Abstract
This paper describes the increasingly important role of NGOs within South Korea in demanding better conditions for low-income groups in urban areas, and the links that this new role has with the democratic movement of the 1980s and the Saemaul Undong movement that started in 1970. The paper focuses in particular on NGOs that opposed the government’s large forced eviction programme in Seoul during the 1980s and early 1990s, and that have helped to promote changes in government housing policy towards an “enabling framework” rooted in democratic and participatory government structures. The paper also discusses new directions that NGOs are taking or need to take to become more effective.