Apartments
• In 2005, I stayed at dorm at Yonsei, shared with a roommate and sharing a bathroom with maybe two dozen other people. I don't remember much about it.
• In 2006, I stayed in an apartment out in Ansan. It had no air conditioning, so I had a rotating fan. It was the top floor room in a two-story apartment, with three women living in separate rooms below.
• In 2007, I lived in a studio apartment near Seollung Station. There was an old couple who lived above me who would come home at 2 AM and clomp around until 4 AM. The English-speaking landlord let me move to a room on the first floor. There was clomping above, but not late at night. There were large dead roaches when I moved in, but no live ones.
• In 2008, I moved to a studio apartment in between Gangnam Station and Yeoksam Station, where I stayed until 2012. I started off at the room at the end of the hall, but after there were problems with the boiler, I was allowed to move to a slightly larger room in the middle of the hall. These apartments had a three-month contract that could be renewed month to month, so it was easy to stay. It also meant all the other neighbors would come and go in short periods. I noticed in old entries written in 2010 that I was unhappy with the neighbors.
I remember there being annoying neighbors nextdoor. I remember there was a Chinese neighbor across the hall who would yell into her phone. I remember hearing noise late at night, and it was coming from the room on the top floor, two floors above mine. I remember there was a girl at the end of the hall who'd have friends over and leave her door open, until I went over and closed it myself. Some mornings I was woken to the sound of her and her friends eating and smoking on the stairwell right outside my room. I reported her to the landlord for smoking indoors, and he kicked her out.
I filmed all my early music videos in that apartment. I also bought an electric drum set, but didn't play it much. I turned down an interview with KBS right after the Subway Song came out because they wanted to film inside my apartment, and it was nothing to look at.
• In 2012, I moved to a studio apartment up the hill behind the CGV movie theater near Gangnam Station. It turned out by sheer coincidence that someone I knew lived in the room directly below mine. I was productive in this apartment, but I only stayed a year. The bathroom had no windows and was bad at ventilation. Eventually, water started to pool on the ceiling above the kitchen area and mold started growing. The landlord didn't offer a solution. The landlord was weird and would often just let himself into my room without notice, sometimes while I was still in bed. In my last month, someone moved in above me and started jumping up and down early in the morning. I decided I didn't want to stay there.
• In 2013, I moved to a one-bedroom apartment close to Shinnonhyun Station, on the top floor. I had access to the rooftop, although everyone in the building technically did. I thought being on the top floor would be a solution to my housing problems. It wasn't. The woman below me would drag chairs loudly across the floor, and on occasion blasted music. It felt like I could hear everything. I was miserable there.
• In 2014, I found a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor of a building near Yeoksam Station, and I ended up staying there for seven years. It had large windows with an amazing view, as well as rooftop access. It had a weirdly shaped bathroom in the middle of the apartment, with good ventilation. It had a massive veranda that was a pain to clean and dust. It was good. For a while.
That's because for a while, the neighbors must have been decent. I also lived directly above the landlord, who wasn't noisy. There was only one room next to mine, and the tenants were typically decent.
There were three big weaknesses to the building: 1. The doors were incredibly slammy, and people often did not take care to prevent them from slamming. 2. It was possible to hear noise in the apartment three floors below mine. This wouldn't be much of an issue until the final year. 3. The door to the roof was right by my bedroom, and on rare occasion, I would be woken up my people going to the roof.
The last year was miserable. I didn't find out until they moved out, but the room next to mine was occupied by two bunk beds, and at least two young guys, possibly four. They all worked at the delivery restaurant in the building across the street, and worked at all hours of the day and night, so they were constantly coming and going. One was decent enough not to slam the door. The others, not so much.
The room three floors below mine was occupied by another group of young people, or perhaps just a couple who always had their friends over. They could be heard at night. Worse, they would go up to the roof to film dance routines, which . . . I didn't know until they started doing this that the roof was rather weak, and dancing up there sounds like thunder in my apartment. Although both of these groups moved out by the time I was about to leave, I had already made up my mind.
• In 2021, I moved to a one-bedroom apartment near Seollung Station. I had specifically requested an apartment on the top floor, and this room was on the top floor reached by the elevator. When I first looked at it, I noticed a set of stairs going up further and asked what they were, as I assumed they went to the roof. The realtor asked the landlord, who said they were nothing.
They weren't nothing. They were other neighbors, loud ones who always liked to be home, always liked to have guests over, always liked to keep their door open (because there was a second glass door at the stairs; essentially, sound traveled freely, while no one could go up to yell at them). Even if it weren't for those assholes, the quality of the building seemed to be lacking. I'd gotten suckered, and I opted to get our of there before my contract was up.
Just today I got back my deposit for that place, and am finally done with it.
• In September 2021 I moved out of Seoul, to a two-bedroom apartment in a high-rise building in Anyang. It's the first time I've lived in a non-villa-style apartment.
It is better than my previous apartments in all respects, and yet I'm not satisfied.
I've always thought living in one of those little boxes inside a large building would feel claustrophobic, being boxed in on all sides, whereas villa apartments have different shapes and . . . I dunno, feel freer, even though they're not because of their shoddy quality. But anyway, I feel boxed in. I have neighbors in almost all sides of me. There is noise, but it's fainter. The problem is when I work at home, and it's deathly silent, I hear everything if there's any noise anywhere.
I don't know how bad the noise is, because noise stresses me out, and when I'm stressed, I always perceive noise as much worse than it actually is. It's a problematic cycle.
The person above me generally hasn't been noisy at all, except the rare times she has friends over, which was last night and also this morning, but I have a bad feeling that's because she was moving out. If that is the case, I am afraid of who will replace her. She lived in her apartment alone, like I do, but I've seen parents with kids who fit inside this space.
Noise isn't the only problem, if it's actually a legitimate problem at all. This place has central air conditioning, for which there is a vent in every room, and it's quite strong. That is, it's strong when it's working. The problem is the complex shuts off air conditioning when the outside temperature falls below a certain threshold, and they don't really take humidity into account. Surviving the warm, humid nights of the fall was torture. These AC units don't have a dehumidifying setting, and my own dehumidifier releases heat, which as I've mentioned, is the problem during warm and humid nights.
Even if spring is far less humid, and there's a quicker transition to activated air conditioning, it will still be a transition that I will have to endure. I intend to move out for this reason alone, but this time I need to wait until the end of my contract.
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I don't know where to move to next. I don't know what the solution is to all these issues. I have plenty of time to think about a solution, and perhaps to go look at other apartments even though I don't intend to sign for any of them yet.