For first-time visitors to South Korea, one of the most striking features of the country’s cities is the prevalence of giant, identical-looking apartment complexes.

Often derided by outsiders as drab or ugly, these sometimes monumentally sized high-rise complexes of slabs and towers, referred to as “apatu danji” – “apartment complex” in Korean – are ubiquitous: 61 per cent of all Koreans, and even more in and around Seoul, live in apartments or multifamily housing as of 2021, much of which is in high-rise towers that are usually 12 to 15 floors but can go as high as 50. 

These exteriors nonetheless belie qualities that have made them an often successful solution for a country undergoing rapid growth. The apatus’ density has been a key tool that has made comfortable, convenient accommodation easier to access for ordinary people. And while they follow an international aesthetic style, they possess many features that are specifically tailored to Korean tastes and customs.

Another singular feature distinguishes them from similar complexes elsewhere. Reflecting the huge role of corporations in South Korea’s development, they were often built by some of the world’s biggest consumer companies – Samsung Group, Hyundai Motor Group, LG Group, to name a few – that are recognized household names around the world.

A Distinctively Korean Model

The story of how these corporate-built housing complexes came into being has its roots in South Korea’s recovery from the Korean War. When the war ended in 1953, rapid urbanization followed, with mass migration to war-damaged cities necessitating a shift toward large-scale housing. Many new arrivals ended up having to live in illegal settlements on city fringes, in places where existing housing was mainly still the traditional “hanok,” a low-rise individual home built from stone, wood and plaster. 

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Modernization to match this migration started in earnest in the early 1960s under the rule of military dictator Park Chung Hee, who led a policy of rapid industrialization in an effort to catch up economically with Japan and Western countries. 

Seoul’s population grew from 1 million in 1953 to about 2.5 million in 1960. With no planning for such explosive growth and urbanization, informal housing proliferated across the city, encroaching on mountains, rivers, green belts, national land and even roads. At least a third of all residents lived in hastily assembled clapboard houses. 

The high-density apatu complexes were seen as the only viable solution to accommodate Seoul’s growing population. While this rapid transformation reflected global urbanization trends, the involvement of the chaebol conglomerates stands out. Hyundai, a company best-known internationally for car manufacturing, was constructing housing – not explicitly for its own employees – as early as the 1940s. Initially commissioned by the US military, the corporation also built roads, bridges and warehouses across the country. These developments were not entirely private, but collaborations between state-run companies and private conglomerates.

The first modern apartment complex, western Seoul’s Mapo Apartments, was built in 1962 by the state-run Korean National Housing Corporation. Its 10 six-story apartment blocks represented a notable improvement from the conditions many residents knew: The complex boasted central heating and amenities like playgrounds and shops. Five companies worked on its construction, among them Hyundai Engineering & Construction, still one of the country’s biggest conglomerates. 

As a former Japanese colony, many development policies were transposed to South Korea from Japan, as the government sought to emulate its neighbor’s rapid growth, including heavy corporate involvement. Japan’s “zaibatsu”  – family-owned conglomerates that were central to the country’s 20th century modernization – provided a model for the involvement of corporate titans in South Korea’s reconstruction. 

From Hanok to Apatu

The successful widespread adoption of multifamily apartment blocks was never a foregone conclusion. Such buildings’ early forms in the 1960s were often of low quality. Their Western-style radiators also initially seemed alien, according to a study by the University of New South Wales’ Raffaele Pernice: Traditional Korean houses are equipped with an underfloor heating system known as “ondol,” in which a furnace warms a thin masonry floor to heat the whole house. 

A concerted effort by the Korean government to push for the construction of better quality prefab high-rise buildings nonetheless helped change people’s perceptions, and the construction of high-density residential areas in Seoul got a further boost after the government implemented the Housing Construction Promotion Act in 1972.

Other design elements made these later complexes more desirable. They might be built specifically around or near important services and amenities such as schools, shops and transport links, and beautified by elements such as rock pools and gardens. As such, they differed slightly from the Corbusian towers-in-a-park model by being less isolated within the urban fabric. This attention to amenities and the complexes’ targeting of more affluent residents meant that apartment complexes diverged from similar abodes in the US – and to some extent, in Europe – where such projects were often seen as undesirable, poorly located housing for lower-income people. 

As such, some scholars trace the Korean designs to Western ideas such as England’s Garden City movement of the 19th century and to US urban planner Clarence Perry, who developed the concept of a self-contained “neighborhood unit” in the 1920s. The concept – a forerunner of today’s much-discussed “15-minute city” – also has parallels in the Soviet micro-district, where discrete neighborhood units were planned with dedicated shopping and amenity complexes. 

Inside, the apartment units were influenced by the Japanese LDK configuration – or living room, dining room and kitchen – which itself was derived from Western ideas. But traditional Korean design elements also endured: Later versions, for example, featured an updated version of ondol-style heating using electric elements or hot water pipes, providing practical, familiar ways of getting through Korea’s often freezing winters.

These apartments also adapted the traditional functions of the “madang,” or hanok courtyard, through a central living room designed to be the passage to other rooms in a typical three-bedroom apartment. This walk-through heart to each apartment served as a shared core that “persists as a focal space for family life,” according to a 2016 paper by academics Nahyang Byun and Jaepil Choi. The ubiquitous enclosed balcony in apartments provides further space for laundry or storage, while visually opening up the space to the outside.  

The result was a type of housing that superficially resembled similar developments across the world even as it reflected local norms. As Choi writes: “The modern apartments of Korea may be extremely popular because they appear to embrace a totally modern (Western) lifestyle while actually allowing many traditional behavior patterns to continue.” 

Status Symbols

As South Korea developed, living in modern apartments backed by corporate names became synonymous with upward mobility. The near-identical floor plans, replicated across thousands of complexes across the country, were not seen as a negative. This standardization was what made apartments a good investment, “a strength which guarantees a predictable product of generally accepted value,” wrote Andrea Prins, a Rotterdam-based architect and researcher who has studied housing in Korea.

As the country became wealthier, apartment complexes also evolved to serve the growing ranks of middle- and upper-middle class families. Woo Ayoung, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Urban Studies at Hanyang University in Seoul, said that since the late 1980s, swankier apartments have been marketed to higher-income households with the English word “mansion,” which is meant to evoke prestige. The apartments typically carry the name of the conglomerate that developed them alongside an approximation of a Western word to signal wealth.

As a result, some of Seoul’s most sought-after developments bear names that might sound strange to English speakers, such as Samsung’s Raemian La Classy and Hyundai’s The H Forecent. “The labeling of apartments in Korea has basically become the representation of social status because the brand makes it so easy for anyone, even kids, to immediately distinguish higher-end units from the public housing apartments,” said Woo.

Located in affluent neighborhoods such as Gangnam and Hannam-dong, these complexes also offer numerous amenities to compensate for relatively small apartment footprints, such as cafes, libraries or reading/study rooms. The most high-end developments run to gyms, saunas, small children’s water parks and – reflecting Korea’s golf craze – indoor driving ranges. Their connections to tech companies can provide other features, such as, say, “smart” Samsung appliances.

Even older, more run-down apartment complexes that don’t offer such services can attract residents – thanks to their very defects. Some South Koreans pour their money into crumbling older apartments hoping that the buildings will soon be demolished and replaced. Homeowners who are entitled to units in the new development can then profit handsomely from the increased property value as a result of “jaegeonchuk,” or reconstruction. It’s not unusual to find some very wealthy people living in the shabbiest apartment blocks for this reason.

Shrinking Demand

For now, the tried-and-tested model of mass construction of apartment complexes shows no signs of slowing down. Owning such an apartment continues to be the top aspiration for most South Koreans, who are attracted by the safety of the asset class and the importance of being near good schools and other education-related amenities that cluster around major complexes. The country’s largest-ever apartment complex, designed to accommodate over 10,000 households, is currently under construction in Seoul.

These huge volumes have not, however, prevented Seoul from experiencing the affordability crises now common across prosperous global cities. Apatu are not cheap. And while the units were initially intended to be owned by their occupants, the increasingly unaffordable costs of doing so means that most are now rented out. Typically this is via the distinctively South Korean “jeonse” contract model where, in lieu of rent, tenants pay a huge deposit equal to up to 90 per cent of the home’s value, from which landlords gain the interest during the tenancy – a model currently in crisis that even at its peak excluded people without access to capital. 

There are also some signs of change, and even a local backlash against the apatu danji’s generic qualities. “When we just examine the floor plans of these Korean apartments, they are one of the best forms of housing in terms of efficiency and convenience,” said Choi Doo Ho, founder and head of Tomoon Architects & Engineers in Seoul. “But it becomes a problem when they are endlessly duplicated without considering how well and harmoniously they go with the rest of the city and its surroundings.”

Older blocks of this type are, to some eyes, a little too harmonious, their uniformity earning them the nickname “matchboxes.” Newer blocks, however, tend to add prestigious features such as increasing the ratio of glass to concrete, playing with with irregular lines or curved walls on the exterior, or adding sky bridges between towers. These distinctive features are also used to give complexes a form of brand identity – the Lotte Castle real estate brand, for example, uses golden finishes externally so that people recognize the building as a Lotte product.

Just as it did globally, Covid-19 also changed the way that some South Koreans viewed their residential spaces. As local media reported, many urban apartment-dwellers yearned for outdoor space during the pandemic and found ways to repurpose the balconies in their apartments, enclosing spaces previously used mainly for storage or clothes’ drying with glass, and incorporating them into living rooms. Due to the growing demand for outdoor space, the Seoul government recently amended rules to allow protruding balconies to be built in apartment blocks above the 20th floor.

In the longer term, powerful social and demographic trends could also threaten the housing model . In a country with one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, fewer people are getting married and solo households are on the rise, suggesting that demand for large-scale multifamily complexes will decrease in the future.

“The form of housing in Korea must and will change over time because there are limitations to mass supplies of apartments given the changing social landscape,’‘ said Choi, the architect. “I hope that we start with the basics and rethink how housing should be built across the country, and what kind of housing is needed in different areas, because we really don’t need high-rise, fancy apartments in all parts of South Korea.” BLOOMBERG