War Refugees Built Houses All the Way to the Summit

Refugees with nowhere else to go after the Korean War crowded onto hillsides outside Seoul's urban core, and Geumho-dong and Oksu-dong became a textbook example of a hillside shantytown covered in houses up to its very peak.

Key takeaways

After the Korean War, refugees flooding into Seoul mostly settled in areas outside the old city core — places like today's Geumho-dong and Oksu-dong — building makeshift shelters. Fact Even under poor housing conditions, as Seoul's population exploded, the entire hillside became covered in houses, forming a classic hillside slum. Fact

In the late 1960s, the government drew up a "substandard building clearance plan" pursuing three approaches at once: relocating residents to large new settlements, upgrading substandard housing in place, and building communal apartment blocks. Fact Starting in the 1980s, full-scale redevelopment plans were drawn up for underdeveloped areas across Geumho, Haengdang, and Eungbong-dong. Fact

What to look for on site

Archival photographs documenting the shantytown era
Steep roads that hint at the terrain before redevelopment
The lived history running from settlement to eventual demolition

Responsible framing

Avoid romanticizing this past as simply "poor but warm-hearted times." Also acknowledge the genuinely poor housing conditions and the conflicts that arose during forced demolitions.