At 4:40 pm on Monday, the 13-year-old texted her 72-year-old grandmother who was in the hospital, wishing her well and saying she was praying for her speedy recovery.
“How sweet of you, my sweetheart!”, replied the grandmother in a message. It was the last time she spoke to her granddaughter.
Four hours later, floods from one of the heaviest rains on record in South Korea descended the steps of the three-room semi-underground home in southern Seoul, where the girl lived with her mother, 47, and her aunt, 48.
The family had moved into the house seven years ago. They knew the low-lying neighborhood was prone to flooding, but it was cheap and close to a government welfare center where their aunt, who had Down syndrome, could be cared for.
Heavy rains that hit the Seoul metropolitan area from Monday to early Wednesday left six people missing and at least nine dead, including a family of three, highlighting the plight of the urban poor in South Korea as well. such as the country’s housing crisis and growing inequality.
The risk of flooding in these homes was dramatically portrayed in the South Korean film “Parasite,” which became the first foreign-language film to win the Oscar for Best Picture in 2020.
The water came down so hard that the family was unable to open the only door, according to neighbors and emergency workers. The girl’s mother knocked on the door and called the neighbors for help. These called the government emergency line, but so many flood victims were calling that their calls went unanswered.
Two residents of the neighborhood tried to rescue the family through the window of the house at street level, but were unable to get through the steel grating that blocked the window.
“The water filled the house so quickly that we couldn’t do anything,” Jeon Ye-sung, 52, a neighbor, told reporters.
Jeon ran home Monday night after her daughter called her saying water was gushing through the windows in the semi-underground residence. He broke windows to rescue his three daughters. But he and another resident could not reach their neighbors.
When rescue workers pumped the water on Tuesday, they found the three dead.
South Korea’s urban poor often live in semi-underground houses – the “banjiha”.
One of the nine dead was a 50-year-old woman who also lived in one of these houses in Seoul. She fled the flood, but returned to rescue her cat and was unable to make it out alive.
In Seoul, a city where skyrocketing housing prices are one of the biggest political problems, living in high-rise buildings built by the country’s conglomerates like Samsung and Hyundai is a status symbol.
But the poor often live in cheap, damp, moldy “banjiha.” Hundreds of thousands of people inhabit these homes in the congested metropolitan area, where they struggle to find jobs, save money and educate their children to overcome growing inequality.
Over the years, Seoul has offered to help those who live in these underground apartments by providing pumps and other equipment to fight the floods. It also renovated sewer systems in low-lying neighborhoods to drain rainwater more quickly. The government has asked those living in semi-underground basements to move into state-owned apartments with cheap rents.
Still, thousands of families live in banjiha, fearing flooding each monsoon season. They build small dikes with sandbags around the houses. When the floods subside, they put their clothes and furniture in the alleys to dry. In a 2020 survey, more than half of the 500 semi-underground homes in two districts of Siheung, southwest of Seoul reported that their homes are submerged during rains.
“When I returned home from work, I found my ‘banjiha’ underwater,” wrote a resident on South Korean portal Naver on Tuesday (9). “It felt like the sky had fallen on me.”
On Tuesday, when President Yoon Suk-yeol visited the neighborhood where the family of three women died, the house was still waist-deep in flood water. Pillows, furniture, and plastic bags floated inside. Yoon had to crouch outside to look inside the house through the street-level window.
The neighborhood was littered with garbage bags, rain-damaged furniture and electronics that families dragged out of their basement homes.
“There’s almost nothing we can save,” said Park Kyong-ja, 77, who has lived in the neighborhood for 26 years.
Choi Tae-young, head of the Seoul Metropolitan Fire and Disaster Headquarters, blamed floodwater for blocking the family’s front door. But neighbors accused the government of failing to warn residents of impending floods. The city did not warn of the danger of a nearby stream overflowing until 9:21 pm on Monday, according to local media and neighbors.
From inside the house, the women’s family called neighbors between 8pm and 9pm, asking for help because they couldn’t get out. The teenager’s mother, who was identified by police and local media only by her surname Hong, also called her mother at the hospital at 8:37 pm, saying she could not open the door because of the flooding, according to the daily JoongAng Ilbo newspaper.
“When I got out and ran to their house, it was already full of water and I couldn’t see inside,” Kim In-sook, a neighbor, told reporters. Police and firefighters were not able to pump the water until hours later.
Hong Seok-cheol, 46, who lives in a similar house next door, left at 7:45 pm Monday to have dinner with his wife. When the couple returned home 40 minutes later, they were shocked to find the alley flooded. Their house was underwater.
“The rain came so fast and furious, and the pressure on the underground drainage pipes was so strong that they burst, making the flooding worse,” Hong said. “My wife and I couldn’t have left if we had been inside.”
Some household items belonging to the dead family were in front of the four-story building on Wednesday, including a white teddy bear. In the underground garage, there were four cars covered in mud.
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“The torrential rains were the worst in 115 years,” President Yoon said during a meeting with emergency response officials on Wednesday. “The poor and the weak are most vulnerable to natural disasters. Our country will become safe when they feel safe.”
