AbstractsGeography &GIS

Since the 1980s, areas of public rental housing in South Korea have emerged as one of the targets of housing policy. The Korean government has developed public rental housing policy with the goal of contributing to social integration through providing the poor with decent and affordable accommodations. However, since the 2000s, there has been a growing concern that public rental housing estates have become stigmatised and isolated from the outside at a local level. The phenomenon of 'conflict' between public rental housing estates and local people not living on public rental housing estates has been debated under the term 'social exclusion' not only by Korean academia but also the government. This research maintains that a specific type of public rental housing estate is labelled as the neighbourhood for the undeserving poor by non-residents of the estates, who refuse to socialise with the estate residents. Drawing on available models to explain the social downgrading of neighbourhoods, this study concludes that social exclusion on public rental housing estates in South Korea is caused by a combination of the 'concentration effect' on the estates and the Korean welfare state oriented towards the principle of selectivity through 'targeting' in social provisioning.