Housing redevelopment and neighborhood change as a gentrification process in Seoul, Korea: A case study of the Wolgok-4 Dong redevelopment district

This dissertation investigates housing redevelopment and neighborhood change as a gentrification process in Seoul, Korea. Chapter 2 presents a review of the literature regarding debates over gentrification and outlines what forces have driven gentrification in Western cities. A detailed theoretical expectation for gentrification in Seoul is presented in Chapter 3. Chapter 3 explores the context of gentrification in Seoul regarding changes in maximum land values, economic base, demographics, and politics based on the "rent gap," "post-industrial," and "world city" theses. Chapter 4 offers an empirical analysis of gentrification in the 522 administrative dong of Seoul in 1991 and 2001 using correlations, factor analysis, and stepwise regression. It reveals that gentrification in Seoul is mainly affected by the changes in land values, demographics, economic base, and institutional policy characteristics, excluding housing type and ownership. Chapter 5 investigates gentrifiers' demographic and economic characteristics, movement patterns and motivation for location choices. It also examines the role of city officials and local government to induce gentrification in Seoul by using semi-structured interview and archival data. Brief summaries of each chapter along with concluding comments are found in Chapter 6. Collectively, the results of my theoretical and empirical investigations show that gentrification in Seoul has the same pattern as Western cities in that the rent gap and post-industrial city status theses are applicable to explain gentrification in Seoul, but there are difference of urban policy between Korea's local governments and Western countries' local governments. Gentrification in Seoul is a relatively small scale phenomenon in terms of the volume of gentrifiers when compared with Western cities.