A 10-meter watchtower that residents of Guryong Village in Seoul's Gangnam District had used to monitor government officials entering the settlement was removed on the 18th, about two years after it was built. The village in Gaepo-dong is often called the city's last shantytown.
The Seoul Central District Court sent enforcement officers into the village at around 6:30 a.m. that day to carry out the court-ordered removal. The work proceeded after talks with residents and was completed at around 3 p.m. Police deployed 250 officers, including a riot squad and staff from Suseo Police Station, to support the operation, and no physical clashes were reported.
The watchtower was built at the entrance to Guryong Village in November 2024. Residents at the time staged a sit-in centered on the structure, demanding certificates confirming their residency and the right to purchase land under the redevelopment plan. The tower was used to monitor officials from the Seoul Housing & Urban Development Corporation (SH) and the Gangnam District Office.
The district office and other authorities ordered residents to remove the tower voluntarily starting early last year, but the order was not carried out. On the 12th of last month, the court handed a one-year prison sentence, suspended for three years, and ordered probation for Yoo, head of the Guryong Village integrated residents' self-governance committee, who had been charged with violating the Urban Development Act for installing the tower without permission and failing to remove it. The court made removal of the tower within one month a special condition of the suspended sentence, but Yoo appealed.
SH held talks with residents on the 18th to secure compliance with the removal order. Discussions were also held with Yoo, who arrived at the site at around 10 a.m. People who had been on top of the tower then came down and furnishings were carried out of the structure, after which full dismantling work began.
Guryong Village took shape in the mid-1980s, when people displaced by demolitions settled there ahead of the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Seoul Olympics. The area was first designated an urban development zone in 2012, but conflict between residents and SH over the development method and compensation has continued for more than a decade.
SH acquired ownership of the land in the Guryong Village area last year and plans to build an apartment complex of 3,739 units there by 2029. Residents say they have lost their homes to redevelopment and a series of fires without adequate relocation and compensation measures. SH says it offered relocation options, including temporary public housing with rents reduced according to income, but that residents did not accept them.
The dispute has also spilled into the courts. In April, SH filed eviction suits against about 200 households that had not moved out, and in May it filed a criminal complaint with police against three residents who had remained in tents after the fires, accusing them of obstruction of business.
