Korean Job Discussion Forums

[JongnoGuru]

I received a PM from a poster who doesn't live in Korea but will be coming here to work soon. Their employer isn't providing them with housing (nor assistance in finding housing), and they're wondering how to go about getting a place, what it will cost, where to start looking, etc., and they asked if I'd offer some advice.

One of the options they've considered is sharing an apartment, which struck me as fairly unusual. And fairly quaint and reminiscent of myself and nearly every young foreigner I knew when I first arrived in Korea. Perhaps not surprisingly, this person isn't going into the EFL business, where I gather housing is provided in most cases.

Anyway, it got me wondering how few of you have flatmates or would even consider sharing a place if that were an option. I don't mean colleagues from your school/hagwon who were billeted with you by your employer, but friends or acquaintances with whom you freely decided to share a place.

Sure, you'll see classified ads by people looking for flatmates ("available: 1 rm in 3-rm apt., shared util., no smokers, no pets, pref. cat-loving vegetarian"), but I can't recall the last time I actually met a foreigner in Korea who had a flatmate by choice. Oh, they all lived in shared places BEFORE they got to Korea, back home, where everybody does at that age. (I've seen Friends -- nobody in the West lives alone at your age, stop lying.)

But you people, you get here and suddenly you're all... What? Too good, too proud, too damn special to share the toilet anymore?? And I think that's unfortunate, as it deprives me & others the merriment of reading all those wonderful threads that might've been. I can almost see the thread titles...

My Flatmate from Hell!!

And We Used to Be Such Good Friends

You won't BELIEVE what that biatch did last night!!

*sniff*

Wait. Maybe more of you DO share your place, but are just too scared to say so lest your freaky waygook flatmate reads your post and poisons your food in retaliation.

[steelhead]

I had 2 roomates in our 3 bedroom place. One guy moved out, he just wanted a little more action, and to be on his own Im pretty sure. The other guy and I are pretty chill.

LIke to go out once and a while, but in general pretty neat, and to settle squabling over patches of dust, we just hire a cleaning lady once a month, because the taking turns cleaning the shower and crapper aint gonna happen.

We could always take on a 3rd, but our rent is only 700, so its really not killing us to pay for it ourselves.

However, I will be moving out in 3-4 months, so the last roomie will have to stretch his outlook to find a Noob to live with.

[Col.Brandon]

Bleh. Flatmates are a hassle. Even when they are nice people and don't have any bad habits you still don't have the place to yourself and can't just please yourself. I've been there, done that and moved on. For me having a flatmate was an economic necessity, not a choice. One thing Korea did for me (finally) was allow me the peace and freedom of my own space (ironic in such a crowded country).

An example: My first place in Korea I shared with my co-worker. He was a really nice chap and we got along well, but he was a hairy b@stard! Every time I took a shower I had to wade through a forest of gorilla-boy essence... ugh.

That was one of the better flatmate experiences I had. The worst ones don't bear thinking about...

Having to endure the mindless twitterings of a travel agent and cosmetics sales rep as they watch some reality show on TV

Losers who skip town leaving me with the bills

Flatmate's crazy boyfriend/girlfriend/loser family member who arrives and turns my home into an episode of Freddie Vs Jason

Arguing over whose turn it is to do/pay for what

Interviewing an endless stream of slackers and psychos who answered your advert for a room mate, "Uh, yeah bro - I got kicked out of my last place, eh!"

Waiting all weekend for your new roomie to move in but they never show up and you never hear from them again but you cancelled your ad in the newspaper and have to wait another week until the next advert appears and meanwhile you're paying all the rent and it's just about crippling you...

Sheesh, life's too short if you ask me. If you want to meet people join a club or something. Don't let them into your house until you know you can trust them with the silverware and they have enough of an IQ not to bore you senseless.

However, I enjoy living with my wife, even if she does leave hair in the plughole

[jinks]

When I started my first Korean teaching contract last February I was adamant that I did not want shared accommodation. Like the OP said, house sharing in my home country is the norm, but at home we choose our own flatmates. I liked everything about the job offer on the table, except the part about shared housing. I tried negotiating single accommodation, and my director told me it was do-able. However, as departure time approached the director asked me to reconsider the housing, saying the shared apartment was much bigger and that two can live as cheaply as one and also to consider the loneliness of being new to Korea and living in a small town without a sizeable foreign community. I was not happy, but I agreed to try it out on the understanding that as soon as anything untoward happened in the shared housing I would move out and the director would provide me with my own place.
12 months later, I am still here and my living arrangements could not have been more enjoyable. Despite a 20 year age difference and a massive divergence in political and social views, my flatmate and I have lived very amicably together for the whole year. The first few weeks were a bit difficult as we were both wary of each other, but it soon became clear that we are both reasonable people.
Now we are about to go our separate ways; we haven't spent the last year living in each other's pockets, we have both kept to different circles of friends, but we have enjoyed catching up at school [our schedules are different - that helps] and we look forward to coming home to someone eager to listen to our battle stories from work and weeekend adventures.
It has been great!
Next week, my flatmate is returning to our home country and I am moving to a university job in the city. I am excited about my new job and having my own apartment, but I will definitely miss coming home to a pile of someone else's dishes and a friendly face with a sympathetic ear. flatmates rock!

[TOGirl]

I fit into the:

And we used to be such good friends category

My friend and I decided that we would live together last year when we came to Korea....big mistake.

My friend had a boyfriend back home and when I met someone in Korea all hell broke loose.

She wanted to make our apartment a "Korean-free zone" (my boyfriend was Korean), meaning he could never come over, she didn't even want him to come by to pick me up. Everytime he came by she would run to her room and then yell about it the next day, or give me the silent treatment.

After 7 months of Korean people and culture bashing she did a midnight run....and the next 5 months were so peaceful.

I would never even consider living with another person in Korea, friends or strangers. I can't go through that again.

It would have made a great thread though!!

[Homer]

I have had mixed results with flatmates in Korea.

My first year in, my flatmate was a cool guy. We became friends and still keep in touch to this day.

My second year flatmate was not the greatest guy on earth. We just did not get along. It made for a semi-long year. It was not a bad situation but it added nothing either.

I think a good flatmate can be a good thing for a newbie if he or she has been here a while.

Honestly however, I would tend to advise newbies to ask for single housing.

[TheUrbanMyth]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[Qinella]

Had 2 roommates for a year in college. Twelve months of no privacy, washing everyone's dishes, my food disappearing, weirdo friends over all night for parties, drunk girlfriends bashing the door down at 3am, stupidass stories, my weed being bogarted, and the tv constantly being on, I decided enough was enough. I've lived alone ever since, and as long as I'm financially able, that's how it will be unless I get married.

Waking up in the morning and having to look at some dude moping around is one of the worst imaginable ways to start a day.

Q.

[Corporal]

[JongnoGuru]

My tentative title for this thread was "FLATMATES -- the good, the bad and the smelly", but I didn't want it to be just a variant of the "Freakiest Waygook Contest" thread (though such stories would be fun to read). I was just prompted by that poster's PM to thinking about how much things have changed here in this regard, and why they've changed.

What you would have found different then:

1. First and foremost, English teachers are usually provided housing, and there weren't so many English teachers on the ground then.

I suppose for most Dave's members, it's your employer who decides if you're going to have flatmates or not. You may insist on single-occupant housing and you may even get it. But that's still up to your employer to provide/permit if he wants to or not if he doesn't. Anyway, that's not at all the same thing as when I got here, and it's not the same thing as non-teacher expats often face today: a job but no housing or even any input from the employer regarding housing. That means no help, no assistance, no support, but also no restrictions at all on what, where, how large, how much, single-occupancy or shared. Nada.

2. Cheap single-occupant housing options (one-rooms, officetels, goshiwons open to the general public, etc.) didn't exist in any significant number then.

What you had were boarding houses (sleeping two, three or four to a room) and some rather sleazy "inns". These were essentially yogwans, but cheaper, more traditionally Korean-looking, and not very numerous. These "inns" didn't cater to the two-hour-tryst trade (businessmen banging secretaries) but rather to the flotsam & jetsam of foreign backpacker types, camera/walkman/rolex smugglers, drug runners, Korean language students and various other freakazoids.

If you weren't an English teacher, if you weren't married to a local w/sacks of money, and if your employer (overseas or in Korea) wasn't taking care of your housing, then sharing a place was a logical and often necessary alternative to living in a yogwan.

[Pyongshin Sangja]

Grown men should not have to listen to each other whack off.

[whitebeagle]

I remember once telling my roommate that i could see a 'roach on the floor in his room. He turned his head slightly away from the lounge tv to look, "Oh, its ok. Its on its back."