Last updated on August 16, 2024
The living room is one of the most curious spaces in contemporary Korean life. A visit to middle-class apartments selected at random would reveal an uncanny conformity in style.
The hall from the door opens up into an open space containing a large TV, a couch or sitting cushions, and perhaps a table. The walls contain a few decorations, and, aside from the few pieces of furniture, the space is open and uncluttered. Books, computers, and other possible sources of clutter are scattered among other rooms in the house. The overall size of the space varies with the apartment, but the Zen-like lack of clutter is almost universal.
To understand the living room better, a little history is in order. The living room is the 20th-century successor to the 19th-century parlor, a formal room for entertaining guests in mansions in European and American cities. As a place of show, the parlor contained the best furniture and most attractive decorations in the house. With the growth of the middle class in the 20th century, the living room became a parlor for the common man.
Living rooms reflect prevailing social trends. In the late 20th century in the U.S., the size of the living room decreased in favor of the family room or larger kitchens. The living room lost much of its meaning as a place for guests because home entertaining declined as women entered the workforce in larger numbers in the 1970s. The idea of the living room as a place for the best furniture and decorations, many of which are family heirlooms, lives on today even in smaller houses where the living room gets heavy use.
The living room came to Korea with Western-style architecture, but it fit in well with traditional Korean “sarangbang,” a formal study reserved for men in a “yangban” household. It also fit well with the “maru,” the unheated wooden floor area used for living in warmer seasons. Though the formality of the living room corresponded to similar spaces in traditional Korean architecture, the living room did not become common until apartments became the dominant form of residence in the 1990s. Rapid urbanization in the 20th century forced people to live in extremely crowded conditions, and space was at a premium.
What does the empty living room say about contemporary Korean life? It could be that Koreans have a cultural aversion to clutter, and prefer uncluttered spaces. Another possible explanation is that Koreans feel more comfortable sitting on the floor and using portable furniture, such as cushions and tables. Another still is that Korean families are so busy that they do not have much time to spend together in the living room. Finally, the lack of furniture and decoration could mean that the average middle class family does not have enough money to buy much furniture.
All of these explanations work, but how do they fare in explaining living rooms in non-apartment residences? With the exception of large single family homes of the wealthy, living rooms in other types of residences are smaller, putting a premium on space. Middle-class necessities such as a kimchi refrigerator and a large refrigerator creates overflow from the kitchen into the living room, creating a multipurpose kitchen-dinning-living room space that becomes a busy and cluttered center of family life.
The conclusion is clear: living rooms in apartments and non-apartments differ, yielding the conclusion that the empty living room is apartment specific. The empty living room, then, is a symbol of “apartmentness,” the state of having graduated from the clutter of crowding ― and hence poverty ― to the emptiness of affluence. To fill the room implies a continuation of the crowded past that people who live in apartments want to put behind them. This leads people to go in the other direction by creating an eerie emptiness in what should be a living space.
The emptiness of affluence in contemporary Korea is not the loneliness and alienation that sociologists discuss in other societies. Koreans are not a lonely or brooding people. Rather, it is the emptiness of conformity, which reflects a deeper fear of being thought of as different, of going against the dominant social ethos. Many an apartment dweller has probably wondered about the cost of buying and maintaining an unnecessarily large space. Others have probably thought of creative ways to use and decorate the space. In the end, they hold back because the weight of “apartmentness” is too heavy.
As with everything else in Korea, change is afoot. The first generation born and raised in apartments is now entering its 20s. As the first generation to come of age in an affluent democratic society, they are more individualistic and more tolerant. Expect the emptiness of affluence to give way to the personalization of affluence as living rooms reflect the personality of their owners rather than the conformity of “apartmentness.”