LIVED THROUGH THIS

The Goshiwon

What it’s like to live in a 50 square-foot micro apartment in Seoul

Julladonna Park
Human Parts
Published in
8 min readSep 18, 2021

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Source: Sim Gyu-Dong, “Goshitel”

In the first week, I broke everything: a $2 plate from Daiso, which I’d loved for its spunky polka-dots. A cylindrical holder for my travel-friendly toothbrush and mini toothpaste. Finally, a precious Royal Albert mug I’d been given as a gift that spring.

Crash.

I looked numbly at the elegant ceramic shards spread across the jaundiced linoleum floor—cracked pieces of beautifully printed lavender and rose, now made useless — and tried to move past my dismay.

“I couldn’t have helped it,” I murmured to myself. Every time I spread my arms, something else topples over.

I wasn’t clumsy. I was just living in a goshiwon.

A typical goshiwon unit is roughly 50 square feet, almost a tenth of a North American studio apartment. Communal kitchens are usually stocked with the basic necessities of survival — kimchi, rice.

The legal definition of a goshiwon is this: “A siloed space built to accommodate a scholar, with the facilities to feed and house them.” The “goshi” in the name quite literally means “test” in Korean; hence the goshiwon is a place in which test-takers reside.

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Julladonna Park
Julladonna Park

Written by Julladonna Park

Essayist & Academic// Oxford grad in Korean society & culture. Human stories about race, gender, and media.

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