The latest results from Mercer (A global human resource consultant) places Seoul as the third most expensive city in the world, yet Seoul does not place in their top 50 best cities in terms of quality of life. Nor does Seoul place in the top 50 of “Mercer Human Resource Consulting Worldwide Health and Sanitation Ranking — 2007″.
Seoul can be a good place to live if one is prepared to deal with the problems here but there is no way to sugar-coat the implications of these surveys for Seoul. Since Seoul is so expensive, I would hope those that run the city would focus on at least improving the quality of life but then I still can not get a decent map of any bus routes from the internet, there is a persistent and serious problem with asbestos in the older parts of the subway, I have non-supervised people, driving around my neighborhood fogging pesticide and please do not ask me about the sticker porn, which is worse than what I thought was bad back in the states. I’m hoping someone would read this blog and consider better strategies for improving the city.
Seoul is still better than Beijing (China) but then, so is almost everywhere else in the world (according to Mercer’s survey).
Judging from Robert’s great pictures of Hee Won Garden in Yongin, I think I want to move there but not too close to that peacock.
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“I still can not get a decent map of any bus routes from the internet”
I suggest you try this site:
http://bus.congnamul.com/Seoul.....sh/map.jsp
It’s nearly perfect. I use it often and recommend it. Let me know how it works out for you.
Sparkling, by definition, will always get you into the top 5.
Mercer’s on crack.
So what do you locals think an actual (as opposed to a “projected-but-who-really-knows-when”) departure of US troops, from the forward areas southward, will do to Seoul real estate prices?
If the consensus is “not much”, then the next question is: “what would a total departure of US troops do to aforesaid prices?”
I have pics of the “Bong” truck in my neighborhood spraying the bags of trash that were conveniently located just in front of the playground where the children were playing……………Nice, eh?
seoul is one of the dirtiest cities in the world and in asia
singapore
tokyo
osaka
hong kong
among others are very clean and well kept not only by city workers but by citizens as well
koreans in general do not care about cleanliness of their neighborhoods or public areas outside of their own places they could care less
if you are up early enough some morning watch the trash collectors and how carelessly they place bags and garbage in the trash compactors and dump large amounts on the streets and leave it there
Ah, the Mercer survey – oft quoted and seldom understood.
It’s meant to be a guide for HR managers trying to figure out compensation packages for executives being exiled to, errr… going to work in other countries. New York City is given a median score of 100.
So, basically they look at the types of apartments that executives in New York City live in, the cars they drive, the food they eat, the things they buy, etc, and then figure out the cost of replicating that lifestyle in the target city.
As large apartments, imported cars (and gasoline), western liquor, beef and pizza delivery are all rather pricey here, it makes Seoul appear much more expensive than it actually is for the average expat.
Also not taken into account is that most American expats in Korea have effective tax rates of about 3 to 3.5% regardless of salary. Try to get that in New York. (Canadians and many others have to pay taxes in their home countries unless they spend at least 10 months of the fiscal year in another country.)
Though I do find some things to be infuriatingly expensive here, my overall cost of living is lower than it was when I lived in DC. My rent is lower, the subway and taxis cost half as much…
The bus map webpage whitey provided is brilliant, as long as you run windows.
I believe The Marmot is a Mac user.
I tried forever to understand why that site does not work on a Mac. When I went into a PC bang to try it I finally understood : it needs an active X component to run.
ecorn is right, Mercer is a survey for foreign execs who stay at Frasier Suites and have a driver and eat in hotel restaurants all the time. I knew a guy who worked for a very big American company who lived here for years and never ate Korean food (except kalbi). For their companies Seoul is pricey.
R.Elgin, as for the relative shittiness of quality of life for many Seoulites, it comes down to ignorance and passivity. People throw bags of garbage on the street because the city doesn’t provide alternatives and they are remarkably uncomplaining about it. I don’t see any community activism here except the NIMBY type.
Whitey, that stinking map you refer to will not work on any of my machines, except in windows, with IE. As a result, I can not use it. Outside of that, there is nothing else. I would rather have an Adobe Acrobat PDF file that I can look at but it seems that such advanced technology is not available in Korea yet. Besides, I’ve thought of wearing a filtration mask for the asbestos in the subway since I would need to if I were to go back to riding the subway. I no longer ride as a result and I spend more money on transportation now, as a result.
“ecorn” is right about the intent and use of the survey. DC made the list of cities with good hygiene but they have other problems like a still contaminated water supply in parts of the city. Seoul is also more interesting than DC except for the mall. My cost of living here is lower than back in DC as well but that is because I do not have the omnipresent mortgage and three-year car payment than most have in the U.S. Interestingly enough, the pricing bubble for condos in DC recently went bust, leaving almost all investors losing much money.
Again, money is not everything, rather the important issue, IMHO and in the opinion of the silent majority of Koreans, is “quality of life” and this is where Seoul has a serious problem.
RE: comment 3. - real estate prices in the Yongsan area rose sharply after it was announced that the US base there would move - on redevelopment hopes. I think the same thing is happening around other US camps north of Seoul.
The lifestyle assumed in the Mercer survey is not the same as how must of us live here.
For instance, taxis are relatively inexpensive, subways and buses are ubiquitous and even cheaper, and a decent, healthy meal can be had almost anywhere for around 5,000 Won. If you don’t mind a small place, rent is not that bad, either.
What would kill you is a large apartment, a big car, fuel for that big car, parking, and western meals.
Also, the Mercer survey said a lot of the recent changes were due to currency movements. These affect only ex-pats paid in U.S. Dollars rather than those paid in the local currency.
There are, however, too many dirty parts of Seoul.
ha! if there’s a clean part of Seoul i haven’t seen it yet. (certain parks and palaces excluded). even “nicer” neighborhoods are still afflicted by that smell.
Thanks to the asbestos spewing up from the subway gates, the insecticide that the cities spray willy-nilly here (like Angus and his Australian friends and their AIDS?), and the fugitive emissions** that I frequently smell as I walk by the factory by my home, I think I’m getting sick again and I think it’s not my somatoform disorder this time.
**here should be “read strong volatile organic vapors released into the air” similar to what was common in the US… 40 years ago. At the time, the companies and communities just equated it to the “smell of money,” or progress, but later figured it that it was actually the “smell of impending cancer.” Think about that one, Korea.
In front of our building there’s a relatively new officetel with a gazebo-thing and some benches where a drunk settled in for TWO DAYS smashing soju bottles on the ground and doing the obligatory piss on the sidewalk. I would have called the police except I know how absolutely useless they are, and apparently no one else cared either. A drunk guy trashing up a new plaza–that’s Korea in a nutshell for me.
“Ah, the Mercer survey – oft quoted and seldom understood.”
I think so too. It certainly doesn’t factor in the cheap subway/bus fares, cheap local meals, etc. that most of the “non-serviced residence” crowd doesn’t make use of on a day-to-day basis.
I’d like to mention again what a worthless tool the mercer study is unless you are relocating executive. I wish someone would come out with a real cost of living survey that measured the expenses of a normal individual.
I wish someone would come out with a real measure of what is a normal individual.
Yes, the subway and meals with recycled banchan are cheap, but here are some of seoul or korea’s rumored achievements in high prices (mind you these are poorly documented)… such as world’s most expensive:
1) beef (read it in the chosun)
2) cars
3) starbucks
4) and rice
I really question the last one, but these are all products that I assume would be considered for a normal individual’s consumption. beef’ll go down in price soon too, but still..
Or take the samsung dvd player selling at hi-mart and explain to me why it’s twice as expensive as the similar one at Best Buy back in the States.
Oh, and I bought a 24-roll pack of toilet paper last weekend (another thing that I’m pretty sure everyone uses from time to time) and it was 17,000 won. Almost 20 bucks?
Just a couple of the many examples that quickly erode the advantages of the cheap mass transportation, quick meals, etc.
Makes my Midwestern blood boil sometimes. At least soju is cheap.
cmm, I think prices are high in Korea because the market is protected (rice), there are monopoly practices (Samsung), import tariffs are very high (cars), and pricing is generally arbitrary here.
Somewhat related to quality of life…a really funny representation of Italian culture as compared to the rest of the EU.
http://piep001.de/PIEP001/Sites/European_Italy.htm
The parallels with Korea are eerie.
Damn, Herr Blueballs, they are almost the same! But then there’s Italian food…no comparison.
Michael I agree with you mostly, but I think your reasons are all the same–protectionism.
The electronics company you mentioned doesn’t really have a monopoly per se, since LG is generally in the same league in some markets and Hynix in others. I think it’s the protectionism (high taxes on the Japanese, Taiwanese, etc. competitors) that allows all the domestic companies to jack up their prices (and therefore margins) high enough to just undercut the tariff-inflated prices of Japanese and Taiwanese goods.
So in the end, while the protectionism keeps the money in Korea (away from the foreign companies), the domestic companies get richer, the farmers get to maintain their inefficient businesses, Hyundai can afford to over-compensate their ridiculously infantile union laborers, and the consumers in general get the high-price shaft? A little cynical I guess.
But still not sure what the deal is with the expensive Starbucks, and would not care if it wasn’t for the fact that the gf can’t seem to comprehend the annual cost of her cup or two per day.
Cmm–At the root of it is protectionism, as you said, along with blind nationalism by consumers, probable collusion on price fixing by the chaebol, and so on.
Protectionism also adds to costs here because if you notice a lot of products have a local company’s name on them (like Kimberly-Yuhan) even though they didn’t manufacture the product, since it’s too difficult to get into the local market without giving the local company a cut.
I think that there are two related factors keeping the prices of some goods high in Korea. First is protectionism and second is soju. Protectionism plays strongly because it allows inefficient business practices to remain in place, where they would normally be rooted out by competition. Yes, it was essential to the growth of Korea’s export based economy, back when people spoke of this country as one of the four East Asian Tigers, but there is little room for such protectionism in the world’s 11th largest economy. (Agricultural subsidies in the US notwithstanding.) My basic point is that, in my opinion, antiquated tariffs are the largest succubus of Korea’s productivity.
How then does soju figure into all of this? Shall I say it? I will after all be branded a racist shortly thereafter. Soju and Korea’s hardcore drinking culture cut into productivity almost as much as protectionism, if not more so, and alienate a large portion of the workforce.
As the articles linked above show, this isn’t just me anecdotally saying, “When I go to work in the morning there are a whole bunch of guys who sit around doing nothing until after lunch.”
Government statistics (which are probably conservative) show that in 2005 binge drinking cost companies KRW 20 trillion in lost productivity. Astounding.
Crapola, the links in my last post should have been:
http://english.chosun.com/w21d.....10016.html
and
http://mobile.iht.com/articles.....ea.1.xhtml
I fixed the links for you “ecorn”.
“ecorn”, even if one were to consider your thesis, one should ask what drives so many to drink? I strongly suspect that the psychology behind this problem is directly related to “quality of life” issues such as the urban environment and the ineffective governance and the sense of helplessness and depression that comes with such. I witness this in a very up-close and personal manner around me. I have discovered that many people that one might think are attempting to practice their English, are actually reaching out in an attempt to pull themselves up. I do much listening as a result.
wow. that link provided by i♡blueballs is very eerie. the parallel parking one happened not too long ago for.
oops. not too long ago to me.
Seoul is very ugly.
Parts of it are, but then again parts are not.
I was faced with a lot of problems there, but these were not rooted in poor architecture…
Maybe I’ve been in Taipei too long, but I think you Seoulites have it easy!
No offense, but I was in Seoul a couple of weeks ago, and there were several times I thought I could’ve been walking in Atlanta, Georgia. Sure, there was some trash in the street, but all of the cars seemed new(-ish), there were no mopeds, the buildings seemed solid and new(-ish), even the food from the street side kiosks seemed to have a certain level of cleanness, etc. etc.
It was so nice to take a deep breath and not feel like I was simultaneously preserving and killing myself.
That said, it was much more expensive than Taipei. The subway in Taipei is sparkling new, too. In fact, parts of it still aren’t finished.
Overall, though, I felt like Seoul, at its dirtiest, was way above Taipei at its cleanest.
“Seoul is very ugly.”
It probably was when you immigrated 25 years ago. It’s brightened up considerably since them.
typo correction: …since then.
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