The Negative Perceptions of Apartment Culture as Represented in Korean Films during the 1970s–1990s

Popular films, which are cultural products, inevitably reflect the social and architectural culture of the time and the thoughts and interests of the public. This study analyzes the negative perceptions of apartment culture to verify how the negative characteristics of apartment housing were recognized by the general Korean public in a socio-cultural manner. For the analysis, a pool of artistically and publicly renowned Korean films between 1970 and 1999 was constructed. Through the scenes and their respective scripts, the characters, stories, cinematic messages, and architectural spaces were analyzed. The 1970s and 1980s films shed light on the large-scale, uniformly developed apartment complexes to reveal apartments as lonely, anonymous, closed spaces of the urban middle class. During the 1980s–1990s, the negative aspects of apartment developments were highlighted. These include a loss of place and memory, the disintegration of family, the deepening of relative poverty, and standardized desolated scenery. Negative perceptions toward apartments intensified in the 1990s to reveal a lack of communication between neighbors, externality, misunderstanding, and distrust. By diagnosing the Korean public’s negative view of apartments, this study will help find a better housing culture and the positive sustainability of apartments.