The Bias of Housing Policies by the Japanese Government-General of Korea by the Ethnic Group and Social Class and the Emergence of Housing Rights Movements

This study set out to investigate the developmental process and nature of housing policies, which offer collective means of consumption, to understand the operational methods and historical meanings of ruling power. The study also aimed to analyze the activity patterns and logic of the housing rights movement as the first step to approach the collective identity of subordinate subjects manifested in the living area and the limitations of governmentality reflected in their acts.
The study arranged the characteristics of housing policies by the period. During the period of 1910-27 characterized by the foundation of a colonial capitalist system and the introduction of social policies based on the concept of preventing poverty, there were discriminating housing supports to stabilize the life stability of the ruling class. In the 1910s before the emergence of housings issues, a system was drafted which supported housing expenses. Not all people were eligible to benefit from Suksaryo. There were dual discriminations. One involved distinction between different ethnic groups. All of Joseon government officials were excluded from the system as they were considered not to meet the intent of the system, which was to promote the housing stability of rulers. The other involved distinction by the class. Efforts started to be made to save administrative costs in 1911, which excluded temporary Japanese workers from the system.
In the 1920s when the balance of housing supply and demand became visible, the management of rental houses began at the Bu and Myeon level with the substantialization of the system to support housing expenses pushed forward. Public housing was, however, far from enough to serve as a solution for supply issues and functioned as closed dwelling space only for Japanese officials. In addition, such trends of increasing supports for housing expenses and expanding the scope of their beneficiaries had nothing to do with Joseon people. The Japanese Government-General of Korea adhered to the old systems despite ongoing issues with ethnic discriminations raised by the Joseon people in the society.
The period of 1928-37, when a basis of reformism was established to restore the social order with the housing market issues escalating to threaten people's daily lives, witnessed the implementation of two-pronged housing policies. One of them involved all-out public supports to stabilize the life of the vulnerable. These measures were taken in three major layers including the coordination of ownership through social legislation and authority of regulation, introduction of public housing and regulation of its prices, and rearrangement of districts with deteriorated houses.
Public supports, however, generated no practical effects. As the restoration of the shaking rural order became a top priority, all the bills related to housing were put on a hold. The police's coordination efforts were helpless before firm lessors. Only a fraction of public housing planned in multiple layers fulfilled its original intent as they were scheduled to serve as official residence for Japanese people. The adjustment of public housing rents had no particular impacts on housing prices. A project of constructing districts for the poor was carried out instead of the project to improve districts of deteriorated houses under the goal of providing the poor with sanitary rental houses. The project was nothing but a means of expanding and reproducing "slums" gathering a large number of deteriorated houses in suburbs with poor sanitary arrangements.
The other prong of housing policies was to vitalize the market to facilitate the ownership of one's own house. Such policies included the injection of land and money into the market. The Japanese Government-General of Korea supplied land to the market by prohibiting national forests and Buyuji to alleviate space limitations in cities with a shortage of available housing lots, dissolving forest reserves, and allowing small-sized reclamations by owners. For funding purposes, the Japanese Government-General of Korea introduced housing finance in monthly repayments under two major axes of the Urban Financial Association and the Joseon Savings Bank and expanded their loan capacity.
Implemented in a deflation situation, the measures of vitalizing the market made achievements to some degree. National forests and forest reserves along with unused land were transformed into housing areas by developers, which expanded the base of demand for housing finance. There was a growing trend of residents that owned a house. The recovery of the housing market was, however, close to a "double-edged sword." As the reconstruction projects of Geonyangsa and the residential quarters projects of Chosen Urban Management Co. Ltd. showed, modern dwellings and improved Hanok sold to affluent people resulted in the loss of houses on the part of poor Joseon people living there.
The final period fell in 1938-45 when importance was placed on the control of rents and the reproduction of labor force according to the supreme tasks of preventing inflation and expanding production capacity. Total housing measures were pushed forward in the period. The Japanese Government-General of Korea made active interventions into the market in three layers including organizational arrangement, control of rents through legislation, and expansion of projects related to increasing supply power. It was, however, paradoxical that the total housing measures driven by the war were crippled by the deterioration of war situations with the quantity supplied in the market left to Japanese people.
The three layers were examined specifically. The rent policies reinforced their control power over time through the enactment of 地代家賃統制令 in 1939 and its revision in 1941 in replacement of an administrative order. The policies failed to function as a rational means of controlling prices in accordance with the reality. Lessors' just demand for an increase related to housing construction and extension amid the arbitrary management of the system was habitually denied for violating the basis of low prices. The subjects of management abused orders for a reduction. The system became a dead one due to its exclusive tendency of control, producing such outcomes as the lower investment desire of renters, spread of a black market, rapid increases of rents, and rise of criminals.
The management of residential quarters, which made an axis of indirect creation, was a timely measure in cities where the shortage of available housing lots became a permanent issue, but its social utility was low. Not a single case completed construction according to the plan. For instance, the management project of residential quarters in the Pyeongyang Bu was planned by the demand of Japanese forces stationed in Joseon. Even though the project benefited massive funds and access to violent methods, the deadline of its completion was prolonged by five years. The idea of establishing a housing complex equipped with life infrastructure fell apart. The sales of housing lots to repay principal and interest were low.
The other axis of indirect creation was low-interest funds, which were supplied to facilitate the construction of new houses for workers. This measure was, however, distant from the demand of the production site. The amounts allocated to Joseon were only 50% of Joseon's demand. Most of the funds were used by the housing corporation to buy bonds. Three groups of businesses received preferential loans. Specifically, the affiliates of Nihon Chisso Co. supplied their company housing only to some of the new employees, excluded low-class laborers from their welfare facilities, and supplied no houses to Joseon people.
Direct supply led by the Buwa Housing Corporation was immaculate at least on the plan. The reality, however, told a different story. The houses managed at the Bu level and by the corporation made insufficient achievements in the middle of material and lot shortage. Their completion rates were 76.97% and 36.08%, respectively. An even bigger issue was the biased distribution of Buyeong houses in the public domain. Their rents were lower than the market prices due to the appropriation of considerable tax revenues and the use of public land as housing lots. From the beginning, their occupants were determined. They were Japanese officials and employees.
These findings indicate that the Japanese Government-General of Korea implemented housing policies distant from stable housing life through the mitigation of structural contradictions innate in the market order. Exposed to soaring rents and frequent eviction orders during the Japanese rule, houseless people engaged in active collective actions. There were movements to ensure the residential life of lessees in pursuit of a fair lease order and oppose the demolition of deteriorated houses to raise objections to forced demolition and obtain a right to live. These movements settled down important and formidable social phenomena.
The movement to ensure the residential life of lessees had characteristics in the following patterns: first, there was a strong focus on big cities in terms of space. At the center were Pyeongyang, Gyeongseong, and Incheon where real estate speculations were sweeping; second, the amplified confrontations became a part of the system in 1937; and third, propaganda, self-help, and opposition movements developed in mutual supplementation. The main movement involved collective actions to raise objections to rents distant from the general economic trends.
The core driving force in the organization of movements was "being the party concerned." The social approach led by local influential figures and social groups was low in percentage and temporary. Most of the movements developed in a single line through an independent approach in which stakeholders bonded together and formed a community sharing fate. Here, spontaneity and compulsion played important roles. In the independent approach, the latitude and longitude include a horizontal decision-making agency, public opinions, and restrictive rules to prevent deviant behavior and increase unity.
The main concept mobilized to establish justification was equality. Lessees highlighted the senseless aspects of lessors' behavior based on a two-pronged circuit. First, they calculated proper prices. Tenants demonstrated that rents had room for reduction based on the addition of total expenditures and common earnings rates against total revenues, and leaseholders demanded reasonable compensations based on the transaction prices in reality. They also demonstrated injustice with various yardsticks. Lessees pointed out the abnormal aspects of rents by citing macroscopic economic flows and an economic principle of lower real estate prices in undeveloped areas than developed ones.
Lessees' activities usually moved through the following routes: first, there was a stage of bargaining. Once an issue emerged, lessees would engage in conversations with their lessors; second, there was a stage of confrontation. In response to lessors' warnings for high-level attacks, lessees formed a coalition of nonpayment and aroused public opinions; third, the stage of arbitration saw lessees making petitions for lessors' ongoing threats, but their petition activities were of no great use. The first-line agencies tried not to intervene in the private sector, and the police sided with lessors; and fourth, the stage of conclusion involved lessors' filing a suit and lessees starting a legal battle. The problem was that the battlefield was absolutely favorable to the plaintiff. In Joseon where the civil law whose absolute criterion was ownership worked as a scale of judgment, it was impossible for the defendant to win a case. As long as lessors did not accept court rulings, it was always lessees that lost in the court.
The study then arranged the characteristics of movements to oppose demolitions. Their overall progress was as follows: first, there was a concentration of deteriorated houses in big cities, and so were the movements. Of the big cities, Gyeongseong recorded an overwhelming proportion; second, the resistance that expanded along with the reorganization of urban spaces was in a state of lull in 1938; and third, the movements were concentrated mainly in the early and middle 1930s because of changed uses of land including housing lots.
At the root of organization among residents of deteriorated houses, which were objects of hatred in society, was their voluntary solidarity. Nationalist and socialist forces rarely intervened in demolition issues. Most of these movements moved forward as an orderly fate community based on the firm solidarity of people that shared emotions and material aspects within a fence of isolation. Their cohesion was multiplied by a horizontal decision-making agency, in which anyone was allowed to participate and voice their opinions, and public opinions.
These movements were initiated by Joseon people's perception of merciless construction as an irrational act. Residents of deteriorated houses defined demolition as unjust based on two points: first, the old land convention was ignored which charged individuals that built a house in a neglected lot with Chagi fees. And secondly, it was inhuman to violate the social expectation that the ruler should take care of the poor to ensure their living or the legitimate nature of benevolent politics maintained in an altered form of the emperor's benevolence system. Residents considered building a house in an empty lot as a kind of "right" or natural "way of living" for the poor and strongly criticized the destruction of deteriorated houses even without any minimum supports for their livelihood as unspeakable acts, pouring out their anger.
The position warfare of residents of deteriorated houses took place in three layers: first, they ignored a demolition order as a universal method, thinking little of one. There were no cases in which they moved out of their deteriorated houses on their own will; second, they used resistance as a selective method. Some of them made direct confrontations against violence or had sit-in demonstrations until they received minimum compensations; and third, their final option was a petition. In a situation where the landlord's demolition was unstoppable, they would gather around all the members of the community, make a visit to the Japanese Government-General of Korea, and requested for the maintenance of status of quo instead of migration by emphasizing their poor circumstances.
There were special cases in which residents of deteriorated houses filed a suit. When the Gyeongseong Bu broke its promise and sold land to others, the residents of 162 Sindang-ri confirmed the fact that their preemptive rights were recognized. Judging that there was room for a judicial battle, they hired a lawyer and filed a suit against the landlord that refused to strike a deal for the land with them from the beginning.
The housing rights movements that were frequent in the main stage of big cities reflected struggles of lessees that tried to obtain a stable housing life and residents of deteriorated houses. The movements to maintain housing life and oppose demolitions fundamentally in the nature of rule and conflict a branch of "popular" movements in which fragmentary living characters took actions to expand the human life values based on their "work knowledge."