Paragraphs I never expected to read:
Complaints to a government-run inter-floor-noise-dispute resolution center soared by more than 60% in 2020 compared with the year before, according to the Korea Environment Corp. But the center has a months-long backlog, and neither its mediators nor the police can offer much recourse beyond measuring decibels and urging neighbors to be more considerate of one another.
The full story is here. Middle-class life in Seoul is apparently more harrowing than I knew.
I blame BTS.
We all know what happens when the neighbors get too loud in Korea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufss5ot_vGE
The pandemic has impacted noise in ways I never expected. I live 5 miles from an airport, which normally only causes noise when they have to divert planes to a different runway (which forces planes to fly directly above my house).
But suddenly, this year, we were periodically hit with a constant, low droning. It took forever to figure out. It was the noise from the runway, which gets blown our way when the wind shifts directions. Even though passenger flights were down, there were still many, many planes delivering packages, and the dozen or so airplanes lined up waiting to take off make a ton of constant noise.
I've lived here 20 years, and never noticed it before. My only guess is that the traffic noise between here and the airport typically masks it. But that traffic disappeared with lockdowns. Now that things are opening up, I dont hear it anymore. But it was there all summer and well into winter!
When I worked as an Investigator with the DRE we took turns answering calls from the public. Most involved issues that weren’t within our jurisdiction and we would relate to each other our “call of the day”. My favorite was a guy who complained that the condo above him was sold to a man with a wooden leg. When he walked around there would be this clump-clump-clump. He wanted to know if the agent who sold the property had a responsibility to inform him.
We told him no, and that it’s likely that doing so would be considered discriminatory.
Looks like it's Fuck with DRE Day.
They even have developed an automated system to monitor and classify inter-floor noise!
Amazing.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243758