A Rooftop Room in a Sketchy Neighborhood in Seoul
Man Arrested for Threatening to Kill Women at Sillim Station
This is the headline I read today. Two things went through my head simultaneously:
Wow, I used to live right there.
Wow, my mom was right.
Every day of my life, my mother has warned me to keep a lookout for men following me into all of the following: stairwells, grocery stores, subway cars, restaurants, alleys, my own car, my friend’s car, cafes, gyms, and most importantly, elevators. My mom often watched those low budget Korean shows that re-enact crimes with actors in bad wigs, blurred out faces and auto-tuned voices. Whether the stories were real or dramatized isn’t important - they planted memories of horrific crimes into my mom’s mind, crimes that apparently occurred every day in Korea.
“Korea is not safe anymore,” she would say, shaking her head as she vigorously rinsed a bundle of 파 in the sink, “always be careful.”
The one episode that made the most lasting impression on her was of the man who followed a woman into an elevator. He waited for her to push her floor number, then got off one floor before her. As he turned around to face her, flashing a knife and a murderous grin as the elevator doors closed, the doomed woman realized that she could do nothing to stop him from running up the stairs.
“Wait until everyone else pushes their elevator floor button,” my mom said, emphatically waving her kitchen knife in the air, “don’t let them know your floor.”
I rolled my eyes back then, but the news headline had proven my mom right. Somewhat.
The fact that this crime happened in Sillim shook me a little, but upon reflection, I recalled that when I had lived there, I’d never felt entirely safe either.
Sillim is a notably cheaper and sketchier part of Seoul. It seems that since I last called Sillim my neighborhood, it has retained that ignoble title. Let me tell you how I ended up living there and introduce you to another chapter of my Korea life.
Seoul summers are a humid, hot, unpleasant part of the year.
June can begin with deceptively gorgeous mornings that descend into sticky, blazing midday misery. July threatens rain at any moment. August is the long, final slog towards autumn, each hot day made all the hotter at the thought of September being just around the corner. But when I moved into my Rooftop Room, it was May.
Taken in my Rooftop Room when I moved in
Lovely, mild, charming May. It’s the best time of year (and I don’t say this only because I’m a May baby). It’s the time to get married, to go on trips, to have picnics and go late flower-gazing. It’s also the ideal time to move houses as the weather is not too hot, there’s little concern of rain and let’s be honest, your mood is even better than it was in April (all the happy babies are born in May.)
I was preparing to begin intensive model training at The Agency*. At the time, I was living in a residential part of Suwon but by then I had been fired from my job (this is a whole other story for another time) and the daily hour long bus commute to Gangnam was getting tiresome. As May approached, I felt the exciting flutterings of change. I was ready to move to the glittering city of Seoul and explore all it had to promise.
In The Sindaebang House: The Move In, I briefly explained house hunting in Seoul, particularly for the financially strapped. I had a little bit of capital saved up from living in Suwon, but I knew that a full-time job was not going to be possible while training at The Agency. Plus, the cost of training was not insignificant. If you are in the United States, you should know paying for modeling classes is a scam. In Korea, it’s the first step to fame.
Anyway, I’m not here to talk about The Agency just yet (that whole terrible saga deserves its own full theatrical production) but I was in a hurry to find a place in Seoul and move in before training began in June.
I was skimming through the Rooms for Rent ads and scrolling down 직방 when I saw a lovely little 옥탑방 for sublet. As a friendly note, subletting is a risky thing - I don’t recommend it unless you know 100% what is going on. In this case, the renter seemed to be a nice, young man who was leaving Korea for a year and needed someone to take his place; his urgent need to find someone meant he was willing to subsidize the rent. I figured I should meet him and give it a try.
When I met the renter, my first impression of him was vampiric.
He was extraordinarily tall, easily over 195 cm, with a shock of black hair that hung over his thick eyebrows. His pale face appeared even more bloodless by the contrasting purple shadows that gathered beneath his dark eyes. We met on a sunny day in May but he was wearing a long, black trench coat that hung over his thin frame, looking for all the world like the modern Korean version of Dracula.
I wish I could tell you that I was smart enough to hesitate at least the tiniest bit, but my self-confidence and lack of self-preservation were at legendary heights at that time. We greeted each other and he politely bought me a coffee as we sat down in the agreed-upon cafe; he was as nice in manner as he was spectral in appearance. We chatted back and forth for a short bit, during which he explained to me that he had spoken with the landlady already, informing her that I would be subletting for the summer.
“She’s a kind, elderly woman and won’t give you any trouble,” he assured me, “once we finish our drinks, shall we go see the place?”
He lead me away from Sillim station, away from the multicolor signs that read “키스방!” “귀청소방!” “노래방!” All signs that, as I learned later, were very obvious covers for places that promise titillating favors from kissing to the final ‘destination,’ so to speak, for the right price. We walked farther away still, passing run-down shops with tools hanging from the ceiling and men in wife-beaters sitting despondently between rusty washing machines. We turned a corner into an alley that sloped uphill into a shabby residential area. This hill was always empty of people, no matter what time of day. When I used to go home late at night, I would feel a prickle of fear as I climbed this hill. Call it an overly active imagination, call it good sense, but I always kept an extra eye out for anything coming around the corner at the bottom of the hill behind me.
Sillim-dong’s less appropriate hang out spots. Photo from Skye Daily
We passed a single convenience store, one neon-lit, bright, shiny place amongst a drab, concrete neighborhood, continuing up the hill until we were well into Sillim-dong. K-Dracula led me to a typical, run-down, Korean villa. He punched in the front door code and opened the dusty, glass doors to let me in after him. We climbed five narrow flights of stairs, each landing hosting a small lobby where the floor’s inhabitants stowed away umbrellas and slippers, light shining dimly through the weird, green windows I’ve come to associate with Korean villas of a certain era. From the fifth floor landing, there was a very small, uneven set of steps, barely wide enough for one person, that led to a black, metal door. K-Dracula inserted the key, swinging the door inwards to reveal the Rooftop Room.
Rooftop Rooms, or 옥탑방, are often romanticized in Korean dramas or movies. They’re usually depicted as airy and dreamy with tons of greenery, or cute and quaint, with a female lead who loves her independence and gazes wistfully over her town at least once an episode. They’re private havens, hidden in plain view from the crowded, cramped living quarters of the common people.
In reality? Rooftop Rooms are often illegal. Meaning they aren’t required to stick to a building code. Some don’t have 온돌 (heated floors) for the winter, nor air-conditioning for the summer. Sometimes, they’re little more than a tin and plastic shed, originally meant to be used for storage. 기생충 (Parasite) revealed to the world the infamous half-basement flats that have been illegally rented out for years; the rooftop room is the high, above-ground equivalent. As I’ve lived in both types of places, I definitely prefer the latter.
My Rooftop Room was not perfect, not by far. The bathroom was so tiny the door didn’t open in all the way, blocked by the toilet. The kitchen was a separate room, requiring me to step outside of my studio to get to it, and was covered by a high, arched window made of the same green material from the stairwells. The bedroom, thankfully, was a neat, little square and was relatively new. Well-insulated, with a single, large window, heated floors, air-conditioning, and a low set of shelves where K-Dracula kept his clothes and personal items, it looked just like a normal, albeit small, one-room studio.
It was an extremely humble abode, but to me it was wonderful.
“I’m going to put all of my things in storage,” K-Dracula said, pointing one, pale finger at his sparse belongings, “so you can use the shelves.”
He led me to the kitchen; a long, narrow room with a washer at the end, hidden behind a curtain, a metal sink, some cupboards with peeling contact paper and a portable stove.
“Do you cook? It can get very hot in the kitchen,” he said, “since there’s no insulation or air conditioning in this room. The 온돌 does work here but it takes a while to warm up.”
He took me out of the kitchen and to another door that led onto the rooftop.
“Nobody comes up here,” he said, sweeping his arm listlessly out over the neighborhood, squinting miserably as if the sun pained him. “You can use this space however you like.”
The rooftop, like many of the villas in Korea, was painted green and had dangerously low sides. There was a single laundry line with plastic clips dangling from it, a few, dirt-filled flower pots, and far more personal space than many young people in Seoul get to have to themselves.
Not my 옥탑방 but a good example of how many look. Photo from 헤랄드경제
It wasn’t long before I officially moved in. K-Dracula later gave me a copy of his contract, the key to the front entrance and the Rooftop Room key, the number of the landlady and his phone number.
“Just Kakaotalk me if you need anything,” he said, looking gaunt as ever.
A week later after all of my belongings had been neatly put away, the kitchen scrubbed clean, the yellowing cabinet paper stripped off and replaced with new flower-patterned lining, I was just about ready to settle in.
I lived in the Rooftop Room for one year. I learned quickly that by June cooking in the kitchen was brutal. The plastic window, or whatever that material was, multiplied the heat, and as there was no air conditioning either, I would be sweating by the stove in minutes. In the winter, the pipes to my heated floors would sometimes freeze over and I would have to climb out of my warm bed in the middle of the night, awakened by my own shivering, to drain the boiler for a minute to kickstart it again, my toes curled as far away from the frigid water that splashed onto the concrete floor and down the drain.
Hanging your clothes outside to dry on a line looks idyllic in dramas. In reality, it’s pleasant pretty much only in the spring. Your clothes refuse to dry in June, July and August. September is nice but by October your fingers start to get numb from hanging wet clothing in the cold, autumn air, and by November you’re forced to move your clothes inside to dry, unless you want frozen jeans. I bought a clothing rack and kept it in the kitchen where I dried my clothes during the winters and summers; I never cooked during those seasons.
I’ve mentioned the tiny bathroom, haven’t I? It was extraordinarily small, barely able to fit myself within it, and absolutely claustrophobic with the door closed. The sink was no longer than my hand and a small shower head was fixed to the wall beside the mirror. The bathroom, like the kitchen, was outside of the newly constructed bedroom, which meant it had no heat nor cooling. Additionally, it had neither windows nor ventilation. I quickly discovered that attempting to wash in the tiny bathroom was not a pleasant experience and promptly signed up for a gym nearby, where I would workout every morning to use their nice shower room before going to work. I was living my own form of the Pursuit of Happyness.
My neighborhood was quiet but in a grave, dull manner. It wasn’t pretty, well-kept nor exciting. If you wanted entertainment, you had to walk down the hill, past the antiquated repair shops where elderly trash collectors picked through the piles of abandoned appliances, until you saw the first motel signs. In the early mornings, when I made my way down the hill to my gym, I’d know that I had reached Sillim Station by the calling cards with photos of skimpily clad girls scattered all over the ground.
Sillim is the cheap, boozy party scene of Seoul without the hipness of Hongdae and the pretentiousness of Itaewon. But it also has the 도림천 and 보라매 공원, family-friendly places I used to stroll on evenings when the weather was nice. I became one of the many locals who simply lived life economically, grateful for the few, beautiful things that only we can understand. The late night badminton games in the park. Eating a red-bean ice cream bar as you hopped along the line of stones that crossed the stream. The modest, 10,000 won all-you-can-eat BBQ spot that served an enormous variety of side dishes.
My Rooftop Room was small, inconvenient and cheap, but it gifted me with my own special space for that year. Perhaps in this way, the Korean dramas have gotten at least one thing right - the independent, female lead of my own story, I guess I did love to stand out on my rooftop and gaze out over my neighborhood, feeling in love with the whole world. It wasn’t much, but it was mine. On those nights, Seoul did really look like the glittering city of promise I had always imagined.
*Name changed as this is a well-known company.