There is certainly little doubt that home ownership is the norm within contemporary Korean society although the actual home ownership rate is not high. Home ownership has been regarded as a source of ʻontological securityʼ, and some have argued that...
There is certainly little doubt that home ownership is the norm within contemporary Korean society although the actual home ownership rate is not high. Home ownership has been regarded as a source of ʻontological securityʼ, and some have argued that home ownership is more strongly associated with pride, warmth, autonomy, relaxation and identity than renting. However, this argument is problematic in that it separates consciousness, preferences and values from the social context. We have to consider the socio-economic context and the role of discursive practice in the social construction of home ownership.
Thus, this research aims to analyze past home ownership discourse in Korea and examines the effects it has had on Korean society, which, this study argues, has maintained housing inequality on the one hand and restructured the welfare regime on the other. Paying particular attention to its political-economic and socio-cultural contexts, this study examines home ownership discourse that have been dominant in Korea from 1970s-2000s and the ideological effects of such discourse by analyzing the discourse of leading articles and columns of daily newspapers.
Main arguments can be summarized as follows:
First, housing policy and institution in Korea have been centered on owner occupiers. In the so-called ʻdevelopmental stateʼ period of the 1970s to the mid-1980s, state-supplied housing functioned as a commodity to solve the prevailing housing shortages. In this process, housing was distributed selectively and the beneficiaries of such a housing policy were the middle class and home owners. After 1987, increasing intervention of construction capital in housing market expanded commercialization of housing. After financial crisis 1997, in the process described as the ʻfinancialization of daily lifeʼ, diverse financial commodities including mortgages were promoted aggressively.
Second, in policy dicourse 1970~1980s, housing policy was equivalent to development and stimulative economic policy. The period After 1987 when housing became ʻpoliticalʼ issue, market discourse and public interest discourse contended each other. However, policy discourse reduce structural problem to private dimension rather than strengthening public dimension of housing sector because both aspects converged. After 1997, policy discourse appeared to be based on a framework which regards state intervention negatively while financialization as being ideal in housing market.
Third, During 1970~1980s, home ownership discourse strengthened the ethical practices of ʻindustrious laborʼ and ʻthrift and savingʼ and stressed ʻself-relianceʼ despite the generally low levels of income. Since the mid-1970s, housing has become a target of speculation. In ʻBokbuinʼ(ʻwomen who speculate in real estateʼ) discourse, speculation in real estate was criticized as a personal moral problem. In this discourse, the housing problem is blamed on the individual and their personal morality, and not on state policy. During the democratization period after 1987, ʻconsumerʼ identity was appearing. Home ownership discourse had social effects that replaced the issue of welfare and distributive justice. In other words, home ownership was distorted as the realization of distributive justice and was involved in the making of the middle class as a socially stabilizing force. Since the Asian financial crisis in 1997, there has been strong intervention to change the phrase ʻspeculationʼ, which had been a target of moral criticism, to ʻinvestmentʼ which is seen as a more positive action. Home ownership discourse in this period was now promoted mainly by groups of real estate experts, who relied on strategies that present risk and crisis into ʻopportunityʼ. These examples of discourse demonstrate that home ownership discourse encouraged people who want their own home to strive to be rational ʻinvestorsʼ. More importantly, in the situation that housing inequality is worsening, housing problem is represented by access to asset market as individualistic investors rather than public and collective problem.
Keywords: home ownership discourse, housing system, welfare regime, housing inequality, Critical discourse analysis, home ownership ideology, asset-based welfare