Seoulscapade

Sigh, goodbye Bongchun-Dong.

Glorious views of Mt. Gwanak and summer rains from our apt balcony at Woosung in Bongchun-Dong

We moved out of our apartment above mid-October into a cheap place we bought in Ansan, south of Seoul. We needed somewhere cheaper and buying a place seem a much better move than renting again. I hate renting: you slave away at work for a landlord you’ve never met. It’s just throwing cash down a black hole.

Hello Ansan!

A physical assessment day at the Ansan high school across the road from us.

The view from our new place. Our new place will require low mortgage payments–a few hundred thousand won a month. Even if free lancing is slow one month, I can probably still manage it.

One great thing about our location is that Homeplus and Lotte Mart are a five minute drive away. There’s another Homeplus a bit further on, along with a couple of E-Marts, all easily accessible and painless to get to compared to the major operation it used to require in Seoul. And down the street is a restaurant serving what is probably the best Kimchi I’ve even tasted.

We found a quick way into Seoul via Shillim-Dong. It only takes us about 25 to 30 minutes to get to Seoul Natl. Uni. Station. That’s not bad at all.

So far it’s been great. One problem we are facing, however, is that we don’t have another tenant for the Woosung apartment yet! What this means is that we’re stuck paying rent there until someone is found.

The real-estate guy informed us that the economic climate is making people reluctant to rent. Most are seeking chonsae deals, which is paying a lump sum that is returned after 2 years.  We didn’t expect and we’ve never experience such a thing, so that caught us out. Fortunately, some people have been showing interests. It’s a wait and see situation.

Most of our stuff is still back there, making the place look homey for prospective tenants. We kind of living out of suitcase, but comfortably so.  I’m too busy with study and free lancing and other stuff to worry much.

Oh, and, um, I also discovered with great alarm that in this kind of small housing in Korean you are not allowed to put toilet paper down the toilet bowl. There are warning signs about it. It’s something to do with stopping processing costs from being passed onto tenants. I hope it does not cause me psychological damage. It’s just not an issue I want to deal with on a regular basis.

Community meeting at the Sangdo construction site as it gets dark. The front gate is in the background.

Yesterday evening, under overcast skies, a meeting was held at the Sangdo construction site to discuss the state of things. It had been hastily called the day before. We got there around 5 pm and it went on until it after dark, with people arriving steadily.

I told my wife before heading down there, not knowing who would be present, to put on old clothes in case there was a lot of blood spilled.

Here’s where things stand. I’ve got a lot of ground to cover because of the extent of corruption uncovered.

The Bad News First: the old snake, Mr. Yoon, that dithering bastard who was kicked out as the leader of the redevelopment community—by order of the court–and who has caused us monumental problems from day one, continues to wreak havoc through his incompetence and stupidity even when not around. The reach of his poison, everyone has discovered, extends to the local council office, or the Gu office as it is called here.

1) It has transpired that a document (or documents) at the Gu office was stamped by the snake on behalf of community members. We, the community members, had no idea of it. So, this would constitute a fraud in anyone’s book. However, the Gu office is recognizing the document as legal. How can they do that, even though the court has ruled against the old snake and effectively sacked him? Well, everything has been stamped and “looks” legal and rumour has it that certain individuals at the Gu office were paid incentives—bribery went on, in other words.

The person responsible for the fake document is Mr. Han, head of Han Management, the company supposed to manage the community’s development—let’s call him the leech. The leech prepared the document but the snake would have stamped his approval on everything. This document concerns bylaws on the community and future construction. An initial document of community laws was seen by members, and everyone signed off on that, but this second document was not seen by anyone. And yet, all the stamps of all community members appear on it—put there by the leech or the snake.

The importance of this document is that it states Hanjin is the builder. So, AMCO can’t move in with that still in the way.

Believe it or not, there is a house beneath the vegetation. It stands near where the meeting was held. Apparently there is a hold-out tenant still in there.

2) The snake, Mr. Yoon, had said at a previous meeting that he would quit his position and sign a Gu office document stating his resignation. This would allow the newly elected leader, a young guy, to take over with full authority. It would also mean that AMCO could proceed. However, the snake has gone back on his word and said he will not sign anything to say he has quit. (He wasn’t at this meeting. I’ll get to why a little later.)

3) The leech, Mr. Han, reportedly bought land somewhere for 95 billion won.  Mr. Yoon has reputedly embezzled 20 billion won. The leech also took it upon himself to “create” 40 new apartments out of thin air. And he sold them! The money he would have made is anywhere between 15 billion and 30 billion won. But guess who would have stamped the documents to allow this to happen? Yes, the snake. Apparently, since the fabricated apartments have been sold, the deal cannot be undone and the purchases will have to be honored. But where is the money? No one knows yet.

4) The leech has been doing some creative accounting as well. While overspending, and as money was disappearing, he was fiddling the books to make it all look good. He also refused requests by community leaders to see his record. That’s understandable because there are very few records of transactions to see! The leech hasn’t really bothered to keep any. All the millions were managed—now get this—in an Excel file! Yes, hard to believe. Also, some deals were done in the form of land swaps.

5) It appears that different people might have been given different contracts. In addition, some were only given the size of the apartment on the contract but not the cost or what they paid. They were misled on prices. These mainly concern the old community members led by Mr. Yoon. So, it seems that the snake was ripping off his own gullible followers.

6) The leech lied to old community members about the new management company that is taking over from him, called CT Global. Daemyung, the other gangster builder, actually went to the home of AMCO’s CEO and told him that CT Global was ruining everything.

7) Hanjin is asking for money that is well beyond anything it did on the construction site.

8) The longer things are delayed the more it is costing the community because of bank loans that are already in place.

It is clear that we should have lynched these morons long ago. The list of scumbags is as follows: Mr. Yoon, Mr. Han, Hanjin, Daemyung and a handful of older community members—all out for themselves and all totally corrupt.

Empty chairs at the back before the meeting started and part of the construction site in the background, now much of it overgrown

The Good News Section: the snake and the leech are in the hands of the police! That’s right, the police are now investigating all of their corrupt dealings.

1) CT Global, who has taken over from Han Management, has seen it all before, having cleaned up 6 previous mismanagement cases concerning reconstruction developments. They are investigating the money trails and will clean up our mess. They will be asking everyone to submit their documents and finally we will see transparency and record keeping. A guy from CT explained everything at the meeting, detailing how the snake and the leech were thieves and their documents where fakes.

2) The new community leaders are going to take Hanjin and Daemyung to court for compensation for all the delays and financial suffering they have caused.

3) It seems that Lee Myung-Bak, the president, has lifted height restrictions on apartment building heights. Our development was capped at 16 or 18 floors, from memory. Now AMCO will be able to go higher. That’s fortunate given that we now have an extra 40 apartments no one accounted for!

4) Because of the Gu office problem, guards have been stationed at the gate to deny access to any Hanjin gangsters. I think this is going to be a volunteer effort. Members will volunteer as their number comes up. That means we may have to go down and perhaps do an overnighter ourselves in the near future.

5) The community will be sending a petition to Lee Myung-Bak. This may have some sway because Lee used to head Hyundai and AMCO is of course Hyundai. In fact, to make this clearer to the public, AMCO has changed its name to Hyundai AMCO.

6) Old community members have been referring to us, the newer members, as whores. We don’t know why. However, now they are beginning to realize what a thief and betrayer the snake is and what a fraud and lier the leech is. The older community members are very dumb people and will find it hard to admit what old fools they have been.

The front gate, now with all the signage taken down. No more "High Class Life" up there--no, nothing high class about the antics that have gone on

See how deep the corruption, stupidity and greed goes? So, here we are, Korea in the twenty-first century, still weighed down by corruption and people with the mentality of village peasants.

I came to this country with an open mind, but given these events and my past experiences with management at SNU, I am beginning to think that incompetent and clueless management may be a cultural tradition in Korea. One almost expects it. And by the way, Mr. Yoon, the snake, is an SNU graduate.

No one seems to be doing much to stop dirty deeds like these from happening in the first place. Something similar happened with my brother-in-law’s housing, which is to be constructed next to ours. As well as crooked dealings with the Gu office, their community leader running away with a whole lot of money. The police are still looking for him. Thankfully that’s not our problem.

Nonetheless, slowly the forces of good are overcoming the forces of evil. Thus we edge closer to our apartment’s construction, millimetre by millimetre.

Now for a sad and poigniant tale told by the new community leader. He said a 75 year old man came up to him at the last meeting, took his hands, and said that at his age he probably would not live to see his apartment built. I know how he feels.

I’ve mentioned these roving apartment-complex fairs before. They setup for a day or two, featuring stalls with things for the kitchen and domestic life in general, plus a large range of specialty and food outlets. This one was more elaborate than the previous ones I’d seen.

Among the extra goods on offer were wood carvings, as shown below (I wouldn’t mind one of those tables). Another stall was selling antiques, both furniture and ornaments, although I couldn’t see how you could trust the authenticity. Opposite the wood carvings were paintings of varying large sizes, perhaps 50 in all, lining the street.

Around the corner and up the hill there was the fish shop, featured below, selling average and exotic fish and small aquariums. This place was really popular with the kids and seemed to be doing brisk business. I was intrigued how everything needed for aquarium maintenance now was small and lightweight, like those black water filters you just sit on the edge on a tank. All the miniature decorations have become more elaborate than I recollect.

I spent some money at an incense stall. It was all very confusing because the saleswoman, who was dashing back and forward between shops while the incense saleswoman was off taking a break somewhere, didn’t know a word of English. I knew how much to pay but not how much to take. I just chose ten of what I wanted and paid the money. But the real saleswoman returned and was insisting I fill the bag with more. It seemed like I had to choose pairs. I just picking stuff while monitoring her facial expression for when to stop. I wasn’t really counting but got a lot more than what I thought was standard.

The obligatory pig on a spit.

I also bought some dried pear for the rabbits. They love that stuff. The stall I got that from had all sorts of dried goodies, maybe 30 or 40 varieties, just about any fruit you could think of.

One of the things I love about Korea is the recycling ethic. It’s a small country with limited space, and Koreans don’t want landfills from end to end. Everything that can possible be recycled is recycled, included food.

You are not supposed to throw away food in your trash. It has to be saved and then disposed of in large plastic bins. I believe it goes towards feeding animals. What we do is keep a small plastic bag in our freezer and put our food waste in that. That way there’s no slimy mess to deal with.

When we were staying on campus, we could throw away recycling at anytime in the apartment block’s recycling bins. However, the norm for apartment complexes around Seoul is to do recycling on a set day once a week. Until that day, you have to keep your rubbish at home, except for food, which you can throw away at any time.

Our day is Sunday, or rather from around 6 pm Sunday to 9 am Monday. You can see the result above in these pictures I took one Monday morning. This is two weeks worth of recycling for two buildings, ours and another one, because recycling day was skipped the week before due to a public holiday. So, this is a bit more than usual the weekly haul.

The guy in the picture at the top is our building’s guard, who puts out the large bags on Sunday and makes sure it’s all sorted properly ready for being picked up.

People throw out other stuff on recycling day as well, and we’ve pick up a few useful items because of this, such as shelving, an armchair and some large plastic containers. The guard doesn’t care because people have to pay to throw out big stuff, like wooden furniture. He’s already got his cut before we cart anything away, recycling it in a different way by giving it a new home.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere my admiration for Korean practicality, and I might have even noted the way moving in and out of apartments is done with convenience in mind. Here they often use a large retractable conveyor system, or removal lift, on the back of a truck.

These systems have telescopic sliding sections along which a base platform travels. Some of them are huge, as seen in the images here, taken from my balcony window.

With one of these you bypass the pains of using a building’s elevator. I was intrigued when I first saw one, struck by the incontrovertible workaday logic it exemplified.

My second sensation, since I come from over-regulated country, was the conflict between seeing a convenient practice and being unsettled that it was also illegal. I am not certain but I’d predict that this kind of thing is probably illegal in countries like Australia, where you spend most of your life dodging and sidestepping rules.

I doubt anyone’s been killed by falling furniture in Korea. Pedestrians exercise practicality here as well. If you don’t want to risk falling furniture, don’t walk under the conveyor. It’s pretty simple.

I’m all for this mode of removal: pull up, jack it up, load it on, run it down, drive it off.

The two favorite methods for committing suicide in Seoul, and probably throughout Korea, are hanging and tossing yourself out of an apartment building. The first method would appear to be the choice of celebrities. The second method probably scores highest as the one preferred by everyone else. This is partly because thousands upon thousands of people live in high rise apartments, which provides the convenience of a high platform for jumping on any given day.

But it has other merits that put it at the top of the list. Provided that you are up high enough, you are guaranteed of success. It’s probably 95% quicker to implement than hanging, especially if you run to the window. It reveals your considerate nature because ambulance personnel are not obliged to go far to retrieve your body; in many cases, they can pull up right next to you. It also makes a dramatic statement, especially desired if there is any spite in it, for society and those around you.

If I were shopping for a suicide method, I’d want these in the package. The one thing that bothers me, though, is the time it takes before the ground breaks your fall and the lights go out. There’s too much room for doubt there, too much time to reconsider and realize, as you plummet, that maybe you had been just a little bit hasty in your decision.

A dramatic suicide occurred just last week in Seoul in which the person, a 27 year old male, chose this jumping method for his exit from humanity. The story goes that he had been a university student but then was called up for military service. He was living with his mother at the time, and she was under the impression that he was still at university completing post-graduate studies. She believed this because that’s what he was telling her; and he was lying to her so that she would keep giving him money, which she thought was going towards his studies.

Things must have been tense in the household, presumably with not much money to go around. The husband and father of the family had died some two years ago from cancer. The mother was in her 60s, and I guess she probably didn’t have a job or, if she did, it didn’t pay much. So there’s the son, mooching off old mum.

Add to the mix his absconding from military duties, or rather civil duties—the service men have to do if they aren’t fit for real military service. So, the police were after him for another kind of social irresponsibility. It seems like this guy was just spiraling deeper and deeper into more and more trouble (no pun intended).

It wasn’t long before it all came to a head. Three months ago while having an argument with his mother, he killed her. It is likely she suspected his duplicity and the argument was about that. Her death may have been an accident, however—who knows? But he didn’t bother to report it, and instead wrapped her body in bed sheeting and just left her in the apartment. He continued to live there with the corpse for three months, which was probably all he could do, not having a job or a mother anymore to keep up his supply of cash.

Last Sunday night, it seems that he just couldn’t take it anymore. He called the police and confessed his crime. He then added that, before they got there, he would commit suicide. At least, in the end, he was a man true to his word. He jumped from his apartment balcony and fell 16 stories to his death.

We heard his body hit the ground. At first, I thought there had been a minor motorbike accident out on our complex’s back road, faced by our apartment. The sound was like a swishing directly followed by a thud. I’d also heard a couple of people, perhaps women, exclaim cries of surprise. All of it was not that loud, but enough to tear me away from the computer.

Sunah and I looked down from our balcony only to see people walking up and down under street lights on that back road, exercising like any other night. Nothing was untoward. Sunah did see closer in to our building, in the quadrangle of the kids playground, people moving toward the apartment building on our left, which borders the left side of the quadrangle. (That building kind of forms an L with ours.) But people milling about was not unusual. The weather was good, and naturally a lot of parents were out with their kids.

I was already thinking kids were responsible for the kerfuffle, and so upon seeing the road clear, I had gone inside. Then we both just went back to what we were doing.

Not until perhaps forty minutes later, when emerging downstairs with stuff for the recycling bins, did we discover all of the commotion going on. An ambulance was there and what looked like a large fire department bus, all lights flashing. People were everywhere, including others like us attending to their recycling (Sunday nights is recycling night). I did the recycling while Sunah went to ask about what was happening. We still hadn’t put two and one point five together.

After asking the apartment building’s guard, who seemed intent on ensuring nothing more than that the recycling was in order, she told me that some fat guy had jumped from his apartment and killed himself. She pointed to an apartment near the top of the building, from where he had leaped. All of its lights were on. The balcony’s outer sliding door wide open (as you would expect!).

That was enough for me; I headed over to the front of the building to have a look for myself. Not that I could get very close—there were officials keeping people back, plus the well-informed police had finally arrived. I couldn’t see a body anywhere, but I think, if it were still there, it might have been in the dark under trees and bushes. His crashing through the trees first would explain the swishing sound I heard just prior to the thud.

We went back to our apartment. Sunah was pretty upset by the whole thing. I was OK. But I did become slightly unsettled later on. What I mean is that, before long, everything was back to normal; just a tad too quickly for my liking. Actually, throughout this incident, everything remained normal just metres away on the back road; people continued to go about playing with kids and doing their exercise routines, and many probably had no idea that anything out of the ordinary had occurred.

I looked out into the night from my balcony and could see the 16th floor apartment from where the guy had jumped, about 40 metres diagonally to my left and a few floors down. It was still all lit up, and still there was no one inside—no cops, no investigators, no one. Little did I know at the time that the mother’s body was still in there wrapped up in bed sheets. To my front, down on the road and even directly in front of our building, the bustle of life continued on.

In a way, the suicide’s overwhelming lack of impact on everyday life probably made it easier to deal with because it was almost like it never happened. Add to that, I’m not at all against suicide and believe that if people want to do it, they should not be hindered. So the thing was not an affront to any sacred beliefs.

No, the suicide did not astounded me, but there was something sad and unsettling in the brief exclamation it represented; after an hour of commotion everything got back to normal, all was calm. There’s a lesson for us all in that.

As a postscript to this incident, Sunah and I happened to see our real-estate friend last night, the guy who helped us get our present apartment. He said he’d heard about the suicide, and that agents in the area were naturally keeping things quiet. There’s nothing like a murder-suicide to reduce the value of a property. Today, before posting this, I saw what appeared to be workmen doing something on the apartment’s balcony; readying things, I guess, for it to be sold.

This apartment complex had a suicide last year as well, I heard, and I’m reckoning that the average would be about one a year for each large apartment complex in Seoul. That doesn’t seem too bad, in my experience.

Recently after work, when rounding the corner to enter my apartment complex, I came across kind of “fair” setup close to our building. How fortuitous, I thought, because I knew that these kinds of fairs always had a stall full of bootleg movies, and I wanted a few more DVDs to watch while I do the ironing (it’s called multitasking). It didn’t take long to find the movie stall and discover that this one was offering 4 movies of your choice for 10,000 won (or just over $10).

I was looking around when my wife arrived and we did some shopping. First I got 4 movies, three of which I’ve seen since then, and the best of which was United 93. It was almost like a documentary—pretty harrowing stuff. As for the rest so far, at 10,000 won, I still paid too much to have my intelligence insulted by the latest big budget offerings.

Since these stalls are targeted at apartment residents, all kinds of domestic goods are on hand, some not typical of what you’d find at an average market. For example, more exotic varieties of dried fruit, or slightly different pickled chilies, are available. We bought samples of each of those.

Other stalls sell wooden products like wooden utensils and Korean tea tables, bedding, and plants that a guy will put in a new pot for you. One stall accepts all old fry pans and saucepans for exchange; you receive credit according to the weight of your old ones and on top of that you pay a little extra for a new pot or pan. Later that evening we took down an old fry pan and picked up a new soup pot for around $5.

The largest stall there was a restaurant, primarily serving meat, and at its entrance a pig on a spit turned near tables that had meat for sale. We were thinking about having dinner at the place but few vegetarian dishes were being served. However, not far away was a kind of soup stall with four steaming cauldrons. One of these had a vegetarian soup on the boil and we took a bag of it home for dinner.

In the picture, you can one with large meaty lumps in it. I steered well clear of that. It was something made from cattle blood, which I hear is healthy to eat, but, you know, it looked like it would make me sick. I was happy with the boiled weeds, or whatever it was we had for dinner.

Next to our apartment building was this tiny fair ride for the kids. From our balcony, we could hear kids screaming with delight late into the night.

The fair was there for a couple of days and then I guess it all moved on to another apartment complex somewhere in the city.

I thought I’d take advantage of the brilliant map technology now available from Wikimapia to give an overview of some Seoul real estate. You can zoom in, zoom out and move the images around, if you want. At the centre bottom of the above image is Seoul National University, where I work. North of that close to half way up is the concrete jungle called Gwanak Prugio or Daewoo Prugio, where I live, as shown in the close-up below.

North again just a little way, and to the left, is where the Hanjin apartment complex is going to be built, on that large barron looking area in the middle of the image below. That’s where our new apartment will be in two and a half years, with any luck—the apartment that is still a mystery to us—as I’ve explained in previous real-estate posts.

To put the above Hanjin area in perspective, the very botton right of this image shows the very northern buildings of the Prugio complex.

The view above is what we now enjoy from our balcony at our new residence. And if you want to see a bit of what it’s like at night, there’s a picture below. It’s great having such a view, almost like living in a low flying aircraft. All the pictures below are of around the complex.

We moved here at the beginning of November ‘06. We’re on a top floor apartment at a complex called Daewoo Prugio, further away from the university but nonetheless conveniently located. It’s much, much better than our previous living situation. Things were becoming intolerable there, at the so-called BK House.

BK was built to house some of the university’s foreign students and staff. BK stands for “Brain Korea,” and I used to make jokes that it referred to only one brain being there, among all the foreigners, though no one knew which one, or that all the foreigners together made up one brain. There was more to this joking than flippancy, as I’ll relate shortly.

A winter shot of Prugio.

BK was becoming intolerable because for one thing, we’d reached the end of our stay limit, which was 3 years. Officially, it’s two years, but I managed to get a one year extension. Then I applied for a further extension, beyond the three years, with the backing of the institute where I work. I was a trail blazer, as this have never been done before.

For no apparent reason, the process took months before we got a decision. Other foreigners were keen to learn the outcome. Our life was put on hold while we waited—we couldn’t go on vacation, we couldn’t plan anything, we were in limbo. It was beginning to get a little annoying. Eventually, the OK was given.

Now to the main issue, which had also been put on hold. We had major problems with both the Neanderthal upstairs and some kind of family with young kids downstairs. After speaking with the BK manager, we were informed that we might be able to move to another apartment, once it was established that we were allowed to stay for another year. OK, so we waited, and after being told we could stay, we asked about moving apartments.

Another Prugio winter shot.

This time the upper management suggested that if we didn’t like our living situation at BK, then we should get the hell out (not their words, but the gist of them). That was enough for me. We got the hell out. They’d just given the first 4th year extension that had ever been allowed, and I told them to stick it. I wasn’t putting up with the noise any longer, and I wasn’t going to go through an annual begging process to stay there any more.

The guy upstairs was a problem from the first day he moved in. It was not unusual to be woken up at three in the morning to his stomping around the bedroom upstairs. In fact, he stomped around most everywhere. It sound like there was an ape up there, and pretty soon, that’s exactly what my wife and I would refer to him as. We asked him several times to show consideration, but it didn’t work. Some nights his noise was so bad that I’d go to bed angry, and then I’d get up angry, and then I’d go to work angry. It’s no way to live.

The family downstairs was just a typical family. They had a baby that would cry, naturally enough, but it was so loud that it sounded like the kid was in our apartment, not downstairs. You couldn’t escape it. They also had a little kid that would run up and down noisily and slam doors—you know, the usual stuff for brats. To my way of thinking, we had to put up with kids, without them being our kids. That didn’t strike me as fair. To give them credit, however, they were quiet after around 10pm.

Prugio in spring!

There we were, sandwiched, feeling trapped. It was a nightmare some nights, when I was just trying relax and read. I couldn’t get beyond two sentences without some loud bang or thump or clatter. Sometimes you couldn’t tell where it was coming from; it was just all around. Nor am I joking when I say that this would go on for hours. Presumably, it would compare well with living in a ghetto, save for the absence of gunshots. Actually, I’d probably prefer gunshots to an ape nearby or a crying baby, but that’s just me.

We started apartment hunting soon after the BK decisions. It wasn’t going to be easy because of the rental system here, where it’s not uncommon to need a deposit of around, say, $130, 000. I didn’t have that kind of ready cash. Fortunately, my wife had a friend in real-estate, who just happen to know of a couple of apartments available near his office.

He was informed of my sensitivities, heightened after having lived under the stress of BK, and we got to see the apartment we are now in, and sign up for it, that same day. We met the current residents, allegedly brother and sister, but I suspect there was more to it than that. I think that was the cover for a couple living together out of wedlock.

It just so happened that this apartment was rented differently, by way of monthly rent and a deposit, the exact amount of which, coincidentally, I had in the bank at that time. And it was cheaper than normal because the owner refused to allow children and insisted that the apartment be taken care of. Thus, you couldn’t get more compatible tenants and landlord.

For us, a top floor apartment meant no Neanderthals above, and we only had a neighbor below and to the left. Plus, of course, they were not foreigners because it is just regular, off-campus, Korean style accommodation. With Koreans, you’re more likely to get manners and consideration, in my experience. In addition, there is an community announcement every week over the PA system reminding people to limit noise from pianos, kids and pets.

As time went on, we found that there was another brat downstairs (they are everywhere, like an infestation). However, he is only an intermittent stomper, like his father. And the thickness of the floors insulate the effect better than the poor construction values of BK house. We do have very thin walls with one side neighbor. You can hear them in the bathroom and whenever they hang their clothes up in the bedroom closet. But all this is nothing compared to what we went through previously.

The nights are truly blissful. I could, if I wished, relax with a book requiring utmost concentration and not be interrupted for chapters on end. So call me elated. It’s an excellent place, all things considered—such a lucky find. It’s amazing what a difference your living situation can make on your life in general. In conclusion, good riddance to BK; I’m loving it here at Prugio!

After a year of living in a studio apartment of about 7 pyeong (or the equivalent of 7 x 3.3 sq ms; a pyeong, 3.3 sq ms, is the standard measurement used for Korean living spaces), enduring foreigner neighbours who had no concept of noise consideration, I was able to move into a two bedroom apartment in the same campus building complex. Pictured above, it’s about 3 times bigger than the studio, or around 24 pyeong.

That’s our place over there, one down from the top.

Because my living situation on campus is tied in with my work contract, it was only possible for me to move into a two bedroom apartment if I was married. So I set about organizing my life to fit the regulation, in a sense. I was not married, but the intention to marry was deemed sufficient for us to move into a two bedroom apartment. Incidentally, living together out of wedlock has been kept secret from many people because it’s not the done thing in Korea.