Korean Job Discussion Forums

[trueblue]

...since being woken up by romping, stomping, door slamming neighbors...and it rages on.

This goes on every day....what can anyone be doing for so long to warrant such noise? And the slamming of doors...why?

In general, the places I have have lived back home, we are conscientious about things of that nature.

Why is it different here? Is there an explanation or am I simply easily woken up?

[northway]

I honestly believe that Koreans are just much better than North Americans at handling environmental noise. Even in the States, stuff that will drive me up a wall doesn't phase my Korean friends.

[trueblue]

Fair enough I guess.

[Steelrails]

Like, didn't you live with a couple roommates who'd be jamming at like 2AM or coming home drunk and making a ruckus? Like, what monastery did you go to for college? Back home there was plenty of noise too. People didn't care. Now, of course if you lived in suburbia or whatnot, it would be an issue and the police would come out. But any place that rented to students/lower income workers would have its fair share of noise.

But yeah, a cheap building here will have a lot more noise. Building quality in the older apartments aint up to snuff compared to back home.

[trueblue]

No, not quite the same.

BTW, is there any way possible, to ban someone from posting on one of your threads? Anyone?

[PRagic]

Yeah, even after more than 20 years here, I'm still sometimes surprises. The other night I heard an entire family yipping it up coming up the stairs...at 1:30 a.m. No problem, everybody gets a pass if they go out and kick it up a bit.

But then the socks came off the kids and they started running around at speed. And this is at 2:00 a.m. No problem, I figure, takes a little bit of time for wound up kids to settle in. But it kept going for hours.

Finally, I rang the doorbell in Dumb and Dumber To fashion. Nobody answered, but everything at least quieted down a bit.

My old apartment? Had a cloven hoofed family living above us. LOUD with a capital L. I tried everything. The grandma simply said that it was their place and they could walk around however they wanted. It wasn't only the grandma and grandpa, though, it was the ENTIRE FAMILY. Eventually just started bouncing the basketball off of the ceiling for a while every day until they got the message. Complained daily to the managment office, too, and followed up to make sure they said something to the a-holes. We moved before it got totally out of hand. I was so very close to just pissing on their door.

[PRagic]

Oh, and this isn't a Korea-Foreigner thing. The Korean media is packed with stories of neighbors that have gone at it tooth and nail because of noise levels.

[trueblue]

For them, simply picking up a chair and not dragging it all the way across the room, must either stagger the imagination, completely go against the Korean wsy, or simply not enter as a thought.

I notice this at school as well...a learned habit, I suppose.

I think I shall invest in a basketball.

[tophatcat]

[aq8knyus]

During uni I lived in a dorm building that was bulit before WWI with 200 other people in central London. It was noisy.

However, that cannot even begin to compare to how noisy it is living in an apartment in Korea.

They just don't care, there are no consequences for yell talking at 4 in the morning or playing music really loudly without headphones.

[Chaparrastique]

[Mix1]

It's partly the skimpy construction, even in the newer buildings. Either that or a marching band lives in every apartment.

And partly the walking style: the heel stomp! I walk heel to toe smoothly, but when Koreans come over (particularly the women) usually the whole place rattles!

The door slams are baffling. I understand the occasional accident, but it's every single time. Who would want to do that to their own door? We'd get yelled at as kids if we would have done that.

Our neighbor called someone to fix his door once. Great! I thought... but it slams even harder now. I guess it wasn't making enough noise for him.

[SeoulNate]

Had a problem only once here with noise above me.

After complaining a few times and visiting their house I was fed up.

Duct taped a speaker to the ceiling, left a deep bass beat on all weekend and headed to the country for some R&R. No more problems when I came home.

[Underwaterbob]

[trueblue]