Korea's love affair with NOISE.

[Horus]

Sometimes the non-stop noise of life in Korea exhausts me. It's everywhere, all the time. The mindset seems to be: Why close your door quietly at 3am when you can slam it. Why walk quietly on the floor of your apartment when you can stomp. Why talk to the person standing next to you at a reasonable volume when you can yell your conversation. Why rearrange your furniture during the day when you can do it loudly at 2am. Why sell your fruits and vegetables like a civilized citizen when you can use a bongo truck and a megaphone. Why wait patiently in traffic when you can blare your horn after five seconds.

Must everything here be done as loudly as humanly possible? Are there no noise pollution regulations in this country at all? Or is it that they exist but that, like every other law, it just doesn't get enforced.

Tired of the constant noise - even while in my own home. You simply can't escape it. Earplugs can only do so much.

[Cereal]

I really have to agree with you 100% on this. I find Koreans incredibly loud. They yell to each other regularly instead of walking for 10 seconds and speaking at a normal voice level. I don't get it.

To my ears, the language also sounds very whiny and more than a little angry.

Having said that, all of the Koreans I know as well as those I deal with in various shops and stores are nice and friendly.

But this place is loud.

[dapto1]

I completely agree, noise is one thing that gets to me. Like the megaphones in supermarkets, for example!

And yet they glare at you if you so much as whisper on the subway.  ???

[michael0226]

Someone explained to me the reason why certain Koreans speak loudly is because they don't want to appear like they're gossiping. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[yeti08]

This is the main thing and one of the only things I truly hate here.  The speaker advertisement trucks make me want to kill.  Noise pollution is an unknown here.... ???

[Seoulian]

I don't understand the whole megaphone thing. Sometimes they are talking to no one or to foreigners. Does it honestly work? Do they buy stuff because some guy yelled at them? I went to a baseball game at Jamsil stadium in the summer, and they had KFC, Burger King and some other group talking as loud as they could in to megaphones, I just wanted to get the hell out of there as fast I could. I mean, they put hanguel on everything as it is, why do they need more advertising?  If a store did that back home I would never go near it.

I've never had problems with the doors, stomping or the voices, maybe I am lucky.

[DWAEDGIMORIGUKBAP]

Koreans adult and kids alike seem like a nation of adhd people to me.

[Horus]

These last two weeks we've had the pleasure of enduring the Seoul mayoral elections. The mayoral candidates go about in their trucks blaring - and I mean blaring - their propaganda out of megaphones. These are the people we expect to pressure the police to enforce noise ordinances.

Sometimes it's so obvious that Korea escaped military dictatorship only a mere twenty years ago. Dictatorships everywhere love to use megaphones to blare their propaganda at captive audiences. Things here change slowly.

[flasyb]

I live in the countryside and it's super quiet. One of the guys in my building was complaining about the noise made in the room above his but every time I went to listen, there was almost nothing to hear. It got to him though but I suspect that had something to do with the annoyance factor. Once you let something get to you, it becomes infinitely more annoying and ruins your sleep. Earplugs work wonders for me even if they don't for the OP.

Not that I'm trying to excuse the absurd noise level. I crashed at my girlfriend's place for entire vacations while she was living in Seoul and it was awful. She had construction going on most of the time that she was there.

I hear foreigners talking loud everywhere. I think it's mainly because Koreans on the subway tend to be travelling alone at all hours with their concentrated faces basking in the glow of their smart phones (plus I live in a rural town so when I go to the big city, I notice every bit of English speaking going on around me). Foreign voices and dialects stand out in Korea. None more so to me than my own language. I'm not sure if the stereotype of Americans talking louder is really true or if it's just more noticeable by their strong accents and stronger presence here in Korea - you're far more likely to meet someone from the USA than from Ireland and so you're far more likely to meet an American loudspeaker, as it were.

[Ectofuego]

Pardon but wouldn't  it be just  as loud if you lived in some place similar in population density  like NYC or Tokyo?

[raoulduke813]

I think it's pretty loud here in some places and I don't live in a huge city. Gwangju's downtown has spots where it seems like two stores across from each other are battling for your attention with their own annoying KPOP CD that I've heard 50 times. That only really bothers me when I'm hungover though.

[Fanwarrior]

I don't understand the whole megaphone thing. Sometimes they are talking to no one or to foreigners. Does it honestly work? Do they buy stuff because some guy yelled at them? I went to a baseball game at Jamsil stadium in the summer, and they had KFC, Burger King and some other group talking as loud as they could in to megaphones, I just wanted to get the hell out of there as fast I could. I mean, they put hanguel on everything as it is, why do they need more advertising?  If a store did that back home I would never go near it.

I've never had problems with the doors, stomping or the voices, maybe I am lucky.

Some of these trucks are guys who drive slowly through areas offering services or things. If a housewife is in her house and hears "knife sharpening!" she'll run out and flag him down if she needs that done. Standing in the store..well some areas are very high traffic dozens upon hundreds of people passing there in a shot time near traffic. If they're trying to drive up business, they need a microphone.

[Yu_Bumsuk]

Just wait until election season next year. In the west it's all about visual pollution. Here it's all about noise pollution.

The noise pollution drove me crazy at first, but now I just automatically block it out and make my own contributions as well. Constant Konstruction noise at school still pisses me off, however.

[Mani]

Yeah the trucks kill me too. And what about the speakers on the wall in my apartment making random announcements during the day! Do you guys have that? WTF? I don't even understand what they say. Messages are typically 30s long. How about not intruding vocally in my apartment?? That's just bizarre!

[ironopolis]

. And what about the speakers on the wall in my apartment making random announcements during the day! Do you guys have that? WTF? I don't even understand what they say.

To be fair, probably these annoy you all the more because you don't understand a word of them. When that's the case it's just random noise pollution that you see no reason for. However, if you understood them, whilst they might still be annoying to some extent, it would no longer be a meaningless background noise and you would probably sometimes appreciate what they were telling you.

For what it's worth, they tend to often be about stuff that it is useful to be told about - like reminders that the hot water/gas etc. is going to be off for a few hours the next day. In some apartment complexes I've lived in here, I have found the announcements rather excessive and sometimes the timing of them not terribly considerate, but I no longer have much of a problem with the basic principle of it.

The noise pollution drove me crazy at first, but now I just automatically block it out and make my own contributions as well.

^^This. I think it's just something you get used to. I very much sympathise with general complaints about it from people who haven't been here very long. However, I don't feel sorry for people who've been here several years and are still whining about it. If you've been here a while and it still drives you nuts, then you really ought to have done something about it yourself.

[Hooplehead]

Koreans think Chinese people are rude because they are so loud. What it is, is Korea noise OK, because Korea noise #1.

[Spongeblob]

Some sociological studies somewhere  :) have suggested that population density breeds the needs for individual expression in the form of loud actions.  Makes sense to think that in a heavily populated area of a socially repressed society that people, when they feel the need to be noticed, would amp up their volume.  Do it enough times and it may find a socially acceptable niche in society as a whole.  Hence, the loud fruit vendors trying to sell their big juicy melons at 6 a.m.

Spongeblob Silly Sociological Studies Statement

[sunflower]

I'm with you. Noise makes us upset and  tired.  The habit of speaking loudly with megaphone came from "Shi Jang" culture. Merchants always yell , clap their hands, stomp their feet together to make people be interested in their goods at " Shi Jang". "Shi Jang" is the place for common citizens, selling almost all kinds of products in a very cheap price in Korea. I'm not sure the qualities are good or not. But it's one of the longest  traditional Korean cultures.   

[Peekay1982]

Some sociological studies somewhere  :) have suggested that population density breeds the needs for individual expression in the form of loud actions.  Makes sense to think that in a heavily populated area of a socially repressed society that people, when they feel the need to be noticed, would amp up their volume. 

I agree but I think it's the other way round - I think because Koreans have such a group-oriented society, for them it's almost like a thought or opinion doesn't exist in isolation; it only becomes valid once it's expressed, once the group knows about it. This is why Koreans constantly mutter under their breath "I'm hungry", "I'm cold", etc.

All this is based completely on my own random musings, I don't have any proof  :D

[Fanwarrior]

Some sociological studies somewhere  :) have suggested that population density breeds the needs for individual expression in the form of loud actions.  Makes sense to think that in a heavily populated area of a socially repressed society that people, when they feel the need to be noticed, would amp up their volume. 

I agree but I think it's the other way round - I think because Koreans have such a group-oriented society, for them it's almost like a thought or opinion doesn't exist in isolation; it only becomes valid once it's expressed, once the group knows about it. This is why Koreans constantly mutter under their breath "I'm hungry", "I'm cold", etc.

All this is based completely on my own random musings, I don't have any proof  :D

No, you really don't since it's quite common, at least in my experience, for people in North America to come in on a cold day and to no one in particular say something like "Man it's cold out there"