Controversies arise Incheon’s life experience center

A life experience center will open at Gwaengiburi village, a representative shanty town with dosshouses, in Manseok-dong, Incheon.

The district is pushing forward with opening a place where children of other districts come with their parents and experience the life in dosshouses in old days. Re-doing a two-story empty house into a living space of the 1960s and 1970s, the district plans to run the experience center with an admission fee of 10,000 Korean won (approx. 8.8 U.S. dollars). Articles that would bring back nostalgia such as chamber pots, black-and-white TVs and pounding sticks for cloth will be placed for visitors to experience. The district made a pre-announcement for legislation in June to run the center at Gwaengiburi village, which will be deliberated at a regular session at district council.

Some residents of the village, however, oppose the plan. About 160 residents submitted a signature letter on Wednesday, contending that they can’t accept “the commercialization of poverty.”

The Gwaengiburi village in Incheon is where Kim Jeong-mi’s novel of “Children of Gwaengiburi village” was set in. This shanty village has been built with old and shabby dosshouses since the Korean War. As of early this year, the entire population stood at 616 in 359 households, out of which some 300 people or 230 households are dwelling dosshouses. There are four restrooms that are shared by dosshouse dwellers. Exposed to natural disasters or accidents such as fire, the village has poor residential environment.

run-juno@donga.com