South Korea is about to section out all basement and semi-basement flats within the capital Seoul after 4 individuals drowned in such houses this week throughout the worst storm the town has confronted in additional than a century.

The tiny dwellings, often called “banjiha” houses, have been featured within the Oscar-winning Parasite, and symmbolised financial disparity. The nation’s city poor typically stay in these semi-underground houses.

Seoul authorities stated landlords and homeowners will now be given 10 to twenty years to take away these buildings and convert them into non-residential areas resembling storage or parking heaps.

Officers stated they’d coordinate with the federal government to revise constructing legal guidelines to ban the development and use of basements or semi-basement houses for residential functions, in response to a Yonhap report.

The administration will deny permits to assemble such houses from this week, officers added.

The announcement got here after Seoul was hit by its heaviest downpour in 115 years, killing not less than 11 individuals.

Many stay lacking in Seoul and close by Gyeonggi Province following the heavy rains that swamped the area on Monday and Tuesday, turning streets into car-clogged rivers, flooding subway stations, triggering landslides, and displacing greater than 1,800 individuals from their houses.

Amongst those that died in rain-related incidents have been three members of a household – a girl, her sister and teenage daughter. They have been discovered lifeless after being trapped in a flooded semi-basement house in Sillim-dong.

Based on an area newspaper, a girl in her 50s was additionally discovered lifeless in a basement flat after being drowned.

These tragedies in flooded basements have renewed the eye on inequalities in South Korea, which have been delivered to worldwide consideration by the Korean-language movie Parasite. It confirmed how individuals dwelling in such dwellings battle to make ends meet and are largely ignored by the society’s wealthy.

The success of the film and its subsequent Oscar win compelled the town authorities to pledge to financially assist not less than 1,500 households dwelling in these residences.

“Underground and semi-underground housing threatens the weak in all features,” Seoul mayor Oh Se-hoon stated.

About 5 per cent or 200,000 houses in Seoul are basement or semi-basement flats, in response to a 2020 census by the town’s metropolitan authorities.

Inequality and the hole between the wealthy and the poor has worsened with the coronavirus pandemic.

The revenue hole between most lowest class teams and the highest 20 per cent of households has elevated since 2019, a report by Shinhan Financial institution confirmed in April.

Extra reporting by businesses