[Webtoon] Seoul's rental housing crisis was a 'hot-button issue' 100 years ago, too [Walkspot]

Did you know that Kim Yu-jeong — the author of "Camellia" and "Spring, Spring" — also wrote about life in a Seoul rental room?

His short story "Ttalaji" is set in a run-down rented room in Sajik-gol, at the foot of Inwangsan.

People from all walks of life crowded into tiny rooms carved out of servants' quarters and storage sheds.

But the tension between a landlord trying to collect overdue rent

and tenants who simply could not pay kept growing.

"Pay up!"

"I can't!"

"Get out!"

"I won't!"

The once-quiet rental house became a scene of chaos, with everyone tangled up in conflict.

Their clashes were not simply a matter of personality.

In 1930s Gyeongseong, the population was growing fast, but there were nowhere near enough homes to house everyone.

The housing crisis and rent problem were so serious that even servants' quarters and storage sheds were converted into rooms for rent.

The Japanese Government-General issued the "Land Rent and House Rent Control Ordinance" to cap rents — but it could not solve the fundamental problem of a housing shortage.

Petty and rowdy as it all seems,

every character in the story was a "ttalaji" — a nobody scraping by against the harsh realities of the age.

Doesn't that sound like us?

The setting is believed to be near Hwanghakjeong on Inwangsan, where Kim Yu-jeong's sister lived.

Take a walk along the Inwangsan path starting from Hwanghakjeong, and think about the lives of the ttalaji of Sajik-gol.

to be continued...