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proportion of households living alone exceeded 30% last year. Among them, there are people who live in cramped and poor places. Recently, sharing a kitchen or laundry room as well as a cultural space is gaining popularity among young people.



Reporter Park Byung-il covered the story.



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A multi-family house in Sillim-dong, Seoul.



There are about 60 studios in a 6-story building, and I went into one of them.



[No, is this all? That's all. It comes out to 2.2 pyeong.]



There is hardly any space left as there is a kitchen and bathroom in a space of about two pyeong.



[(I eat here, eat here, and lie down and sleep like this?) Right. (I don't sleep here like this when I sleep.)]



Even in this case, the monthly rent including management fee is 360,000 won. 



Another nearby rent room is small enough that the bathroom can only be accessed by crouching.



As such, there are a number of places where the minimum residential area per person is less than 14 square meters, as the owners of the building split the rooms to increase their monthly rental income.



[Choi Eun-young / Director of the Korea Urban Research Institute: The problem is that such 14 square meters (4.2 pyeong) is not a compulsory regulation. If it exceeds 4 square meters (1.2 pyeong), permission is granted. So, two or three households are supposed to live, but it's like dividing it into ten households... .]



It is difficult for young people with a housing cost-to-income ratio of 20-30% to escape from this poor housing environment.



Is there no alternative? In this six-story building, 36 people share each room, and each room does not have a bathroom and kitchen.



Instead, there are two shared kitchens and four shared bathrooms on each floor.



This is a co-living house supported by the Seoul Metropolitan Government.



[Johana / Tenant: (Auntie) Please clear out all common spaces. There are 5 people living in the same building as well, and the bathroom has never overlapped. It's very comfortable, so I'm using it well.] It



's a shared space by reducing the space used by individuals, and there is a public laundry room and movie theater, as well as a gym, library, and drawing room.



However, the monthly rent is 30,000 won.



[Cho Seong-ik / Professor, College of Architecture and Urbanism, Hongik University: Isn't it that the number of single-person households is increasing the most? Then why do those people have to live in a house built on the premise that they are a family?]



As the demand for co-living increases, large corporations are also joining in.



In this 16-story building with 378 households, each room has a bathroom, kitchen and laundry facilities.



Nevertheless, there are separate cultural spaces such as a shared kitchen, a shared laundry, a movie theater and a game room.



In addition, there is a common work space, a rest room, a gym, and even a dog playground.



[Areum Park/E Co-Living House Employee: There are a lot of professional office workers who are engaged in these things, companies, and professional jobs in the vicinity of Seocho, Gangnam, so there are many cases where such people are living now.]



Co-Living in Korea House first appeared in 2015.



Beyond the efficiency-oriented first-generation co-living house that reduces personal space and increases public space, we have now entered the stage of large-scale and high-end.



It is predicted that it will become a new alternative to solving the housing problem caused by the increase in single-person households as it is differentiated and developed into more diverse forms in the future, expanding options in price and convenience.



(Video: VJ Yoon Taek)