Shadowed by the high-rises of Seoul’s wealthiest Gangnam district, Kim Bok-Ja, 75, pulls her trolley of folded cardboard through a shanty town that sits uncomfortably in one of Asia’s most developed cities.
At a local recycling yard, Kim smiles thinly as she counts out the meager cash return she gets for the load of boxes and packaging she spent all day collecting.
“This is all I can do to survive, probably up until I die, because I live alone with no proper income,” she said.
Kim’s home is Guryong — a squalid, sprawling slum of plywood and tarpaulin shacks settled in 1988 by squatters evicted from other areas in a push to beautify Seoul as it prepared to host the Olympic Games.
Nearly 25 years later, Guryong (which translates as “Nine Dragons“) has more than 2,000 residents scrabbling out a subsistence living with Third World poverty levels and little or no proper sanitation.
It’s about as far removed as possible from the opulent, glitzy world of neighboring Gangnam — an upscale district of luxury boutiques and night clubs made famous by South Korean rapper Psy’s global hit, “Gangnam Style.”
Taxi drivers have difficulty locating Guryong, although it is only separated from Gangnam by a six-lane highway and covers an area of 70 acres (30 hectares).
“Our village is Seoul’s biggest slum settlement but it will not appear on any maps,” said Lee In, the 59-year-old deputy head of the Guryong residents’ council.
A significant portion of residents are in their 70s or 80s and live alone, most of them without any sort of state assistance.
“Many are engaged in rough work or odd jobs to earn their daily living,” Lee said. “The fact they don’t starve is largely down to help from volunteers and religious groups.” One of the many notable aspects of Guryong is the number of wooden crosses visible on the low-rise roofline, marking dozens of ramshackle churches that cater to the community.
Another is that every inch of available land has been turned into small plots where residents grow vegetables to supplement their diet.
Guryong dwellings are all illegal structures, and gas and electricity supplies almost non-existent, leaving smoky coal briquettes as the main heating source during Seoul’s bitter winters.
A fire in January spread through the flimsy plywood shacks in a matter of minutes, gutting scores of homes, while floods triggered by heavy rains in July last year destroyed a large section of the village.
The only advantage of living in such crude housing is that it can easily be replaced.
“What comes down during the day, we can erect again at night,” said 54-year-old resident Kim Mi-Ran.
The irony of Guryong’s squalor — and the factor most likely to lead to its eventual disappearance — is that it sits on an area of prime real estate, which developers have long coveted.
The land is privately owned, but the squatters have been there so long that they have acquired a quasi-legal status buttressed by the municipal government’s decision to grant them temporary residency cards last year.
Earlier this year, a private developer came up with a plan to build low-rent accommodation to house Guryong residents and redevelop the land they vacate.
The Seoul authorities have since proposed a similar plan of their own, and the two proposals have split the community down the middle with a heated debate over which would be more beneficial.
“We don’t trust politicians who make promises and never translate their words into action,” said Kim Mi-Ran. Forcible eviction is an obvious alternative, but the authorities are particularly wary of taking extreme action.
An effort to force illegal tenants out of a building slated for redevelopment in another Seoul district in 2009 triggered clashes that left six people dead, including a police officer.
Park Won-Soon, a long-time liberal activist who was elected Seoul mayor last October, has made it clear that any solution in Guryong must reflect the opinions and interests of its residents.
“Under the current mayor, there is no question of using coercion,” a municipal government official said.
For Kim Kyo-Seong, a professor at Chung-Ang University’s graduate school of social welfare, Guryong is a concentrated embodiment of everything that is wrong with South Korea’s rapid economic development.
“It’s a powerful symbol of inequality in our society,” Kim said, citing widening income gaps, the lack of support for a rapidly ageing population and the marginalization of those left behind by the country’s industrial drive.
Seoul’s slum life in the shadow of ‘Gangnam Style’
Seoul’s slum life in the shadow of ‘Gangnam Style’
‘One Battle After Another’ wins 6 prizes including best picture at Britain’s BAFTA film awards
- Paul Thomas Anderson was named best director for “One Battle After Another”
- The British awards offer clues about who may win at the Academy Awards in Hollywood next month
LONDON: Politically charged thriller “One Battle After Another” won six prizes, including best picture, at the British Academy Film Awards on Sunday, building momentum ahead of Hollywood’s Academy Awards next month.
Blues-steeped vampire epic “Sinners” and gothic horror story “Frankenstein” won three awards each, while Shakespearean family tragedy “Hamnet” won two including best British film.
“One Battle After Another,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s explosive film about a group of revolutionaries in chaotic conflict with the state, won awards for directing, adapted screenplay, cinematography and editing, as well as for Sean Penn’s supporting performance as an obsessed military officer.
“This is very overwhelming and wonderful,” Anderson said as he accepted the directing prize. He paid tribute to his longstanding assistant director, Adam Somner, who died of cancer in November 2024 a few weeks into production.
“We have a line from Nina Simone that we used in our film, ‘I know what freedom is: It’s no fear,’” the director said. “Let’s keep making things without fear. It’s a good idea.”
Bookies’ favorite Jessie Buckley won the best actress prize for playing grieving mother Agnes Hathaway, wife of William Shakespeare, in “Hamnet.” Buckley, 36, is the first Irish performer to win a best actress prize at the awards, known as BAFTAs.
She dedicated her award “to the women past, present and future who taught me and continue to teach me how to do it differently.”
In a major upset, Robert Aramayo won the best actor category for his performance in “I Swear,” a fact-based British indie drama about a campaigner for people with Tourette syndrome.
The 33-year-old British actor looked stunned and called the victory over Ethan Hawke, Michael B. Jordan, Leonardo DiCaprio and Timothée Chalamet “absolutely mad.”
“I absolutely can’t believe this,” he said. “Everyone in this category blows me away.”
“Sinners” took home trophies for director Ryan Coogler’s original screenplay, the film’s musical score and for Wunmi Mosaku’s supporting actress performance as herbalist and healer Annie.
The British-Nigerian actor said that in the role she found “a part of my hopes, my ancestral power and my connection, parts I thought I had lost or tried to dim as an immigrant trying to fit in.”
Stars and royalty
Hollywood stars and British celebrities, from Paddington Bear to the Prince and Princess of Wales, gathered at London’s Royal Festival Hall for the awards. DiCaprio, Chalamet, Emma Stone, Cillian Murphy, Glenn Close and Ethan Hawke were among the stars walking the red carpet before a black-tie ceremony hosted by Scottish actor Alan Cumming.
Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales also attended, three days after William’s uncle Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested by police and held for 11 hours over allegations he sent sensitive government information to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The scandal has rocked the royal family led by King Charles III, though William and Kate remain popular standard-bearers for the monarchy. William presented an award in his role as president of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Among the biggest receptions from gathered fans was for Paddington, the puppet bear who stars in a musical stage adaption of the beloved children’s classic.
Oscars bellwether
The British prizes, officially called the EE BAFTA Film Awards, often provide hints about who will win at Hollywood’s Academy Awards, held this year on March 15. “Sinners” has a record 16 Oscar nominations, followed by “One Battle After Another” with 13.
“One Battle” went into the BAFTAs ceremony with 14 nominations. “Sinners” was just behind with 13, while “Hamnet” had 11.
Ping-pong odyssey “Marty Supreme” also had 11 nominations but went home empty=handed.
Guillermo del Toro’s reimagining of “Frankenstein” and Norwegian family drama “Sentimental Value” each got eight nominations.
“Frankenstein” took awards for production design, costume design and for the hair and makeup artists who spent 10 hours a day transforming Jacob Elordi into the movie’s monstrous creature.
“Sentimental Value” won the prize for the best film not in English.
Cumming told the audience that it had been a strong year for cinema, if not a cheerful one, with nominated films tackling themes including child death, racism and political violence:
“Watching the films this year was like taking part in a collective nervous breakdown,” he said. “It’s almost as though there are events going on in the real world that are influencing filmmakers.”
The ceremony was more glitz than gloom, though, including a performance by Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami — the voices of animated band HUNTR/X in box office juggernaut “KPop Demon Hunters” — singing the movie hit “Golden.”
Putin critic wins best documentary
The best-documentary prize went to “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” about a Russian teacher who documented the propaganda imposed on Russian schools after the invasion of Ukraine.
The film’s American director David Borenstein said that teacher Pavel Talankin had shown that “whether it’s in Russia or the streets of Minneapolis, we always face a moral choice,” referring to the protests against US immigration enforcement in Minnesota.
“We need more Mr. Nobodies,” he said.
It beat documentaries including Mstyslav Chernov’s harrowing Ukraine war portrait “2000 Meters to Andriivka, ” co-produced by The Associated Press and Frontline PBS.
Most BAFTA winners are chosen by 8,500 members of the UK academy of industry professionals. The Rising Star award, which is decided by public vote, went to Aramayo.
Donna Langley, the UK-born chairwoman of NBCUniversal Entertainment, was awarded the British Academy’s highest honor, the BAFTA fellowship.
