Apartment Hunting Outside of Seoul

This is a bad story with a happy ending. In the end, I’m writing this post from an apartment that I love, looking out over the mountains. But the process, the getting here part was bad.

This is the apartment hunting in Gwangju, South Korea story.

But first, a bit of context.

When I lived in Daejeon from 2017-2020 I worked at a public school and my housing was arranged for me. I was lucky enough that it was, although tiny, relatively new, had updated appliances, and was clean when I arrived. As a 22-year-old fresh out of college, it was perfect! I enjoyed living alone, the small space made it easy to clean, and the location was a super convenient 5-minute walk from my workplace and a quick bus ride to downtown. I lived there for three years.

I came back to Korea again in the summer of 2023 to work for a study abroad program. At that time, I was given faculty housing on campus at the university. It was more or less fine except that because it was a public university, there were strict limits on how low the AC could go in order to preserve energy. So I spent much of that brutal Korean summer sweating in my room or escaping to cafes to find cooler AC elsewhere. But it did the job, and all I had to do was walk down three floors to my office each morning so no complaints in terms of convenience.

This time, however, I am not a 22-year-old fresh out of college or just passing through for the summer. I’m 30. I cook, I work from home, I like to have people over. What I wanted from an apartment this time around was a lot different than when I lived here before. This year that I spend here for my dissertation may also be the last time I spend an extended amount of time living in Korea, so I wanted to live somewhere a little nicer. Just this once.

I arrived here in August of 2024. And unlike the previous two times, this time it was up to me to find housing on my own. After a short orientation in Seoul, I came down to Gwangju and checked into a hotel where I planned to stay until I had found an apartment. As much as Korea operates on a 빨리빨리 (balli-balli aka “rush rush”) culture I knew that it was going to be hard to find a place that I liked, sign the paperwork, transfer the (large) key money, and move in within the one week I had given myself in the hotel. I started off looking at listings on two of the popular apartment apps 직방 (jik-bang) and 다방 (da-bang). If I saw a place that I liked, I contacted the real estate agent via the number on the listing.

At this point though, I should probably explain, that the whole apartment hunting system is quite different in Korea than it is in the US. In the US, you can usually just go to the apartment complex and they have a leasing agent for that building or a landlord who will show you around. In Korea, to the best of my understanding, you usually have to go through a real estate agent. So I would contact the number on the listing and instead of speaking to someone about that exact room I was interested in, someone would reach back out to say “Oh we’re so and so agency, if you tell me what your price range is, location, and anything you have in mind I can show you some places.”

And every agency I contacted had the exact same questions. Any nerves that I had in the beginning about speaking in Korean on the phone disappeared after about the 10th of these places that I talked to. Here’s my budget, here’s the amenities that I hope it has, and here’s the neighborhood.

But once I started being shown places, it was clear that they weren’t showing me the places I had asked to see or even really taking into consideration any of the things that I was looking for. They were just showing me any places they had that (and here’s the important thing) would accept foreigners. I quickly got used to texts like this:

문의주신 방은 외국인이 안되는 방이라서 (동네이름)쪽으로만 방 구하시는걸까요?

“Sorry, the room you requested to see does not allow foreigners. Are you only interested in that one neighborhood?”

The odd thing is, that while I could understand being wary of renting to people with whom you cannot communicate well, I was doing this whole thing in Korean. I overheard the real estate agents on the phones with the landlords several times more or less trying to persuade them to rent to me saying things like “her Korean is really good,” “she’s a researcher,” “she’s lived here before,” but to no avail.

Those first few days, being shown nasty old apartments without the AC on in 95-degree weather and constantly being told “no foreigners,” “no foreigners,” “no foreigners” was disheartening, to say the least. Whenever I saw somewhere that was approaching decent, the real estate agent would start aggressively pushing me to sign the lease immediately saying “this is a great deal, it’ll be gone by this afternoon, you need to hurry.” Here are some of those “great deals.”

The wide-angle camera lens is doing a LOT of work here, these places were tiny. And annoyingly, much worse than the place I lived in Daejeon even though my budget was much higher.

This went on for about 5 days.

Meanwhile, at my hotel, I don’t have a kitchen so I can’t cook anything. I’m eating from the convenience store most nights. I don’t have a bank account so I don’t want to spend too much of my Korean won. I don’t have a washing machine so after a week in the brutal heat in Seoul and now trekking all over town looking at places in Gwangju, I am almost out of clean clothes. And the last day I have booked is quickly approaching with no prospects in sight.

To say that I was stressed would be an understatement.

Then, I noticed a place on one of the apartment apps that looked nice and was in a popular neighborhood that I was familiar with. With low expectations of actually being shown that particular room, I contacted the agency, and made a plan to go over in the morning. When I arrived, it was clear that the building was brand new, with some of the finishing touches still taking place. The agent greeted me in the office without much of a mention that I was a foreigner and showed me up to the place he had available.

Immediately this room was completely different from anything that I had been shown before. It was brand new, had a bigger kitchen than my apartment in America, huge floor-to-ceiling windows, and a second-floor loft.

The agent was a gruff older man who seemed to be managing the whole building. He didn’t say much when showing me the place other than that the view was good. At some point, while we were looking at this first room he asked me how soon I wanted to move in to which I sheepishly replied, asap before next week if possible. At this, he told me that if I really wanted to move in quickly he could get me a slightly better room with (and he was VERY eager to tell me this) a garbage disposal in the sink.

We looked at this second room which had an even better view and I knew that I wanted it. My experiences with the other agents made me hesitant to show how interested I was so I told him that I liked it but had another showing in the afternoon and would be in touch as soon as I could. Instead of pressuring me to give an answer, he told me to think slowly about it and get back in touch when I could.

I went to another awful showing that afternoon and called him back that night. Thankfully, a former co-worker of mine was available to go sign the contract with me. As much as I trust my Korean, I have no knowledge of how leases work in Korea so I felt good about having her with me. We went back the next day, signed the paperwork, and suddenly it was mine. If I could just transfer the key money. And this is where things get worse instead of better.

What I had also been dealing with in the background of all this was that I did not yet have my residence card. When you get any kind of visa to legally be in Korea you have to bring all your paperwork to the immigration office and apply for the resident card which takes about a month to process. Without a resident card, it is nearly impossible to open a bank account, and without a bank account you can’t get a phone plan, and without a phone you can’t verify your identity for basically any online service that you might need to use like calling taxi, buying things online, or making reservations.

I’m very grateful for the one other grant recipient with me in my city because without being able to commiserate with her, I would have surely lost my mind.

Thank bank account problem was the lynchpin for a lot of this so, based on nothing but rumors that some branches of some banks would allow you to open an account with just a passport, we started searching for a place that would take us. My friend managed to find one woman at a branch near where she was staying who would open the account for her, so I promptly showed up the next morning to ask for the same.

At first, this was a huge win! Everything here runs on bank transfers rather than checks or services like Venmo. However, with only a passport, we were basically only allowed a baby account that had a daily transfer limit of 1 million won (roughly 700 USD). Normally, not a problem. Unless you need to transfer almost 4,000 dollars in key money in one go to your landlord.

So thus ensued what was probably the most dehumanizing day or two of my life frantically trying to visit every ATM in the city and withdraw a truly obscene amount of cash with half of the ATMs outright denying the request, some only giving the cash in 10,000원 (10$) bills, some banks saying I’d reached my limit for the day, all while I am dripping sweat, wearing the last clean items of clothing left to my name, and trying to talk myself down from a panic attack worrying that I wouldn’t be able to make the transfer in time. At some point, I found myself alone in an Outback Steakhouse eating risotto with several thousand dollars in cash in my purse, and let’s just say I knew that was a low point.

After several days of feeling like I was living on the underbelly of society, I managed to make the transfer through a friend’s account and officially move in. I lugged my two suitcases full of everything I own up to my room and first and foremost, did a load of laundry.

And that was it. Over time, without intention, an empty room becomes home. It fills with things first and then memories and all the little artifacts of life that human beings accumulate. Now, it’s the place I come home to, where I sleep best, and feel the safest.

I can almost think back on that whole ordeal and not get worked up about it, almost. But in the end, I found a place that I love. And I did it on my own. Now I get to sit here at my desk where I write this and look out to the window to a view that I’ve seen go from lush summer green to the warm colors of fall and bright white after a heavy snowfall.

Home is such an important thing and I’m glad this is mine for now. I hope you’re reading this from somewhere you love too.

Thanks for reading!