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AbbeFaria
Joined: 17 May 2005
Location: Gangnam
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 Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 11:22 am Post subject: Should I fear the tap water? |
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I've been here a month and the closest I've come to drinking tap water is rinsing my mouth out. But at some moments, like now when I'm really thirsty and out of bottled water and it's 4:30 in the morning, I'm really considering taking a drink. Will or do bad things happen? Am I risking severe intestinal distress?
-S- |
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canuckistan
Mod Team
Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Location: Training future GS competitors.....
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 11:45 am Post subject: |
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| Fear and loathe the tap water--it's really not for drinking. Just keep a nice big supply of the bottled stuff around for 4 am chugging. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 12:57 pm Post subject: |
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(Firstly, there are several threads on this topic. Use the "search" command.)
I have asked all of my students during lessons and have found out that it's a 50/50 or 60/40 split between those students' families who drink nothing but bottled and those who drink tap water boiled. None admit to drinking straight from the tap.
So boil some water, have tea or coffee. Or then throw it in the freezer and an hour later drink it cold.
I've been drinking tap water here for three years now, no problem. But here is Geoje Island, not Seoul. It all depends on the water supply. |
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peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 1:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Ask your school if they can help you get water delivered. I get oneo f those water cooler jugs delivered every couple of weeks for 5,000. If you don't want to invest in a watercooler, you can buy a little hand pump for the jug from the guy too for about 20,000 |
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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 1:22 pm Post subject: |
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| You can also just pick up a Brita filter or the equivalent, yes? |
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merrilee
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: South Korea
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 4:58 pm Post subject: |
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A few months ago I went to a town hall meeting with the mayor of Seoul. At this meeting, which was held in English, we were informed that the tap water in Seoul is perfectly good for drinking. We were also provided a booklet, in which they gave "helpful tips" for how to have a more pleasurable drinking experience, such as "add green tea." Funny. I would still have my reservations about drinking it, though.
I don't live in Seoul, though. I know a man who works at city hall in my town, and I once asked him about the water supply here. He informed me that it was perfectly safe to boil the water for a very long time and drink it if you also added that special green tea concoction. Then I asked him if that's what he did, and ashamed, he admitted that he only drinks bottled water. 
Besides, didn't RR post something in the fall of 2003 about formaldehyde being found in the water here? |
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desultude
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: Dangling my toes in the Persian Gulf
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 5:13 pm Post subject: |
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When I run out of bottled water, I make barley tea- after boiling the water well. I love barley tea, cold or hot, so it's just fine.
I don't drink tap water anywhere unless I am well assured of its safety.
I remember one time on Miami Beach, there had been a sewage spill which affected the drinking water. It was reported on a Friday; the health warning was issued on Monday, when the Department of Health came back to work from the weekend!
I just make it a habit not to drink tap water, that way, when I am in Cambodia or Mexico, I don't slip up!
This may sound a bit paranoid, but after one serious bout of amoebic dysentary, I decided my policy on the issue. |
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peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 9:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Hater Depot wrote: |
| You can also just pick up a Brita filter or the equivalent, yes? |
They're great at removing minerals and stuff, but completely useless if the water is contaminated with anything biological |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 10:05 pm Post subject: |
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(You should only fear the Reaper)
My problem with tap water in Korea has always been the (noticeably bad) taste and sometimes odour more than the fear of consuming nasty bugs or chemicals. It really doesn't do to take the best coffee beans money can buy and brew up a pot of something yikky-tasting. Or make the perfect c0cktail and have it taste off because the ice was made from tap water. Water shouldn't have a _taste_ or an odour, and if a filter can't make tap water "tasteless" and odourless, then bottled water is the only option for me. |
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BigBlackEquus
Joined: 05 Jul 2005
Location: Lotte controls Asia with bad chocolate!
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 11:01 pm Post subject: |
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| They can test the water all they want coming out of the plant. It's the pipes between here and there which scare me. |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 11:58 pm Post subject: |
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| BigBlackEquus wrote: |
| They can test the water all they want coming out of the plant. It's the pipes between here and there which scare me. |
Good point. Korea's getting a lot better and more regular about replacing pipe systems at the municipal level, but there are still problems with old buildings that ... I'm sure they'll be torn down before the pipes are ever replaced or even inspected. (It's expensive but doable for houses.)
There was a time when the Korean media wouldn't dare run stories critical of (or even focused on) the nation's (low) tap-water quality, though everyone feared the worst. And the government made it illegal for Koreans to buy bottled water. It was only for foreigners, primarily US military and the foreign diplomatic corps & families -- they were the big customer for Korean springwater vendors at the start. Though as you'd expect in any country with a thriving blackmarket and a certain ... um... mindset among the populace, the wealthier & connected Koreans were getting theirs, don't you doubt it. Fun times, fun times.
Korea was also funny (shifty) in handling the results of its official water-quality tests. They finally did it and publicised it one year, released (what were alleged to have been) the true and undoctored results, and that was that. You'd try to follow it up the next year and the next year, and the official sources kept pointing to that one old study and a list of investments they'd made to improve things. The official line was: "Look, we already admitted that things were bad. And we promised to do something about it. You should just accept that things are inevitably getting better, because we're doing something about it. Stop asking questions".
There was absolutely no sense of what the _current_ status of contamination, etc. was; no sense of what progress was being achieved; no sense of what effect all these new facilities and tougher regulations were having on the tap water that the government was expecting Koreans to just drink without complaint or question. Sure, you could test water quality at any university lab, but that wouldn't be regarded or reported as official. In fact, attempting to get those "unofficial", "unrecognised" results in print anywhere -- well, that could be dicey, too.
(btw, why is this in Job-related?) |
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bluelake
Joined: 01 Dec 2005
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| Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 12:11 am Post subject: Re: Should I fear the tap water? |
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| AbbeFaria wrote: |
I've been here a month and the closest I've come to drinking tap water is rinsing my mouth out. But at some moments, like now when I'm really thirsty and out of bottled water and it's 4:30 in the morning, I'm really considering taking a drink. Will or do bad things happen? Am I risking severe intestinal distress?
-S- |
Hmmm... hard to say. I see you are in Pohang, too (I'm at Handong U.). For a while I would boil the tap water here, but I found it to have a seemingly high iron content. Nowadays, I buy only bottled water.
In Kyongju where I used to live (still do, on occasion), the tap water isn't bad--I've even had it straight from the tap with no ill effects.
When I first lived here, back in '84, you would never even dream about using tap water. I didn't even like to have barley tea at restaurants, because they were known for using tap water to cool it down. Naengmyon had similar problems. Something did happen back then, as I ended up with a bad case of gastroenteritis, although it might have come from the veggies, because farmers used nightsoil almost exclusively at that time.
T |
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just because
Joined: 01 Aug 2003
Location: Changwon - 4964
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| Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 1:54 am Post subject: |
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To drink it every now and then you should be fine...
just not regularly....
I drink it maybe once a week when i have no bottles water and i have lived here 4 years...i am not dead yet |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 2:14 am Post subject: |
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| My water (Nowon) has this most horrible metallic taste to it. I don't think there's anything unhealthy about it, however. I freely wash and cook with it and make coffee with it. I just don't ever drink it straight to refresh myself. |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 2:16 am Post subject: |
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| just because wrote: |
To drink it every now and then you should be fine...
just not regularly....
I drink it maybe once a week when i have no bottles water and i have lived here 4 years...i am not dead yet |
Yeah? And how do we know these aren't messages from the Great Beyond? |
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