Sixty minutes. That’s all it took. As the rains poured down on Seoul on August 9, 2022, I watched Netflix in my family’s apartment in the Yongsan district, safe on the 7th floor, thanks to my economic privilege. Less than four kilometers (2.4 miles) away in Dongjak district, the minutes ticked by as Hong, her mother, and her aunt desperately tried to break the barred windows in their banjo as the flood waters continued to seep through. In the end, despite their screams for help, all three members of the family died. Banjiha, or half-basement apartments, are dwellings for the poor; during my country’s recent climate change-induced weather crisis, these dwellings became death traps. Of the dozen victims who died in one of the most prosperous and technologically advanced cities in the world, nearly all succumbed to their deaths while trapped in these symbols of poverty. 

These deaths are sacrifices on the altar of economic progress. Economic inequality in South Korea continues to grow even as signs of malaise and discontent continue. The elite revels in their belief in righteous meritocracy while the middle class and poor subtly rebel through the lowest birth rate on the planet. But South Korea only serves as a harbinger of what’s to come. Here, we must come together to develop a solution for capitalism before the gyre widens, and things fall apart. 

이채운 강남포스트 학생기자  webmaster@ignnews.kr

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