[Cityscapes] Ugly names of Korea's high-rise apartment brands

New replaces old in northeastern Seoul's Gireum-dong, Feb. 3, 2018. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

By Ron Bandun

Construction companies here often use English or other foreign-sounding words for apartment brand names, hoping to "exude an upscale, high-end image," according to a recent Korea Times article.

This is something everyone in Seoul has likely noticed, after gazing up at the barren concrete sides of the city's thousands of identical high-rise apartments, which are sometimes referred to pejoratively as "Stalin stacks." Each one is usually marked with a number and a brand name.

A cityscape is reflected in water pooled in an urban renewal zone, Oct. 30. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

But can we really call those names "English"? It might be easier to argue they're Konglish, like the random gibberish text seen on shirts sold for cheap in markets like Dongdaemun and Namdaemun (we're just lucky no one's built an "I'm a Tosser" apartment complex yet), or the city's own grammar-deconstructivist slogan, "I.Seoul.U" (what does it mean exactly? How does one "Seoul" another person? Mayor Oh, why haven't you made its removal your top priority?).

So by slapping "Raemian" (a Samsung apartment brand) on the side of an apartment, or "Prugio" (a Daewoo brand, pronounced "Pureujio" in the original Korean, curiously), that doesn't make it English just because it's in the Latin alphabet. After all, "e-Pyeonhansesang" (a Daelim Industrial brand, one of the few mostly Korean names) doesn't become English just because we can spell it phonetically in English.

This genuinely irritates me, maybe partly because I spend too much time gazing at the city as an urban explorer. Older apartments have nice-sounding Korean names, like Jindallae (azalea) and Mujigae (rainbow), or Samil (March 1, the date of Korea's independence movement started 1919) and Gwangbok (Restoration of Light, in reference to Korea's 1945 independence).

An urban explorer climbs over rubble at an urban renewal zone next to a "We've" apartment complex in Seoul, Oct. 22, 2016. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

But lately, it seems everywhere I go, I see Doosan's "We've" apartment brand. We've what? What've we done that's worth placing this incomplete statement so prominently? Other similar names include "I Want" (what do you want? What does this apartment complex leave its occupants wanting for?) and "I'll" (which is actually uncontracted as "I Will" in the Korean).

Another brand that falls into this category is Hyundai's IPARK. They probably intended for it to conjure up lush urban parklands, but it just makes me think of parking garages. Grammatically it does seem to say "I park (my car)." Yongsan Station is in a building called IPARK Mall, but until recently I thought that was just the name of the parking garage there; it is even displayed over at least one parking garage entrance.

Sometimes these faux-prestige names come off as insensitive or even mean-spirited, if you have a connection to the low-rise neighborhoods they replaced. How does it look to working-class people who are evicted (some more violently than others) to make way for the construction of an imperial-sounding "Lotte Castle" (especially if it's the one next to the Gyeongbu Expressway with a very phallic symbol on the side)? Or a utopianist-sounding "Humansia"?

Lotte Castle apartments in southern Seoul's Seocho District have odd decorations on the side, Nov. 9. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

The very first urban renewal site I visited, way back in 2005, is now the Gongdeok Brown Stone Apartment (Isu E&C) complex. The brand name clearly comes from the type of medium-density townhouse (or rowhouse) likely made famous in Korea thanks to its prominent depiction in "Sex and the City" set in New York. Like most other high-rise apartments, the Brown Stone buildings near Gongdeok Station are a dull pastel mix of beige and grey on barren, each about 20 stories tall. Want actual "brownstone" buildings? That description better fits the medium-size brick buildings that were knocked down to make way for these monstrosities.

Urban renewal in western Seoul's Ahyeon-dong, July 22, 2019 / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

One of the ugly problems with these apartment brand names is that, just like the large-scale urban redevelopment completely erases and reconfigures the land (in more extreme cases completely removing hills and water bodies), these names do nothing or very little to memorialize local history or topographical features. If you disagree, I could point you toward a couple of Hillstate complexes (another Hyundai brand) that were built on former hillsides, which have been scraped out and flattened to make space for these lucrative housing projects.

A Hillstate apartment complex towers over an urban farming project in northwestern Seoul's Eunpyeong District, Aug. 25, 2019. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

Instead, these names run the risk of creating a false mythology, and one that's dismissive of Korea's long heritage. Just who is this Harrington, that Hyosung Heavy named its "Harrington Place" brand after him?

So much complexity is lost, while working-class citizens are feeling more pinched for housing the more that affordable options are removed from the market ― in favor of more affluent high-rises for investors to play their real estate shell game with.

Urban renewal in western Seoul's Ahyeon-dong, July 22, 2019 / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

I confess, I've lived in one of these tacky-named apartment brands named above, but not anymore. Long enough to know that they're nicer on the inside than the outside. But their creation is too destructive, and not nearly inclusive enough to support a diverse, robust local community. But there's nothing we as individuals can do about that, so all the more reason to focus on the lame apartment brand names.

Apartment construction in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, Aug. 25, 2019. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

And public perception is surprisingly more in line with my own stance than I would have thought; that Korea Times article mentioned at the beginning of this article included an interesting finding in a survey by the Federation of Korean Language & Culture Centers about their preference for apartment brand names. Of 1,000 people surveyed, only 5.0 percent favored foreign-sounding apartment names (which include Evervill, Xi or even "Anusville" ― whoops, I mean "Honorsville," at least presumably), while 45.9 percent couldn't care less and a whopping 49.1 percent would have preferred a Korean-sounding name.

What's the silliest apartment name you've seen? Can you top "Shinwon Arsis"?

Ron Bandun is an urban explorer. He has been visiting forgotten, abandoned and forbidden spaces in Korea for over 16 years, documenting the changes and conflicts of the urban environment.