Kikuchi lived next to Mrs. Khatun for nineteen days, only a fake wall between them hardly thicker than a finger knuckle. It was Kikuchi’s first month in Seoul, and never again did she have to live in a gosiwon until she left South Korea. Half the size of London and yet a bigger population than the English city, Seoul was full of gosiwon housing, tiny closet bedrooms that provided a last resort of residence before someone ended up on the street, the only option for those who did not have a proper identity document or could not even spare a few million wons for a rent deposit.
Kikuchi, however, did not choose to live in a gosiwon because she was on the verge of becoming homeless. All she needed was a place where she could crash for some weeks at most before she found a decent studio near Korea University. She wanted to avoid paying a grand sum to a hotel, so renting a room in the gosiwon for a whole month for the petty price of two hundred and fifty thousand wons was a much preferable option.
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