empirical results show that about 210,000 households reside in the subdivision-shaped units as modified subdivided-units and 46.6% of them live in types similar to conventional subdivided-units (on a monthly rent basis with no-deposit and costing less than 300,000 won per month). The most similar to the overall characteristics of conventional subdivided-units were Gosiwon accommodations or lodgings. In light of recent global discourses, the subdivision-shaped units can be regarded as informal housing in Korean context. Although it is a cheap alternative for the vulnerable who have been priced out of formal housing, it continuously poses a health and safety threat to tenants. For more improvements, it is necessary to establish a reliable data infrastructure that can catch up with the real figures in terms of hiddenness >, diversity, and complicated hybridity. Based on such data, adequate housing standards should be made into rules in the national policy-level.