Korean Job Discussion Forums

[just because]

So anyway i signed a new contract last week and moved in on Monday. the place hasn't been cleaned for 3 years.

I found Maple Syrup that was used by in 2001, that would give you an indication of how bad the place was. The apartment is really nice, just the previous tenants stuffed it up. It has taken me and my new flatmate(a clean freak thank god) 30 hours to clean the joint up.

We used 12 (100 litre) yellow rubbish bags, it was shocking. Its like the people that lived there the previous 3 or 4 years just didn't clean. I'm glad I've finished and I can get on with it.

However, what is your worst story when changing apartments and moving into a new one. How dirty or bad was it??? I'm sure there are many stories.

[Saxiif]

the couple-inch thick layer of dog hair under my bed was pretty frightening...

[sadsac]

The previous tenants only used one room in the 3 bedroom apartment and thats all they cleaned. Crap everywhere, didn't take us 30 hours, but a good solid day to get it livable. Plus no heating oil, unpaid bills to the tune of 1.2 million won. The director loved getting those. Milk that had been in the fridge for the 3 months the apartment had been empty. Like your roomy just because my wife is also a clean freak. Not a great start, but we love the place now.

[crazylemongirl]

hmmmm let's see I have only been here a year and so many places

my first place there were no curtains I was on the ground floor (got some myself), no stove (for a week), and tons of bugs and my utlities got turned off because of non payment (my phone bill was over 200k)

second place was a current workmate so he cleaned up really nicely

third place was good but I got told I was moving in 90minutes but was the same workmate as the second palce so it was nce and clean.

fourth place was a compelte dive. it stunk, no curtains, and there was a hole in the window.

current place is nice but I got a surprise in the form of an unexpected roomate. she is nice though.

[wylde]

lucky me.. all were spotless

[wylde]

what does your boss say?

[Son Deureo!]

I've been lucky enough to inherit three pretty clean places in Korea.

In Seattle, however, I had little choice but to take a place more or less sight unseen. When we moved in, we figured out pretty quickly that the previous tenants were junkies. We found needles all over the place, blood sprayed on the walls from them cleaning out their hypos, and the place was a pigsty. It took me and my three roomies about a week of full time work, fortunately we were all unemployed, to make the place liveable enough for us to start looking for jobs.

Actually, now that I think about it, every place I've ever moved into in America was filthy and disgusting, while every apartment I've ever moved into in Korea was clean and ready to move into. The opposite of what I would have expected.

[Real Reality]

The small furnished apartment was provided by the university.
Features:
Old, well-used mattress on the bedroom floor (no bed frame; no sheets; no padding) (Wow, it was furnished.)
Rotting, wooden chair (Wow, it was furnished.)
Ancient refrigerator door would not close completely without some hard pushing (perhaps, this was training equipment used to develop skills required in the subway or stores) (Wow, it was furnished.)
Thriving mold on the ceilings (especially in the bedroom and in the corning of the living room) (Another foreign professor in a room near my had to have medical treatment because of a reaction to the mold and mildew in the apartment. Note: The apartment building was only for foreigners.)
No air conditioning
The floor heating worked in spots. (Step here burn your foot; step there freeze your foot. The dancing I did in the winters.)
Stained walls (combination--mold, mildew, grease, smoke, markers and some brown substance) -- So, the wall paper was changed in the time of Park Chung-hee. ?

And, just think the housing was provided with a small maintenance fee and utilities charge.

[animalbirdfish]

Just after moving into my current place (which is pretty grotty overall), one of my drains backed up. It had a large opening, so I stuck my hand down there and set to pulling out the blockage - a bunch of used condoms. Boy, if you think I didn't wash my hands in bleach for a week after that...

[Mr. Pink]

After my last "work sponsered housing" I will never live in a place that a job provides.

I moved into a place where some Koreans, not foreigners had been living before. It was into an apt. building. On the "balcony" was wood which was VERY rotten. I moved on a long weekend, and it was raining most of that weekend, so I had to stay inside with the rotting wood. I tried to clean the wood up but man it was gross. I mean most people have NO IDEA how gross it was. The smell and the bugs in the wood just gave me a "memory shiver"

I should have refused to move in there, but what can ya do when your work is in control of your housing situation?

All I can say is NEVER AGAIN.

[batman]

First place reminded me of a cabin in northern Canada.
Hot in the summer and cold in the winter (not helped by the huge gap between the door and the frame).
During rain storms I could stick my finger through my bedroom wall.
Bathroom was a like a mini zoo with all sorts of wildlife popping out of the drain in the floor and from the toilet.

When I first moved into the cabin the place was a mess.
The original room-mate (had five in my first year) did not clean the place at all in the 11 months he was there.
When he left I spent a week cleaning the place and it took two weeks to air the place out.
Under his bed was found a year's supply of soju bottles and a semi-moldy collection of second rate Asian porn.
The whole place was just dirty, dusty, greasy and icky.

The second place was a lovely studio overlooking the beach.
Beautiful location, great windows, excellent space.

The third place was a really cool luxurious three bedroom apartment which I shared with one other teacher. The only thing notable about that place was the size of the hair ball pulled from the bathroom drain (bigger than a Busan rat), the smell that was stuck to the kitchen, the smallness of the bedroom (considering the overall size of the apartment) and the fact that the building management turned the hot water off every Wednesday.

The fourth place was a KC hell supplied motel in which I lived for 10 weeks.

The fifth was a KC hell supplied 2 pyung apartment (found out it was two pyung by comparing it to the 1 pyung cells at the Prison Museum in Seoul).
Although it came with an oven, it lacked heat and hot water and furnishings.

The sixth place was a KC hell supplied 5 pyung apartment. All I can say is that it was much better than the two pyung place (still no heat or hot water and the water pressure made having a shower seem like being pi$$ed on by an old man with a prostate problem). No furnishings supplied either (which was a good thing because when my neighbour received his bed and other furnishings they all smelled like mold.)

The seventh place was a nice two bedroom flat with a wrap around balcony. Actually had hard wood floors instead of that rubber stuff that is commonly found. Sadly the andool in the living room was broken. It was pretty dirty when I moved in. The previous teacher (a guy from Texas) had been living there for a while but had never cleaned the place. I swear I have never seen dust bunnies that big before. (on a related note, when I went home for my month long vacation last year I let one of my Korean co-workers use my apartment. I walked up the stairs to my flat, opened the door and was greeted by a pile of rubbish (huge) and by burn marks on the floor. Nothing like having to clean up the mess left by the guest)

The eighth is where I am now. A place supplied by my wife's school. It is about a year old but seems much, much more ancient. The previous tenant left all sorts of groady spots on the wall paper (joy shots?) and when we first moved in the floor looked like it had be hit by the Exxon Valdez). When the furnishing arrived (fridge, stove, washing machine, tv) everything looked and smelled like they had come from the side of the road and worked about as well.

In Canada I had lived in about 10 different places. But each place was left relatively clean by the previous occupant. My experiences in Korea though (as well as the experiences of my friends) has been the opposite.
Doesn't seem to matter if the previous warm body was foriegn or Korean the place has never been left clean.

[peppermint]

I've been pretty lucky I think- most of my apartments have been relatively clean and decent. When I moved into the first one, I found that the teacher who'd lived there before had left behind some books, a half bottle of jim beam, and a bottle of tequila!

Then I found that he'd also left all of his underwear behind.
( found out later that he'd forgotten to pack them.)

[animalbirdfish]

[wylde]

that is the good thing about being here first...

ya can check out the room

[Joe Thanks]