NEWS ON KOCER
(No.1 June, 1998)
Making
a Draft of the Housing Rights Law
The urban poor
in Korea have been suffering from forced evictions and lack
of a decent place to live. Though the poor people's housing
situation in the nation has partly improved compared with the
past, housing rights as basic human rights are not still properly
safeguarded by means of legal protection, and even violated
in public at times. It would be more accurate to say that there's
been no such thing as a concept of the housing rights in the
nation.
So some of people's organizations, including Korean
Coalition for Housing Rights, are planning to stage campaigns
to legislate a housing rights law, by which even poor people
could be assured of the basic rights to the minimum standard
of decent shelter. In the process of preparing a draft of the
law to present to the government and the national assembly,
the KOCER was assigned the task of drawing up the draft. This
project is sponsored by the Urban Poor Pastoral Committee of
the Seoul Archdiocese of Catholic Church.
A Study on Recent Changes in Life-style of the Low-Income
Class under the Impact of the IMF Control and their Reactions
to it.
Since Korea's economy was under the control
of the IMF towards the end of last year, most of the common
people in Korea have been afflicted with large-scale unemployment
and sudden decrease in means. By comparison, however, poor people
are bound to face much greater pains and troubles due to economic
recession and unemployment than any other classes in that they
are the least prepared for such unforeseen hardships. Poor people
with unstable working conditions such as daily construction
laborers, odd workers in small factories and street vendors
hardly have their own savings with which to make up for the
loss of their income sources. Nevertheless, the government's
unemployment policies mainly focus on regular workers who belong
to the formal sector, without giving any consideration to the
unemployed in the low class. Therefore we felt the need to look
into the realities of the current economic crises from the viewpoint
of the urban poor people. This project is to show the extent
of deterioration of poor people's living standards and to suggest
to the government reasonable alternative policies for the unemployed
low-income brackets.
Seeking to come up with measures to
counter poor people's unemployment, the KOCER is also a member
of the Unemployed Low-income Daily Workers' Association. The
Association is an organization formed to press the government
to adopt unemployment policies favorable to unemployed low-income
daily wage workers. (of the Association's own formulating.)
Criteria for Evaluating the Development of Community-based
Organizations in Korea.
As NGOs proliferate, despite
the diversity of their objectives and compositions, we can't
but broach a fundamental question; "can't we find some
objective criteria for judging what organization is better,
and what is a more developed type in terms of democratic principles?"
Finding the appropriate general criteria for a "good organization"
is closely connected with the organizers' and leaders' task
of finding the correct directions to improve their organizations.
The main objective of this research is to work out
general criteria of reference for judging what type of organization
is more desirable. To do this, we would do in-depth analyses
of 8 exemplary organizations to examine if a set of theoretical
criteria would work well.
This project will also serve
the following additional purposes. First, lessons and skills
useful for building up community organizations can be drawn
out of the project. Thus, the detailed report of this research
may provide potential organizers and leaders with a textbook
for community organizing. To working organizers or leaders,
it will give an opportunity for reviewing their activities and
learning from others' varied experiences. Lastly, this project
is to promote the potential of community organizing, especially
in the poor people's communities.
History of Anti-eviction Movements in the Seoul Metropolitan
Area
For ten years or so since 1983 in Korea, people's
struggle against forced eviction has been continually active
and its process has produced some progress not only in the urban
poor movement but also in terms of betterment of the urban redevelopment
system. Over those years there have been lots of significant
incidents and some slight changes in the government's policy.
We'd like to view the historical process through which the urban
poor movements for decent shelter have grown in the Seoul Metropolitan
Area. Through this research we'll be able to find out the various
strategies and tactics which the poor people applied in their
struggle against eviction. Causes of the many successes and
failures in the processes of the movements could be shown as
well.
This project is sponsored by the Seoulogy Institute
in Seoul Municipal University.
