I have been greatly blessed to be living in a house of luxury for three years: a four bedroom house -- I mean a REAL, free-standing house (rather uncommon in Seoul). Okay, technically, I only lived in the house for a little less than a year, but before that I lived in the same family's beautiful four bedroom apartment. I have relished having comfortable furniture, a bathtub, an oven, large refrigerator, American Maytag washer AND dryer (oh, how I will miss soft clothes that come our of a dryer!).
But all of this is soon to come to an end... my landlord's family will be returning from England in February and so it is that I am in need of a new abode.
For those of you who are not familiar with the Korean housing market, let me give you a brief lesson. What you need (not surprisingly) is money -- lots of it, in cash (ah, now there is the difficult part). Here's how it works. If you want to rent an apartment you need to pay the landlord a "cheonsae" or "key money;" the landlord then takes that money and invests it, allowing him/her to (hopefully) make a profit. There are advantages and disadvantage to this system. For the renter the positive side is that the larger the key money, the lesser the rent -- you may have to pay virtually nothing, or maybe a few hundred dollars at most. And, best of all, when you move the key money is returned to you (presumably so you can then go get another apartment elsewhere). The disadvantage is, as mentioned above, you need the cash up front.
Let me give you an example. A friend of mine has a two bedroom apartment with a living room kitchen and bath. The living room and one bedroom are roughly 10x10 (12x12 at the most) with the master bedroom slightly bigger and the kitchen half that size. The apartment is relatively new and thus clean and pleasant with a nice view out a large picture window. Now then, for that space he deposited the 60,0000,000 won -- approximately $64,000 -- and pays a monthly rent of about $400.
Now you see my dilemma!!
Although I would like to say that I have $60,000 sitting around that I could give to a landlord, such is not the case.
After a fair amount of searching, I found a decent ROOM that I can afford. Yes, that's right, a one room studio apartment. It is a little ironic, really. When I graduated from college in 1991 and moved to Idaho to teach at an elementary school I made less than $20,000/year. But I had a lovely house small farm house. Others may have mocked my "miniature mansion" but I loved that house. With my closest neighbor about 1 mile away, it was spacious, had a fireplace, lots of windows, bookshelves and closet space and even a 25 year old horse and occasional cows in the front yard. I wish I could have taken that home with me wherever I have lived in the world.
Even in New York living on student budget I had a relatively pleasant apartment with a large living room. But now, here I am, grateful that I found a new, very clean, one room apartment with a "veranda" (i.e. storage space with a washing machine). The best part is the veranda because it allows for a very large window facing south and no other apartments blocking the view. That is actually why I decided to take the place rather than keep looking around -- it is very rare to find this type of housing with a large window. It makes me feel as though the space is much larger than it really is!
And so, despite being rather humbled by the prospect of having to live in a 5th floor walk up studio, I truly am grateful to have found a bright, sunny apartment. Rather than "downsizing" or even worse, being "downwardly mobile" I like to think of this move as a way to simplify my life. (Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with all the paintings I have accumulated while living in a large house with lots of wall space. Oh well, that is a question for another day.)
