Civic groups honor homeless people who passed away with no surviving relatives

Frames containing the names and birth and death dates of 166 homeless people who didn’t get a funeral this year displayed in front of Seoul Station. (Kim Jung-hyo, staff photographer)

2019 Homelessness Remembrance week honors 166 people who passed away with no funeral

Frames containing the names and birth and death dates of 166 homeless people who didn’t get a funeral this year displayed in front of Seoul Station. (Kim Jung-hyo, staff photographer)

Born in 1959, the man passed away on Oct. 30 at an inn in Seoul’s Mapo District. A day laborer at a construction site surnamed Shin, he offered no indication of the cause behind his sudden death, nor any information about family members. With colleagues but no known kin, his death was classified as “without surviving relatives.” Another person surnamed Yoon, also born in 1959, was found dead on Nov. 20 in a waiting area at Noryangjin Subway Station. Once again, there was no information on the cause of death. While Yoon did have family, they declined to receive his remains. Yoon too passed away as someone “without surviving relatives.”

Frames containing the names and birth and death dates of 166 homeless people who didn’t get a funeral this year displayed in front of Seoul Station. (Kim Jung-hyo, staff photographer)

At 2 pm on Dec. 16, a fine red carpet was laid out on the plaza at Seoul Station to send them off on their final journey. The carpet had 166 frames neatly set out on its surface. “Kim Jong-yong, Dec. 3, 1957-Mar. 4, 2019,” one read. “Shin Ae-ran, 1982-Apr. 6, 2019,” read another. Each frame gave the name of one of the 166 people who died without surviving family members on streets and in flophouses in Seoul between December 2018 and November 2019, along with their date of birth and the date and location of their passing. Denied the opportunity for such honoring in life, they now had 166 roses placed before their funeral portraits. The “staircase of memory for the homeless” was set up to mark Homelessness Remembrance Week for 2019.

Frames containing the names and birth and death dates of 166 homeless people who didn’t get a funeral this year displayed in front of Seoul Station. (Kim Jung-hyo, staff photographer)

Organized by Homeless Action and 40 other civic groups, a joint planning team for the 2019 Homeless Remembrance Festival held a press conference at the plaza in front of Seoul Station at 2 pm that day to announce the 2019 Homelessness Remembrance Week and to demand practical measures to improve conditions for homeless people while remembering those who passed away in grim surroundings over the past year. The organizers urged the government to take steps to provide suitable living environments for the homeless. Lee Dong-hyeon, a Homeless Action member appearing as a speaker, noted, “Government measures announced last October included the provision of 2,000 units of rental housing for residentially vulnerable people. This is the same number the government has allocated every year.”

“The 2018 population and housing general survey shows some 450,000 units of non-dwelling households. Can we really call these 2,000 units the government’s ‘supply plan’ to resolve the housing issue?” Lee asked.

Criticisms were also directed at a plan for redeveloping the Yang neighborhood of Seoul’s Jung (Central) District, which passed a review by the city’s urban planning committee last October. The Yang neighborhood is the location of numerous flophouse villages in the vicinity of Namdaemun Gate.

“The city of Seoul and Jung District Office’s plans for the Yang neighborhood redevelopment area do not include so much as a hint of a plan for the flophouse residents. Whether they build parks or buildings, it’s obvious those residents will not be allowed in,” Lee said.

“Instead of the kind of development that involves driving flophouse residents out, we need the kind of development that restores residential rights,” he insisted. Attendees at the press conference that day carried signs with messages reading “Establish measures for residents of the Yangdong flophouse development area” and “Flophouse resident housing measures must come before the Yang neighborhood redevelopment plan.”

Civic groups hold a press conference calling for better government measures for homelessness in front of Seoul Station on Dec. 16. (Kang Jae-gu, staff reporter)

The press conference also brought calls for measures to address cases of theft involving the names of homeless persons. Kim Do-hee, an attorney with the Seoul Social Welfare Public Interest Law Center, explained, “Under the amended Electronic Financial Transactions Act, prison time and fines are imposed without exception even in cases of lending out a bankbook or card.”

“We still see how the state treats victims of name-use crimes as accomplices,” she noted.

“It is not practical equality for us to hold people who are economically desperate and lack social experience equally accountable to those who are not, and it is not ‘justice’ when people who do not actually profit or earn anything are held responsible for all debts and suffer a lifetime of debt to the state,” she added.

Marking its 19th year in 2019, the Homeless Remembrance Festival will be taking place at the plaza in front of Seoul Station at 6:40 pm on Dec. 22. Events at the festival are to include commemorative speaking, singing performances, and a declaration of the rights of homeless persons.

By Kang Jae-gu, staff reporter

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