-style basement homes after deadly floods
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s capital has vowed to move people out of dangerous basement apartments made famous by the movie "Parasite," after three members of a family who lived in the low-income housing died in record flooding this week.
The rains inundated Seoul and the country’s north from Monday to Wednesday, leaving at least 11 people dead, with eight still missing as of Thursday.
The dead included a family who were trapped underground in their home, leading to a national outcry and calls for government action on glaring social inequalities.
Now, officials say they will no longer grant permits for the small apartments — often cramped and dingy homes known as "banjiha," which were featured in Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning film — and work to convert existing homes.
At least 8 killed in South Korea as heavy rains cause floodingAug. 9, 202201:04
“Homes in the basements and half-basement or banjiha are backward housing models that threaten the vulnerable group of people and they must go,” Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon's office told NBC News on Friday.
The family of three were a 12-year-old girl, her mother and the mother's sister, who had Down syndrome. They all drowned in their basement home in the southern Gwanak district of Seoul on Monday, on the first day of a fierce rainfall that caused flooding up to 15 inches deep in the area. All but two families in the area were evacuated by emergency services, according to city officials.
The mother, identified as Hong by her labor union, worked as a sales associate at a duty-free store an hour from her home.
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South Korea's capital has moved to ban the cramped basement flats made famous by the Oscar-winning movie "Parasite."Anthony Wallace / AFP - Getty Images
“Her name was Ms. Hong and she was the breadwinner and the head of her household,” an official from the Korean Federation of Service Workers Unions said. “She lived with a strong sense of responsibilities for her disabled sister, elderly mother as well as her 12-year-old daughter.”
Hong had lived at the apartment with her sister and daughter for seven years, after spending almost 20 years of savings to move closer to her sister's care center, the public broadcaster Korean Broadcasting System reported. She left behind her 72-year-old mother, who was in a hospital at the time of the flooding.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and the Seoul mayor visited the family's home Tuesday, where plates and dolls belonging to the girl floated on muddy water, according to footage provided by the presidential office.