“Weren’t you scared? I read your post about the autopsy.”
“Oh, you did?”
My daughter and I looked at each other and laughed.
“I was too busy working to even think about being scared…”
A few seconds later, as if something had just occurred to me, I added,
“Oh, but… I was different back then. Not like I am now.”
“Ah, I see.”
Our conversation ended there, but I found my own answer intriguing.
“You never used to be like this. Why have you become so sensitive?”
Until a few months ago, my husband would occasionally say things like that to me.
Late at night, the sound of his study door slamming shut would keep me awake or startle me out of sleep. I told him the door was old and asked him to turn the handle and close it gently rather than simply pulling it shut.
On nights when I reminded him, everything was fine. But a few days later, there would be another loud bang, and I would say it again.
As this kept happening, my husband came to see me as a sensitive person—or someone who had become more sensitive.
What makes this interesting is that my husband and I are quite different when it comes to hearing.
His hearing isn’t particularly sharp. He always speaks so loudly on the phone that his voice echoes through the house. When he watches something on his phone, he turns the volume up high.
His parents are much the same. Whenever we visit them, the television in the living room is incredibly loud. They both wear hearing aids and speak so loudly that it sometimes sounds as though they’re arguing.
I sometimes told my husband that if he kept listening at such high volumes, he might end up needing hearing aids himself.
On the other hand, I can hear even the faintest sounds.
One quiet afternoon, I was sitting on the living room sofa writing when I heard my husband eating a pear in his study.
He had closed both the door and the window, and he wasn’t chewing particularly loudly. He was simply enjoying the pear I had peeled for him as a snack.
Yet I could still hear him. I laughed to myself.
One day, I heard a faint rustling sound coming from another apartment.
“Did you hear that just now?” I asked my husband.
“Heh, I can’t hear anything…”
He laughed.
But then I realized something.
I hadn’t always been this way.
I used to be more like my husband, accustomed to loud sounds and less aware of quiet ones.
When I was on the phone and the other person’s voice was too soft, I would raise my own voice and say, “Pardon?”
When my mother-in-law wasn’t wearing her hearing aids and couldn’t understand what her son was saying, I would repeat his words loudly for her.
“Your voice is so clear. I can hear you really well.”
She would smile as she said it.
Sometimes, when I raised my voice, it would resonate so strongly that my children would laugh.
Perhaps this had something to do with my school days. I spent years as an announcer for the school broadcasting club and also hosted school events, practicing speaking clearly and distinctly. I sometimes entered public speaking and storytelling competitions, winning prizes along the way. I was particularly good at projecting my voice.
When I was working as a journalist and raising three young children, we lived on the floor below my in-laws.
I had bought a classic stereo system when I got married, and I would play music by artists like Lobo and the Beatles at full volume. The children and I would dance around the house, having a wonderful time.
The house belonged to my in-laws, and we lived there without worrying much about the noise we made.
Before I got married, I had always lived in houses rather than apartments. Making noise had never been something I thought much about.
Not long after we got married, I was pounding garlic in a mortar late one night in the upstairs unit of a two-family house. The elderly landlady downstairs came up and said, “Can we please get some sleep?”
I once visited an older man in his apartment to interview him for a lifestyle article. He was good at housekeeping and had won prizes for his ideas. I remember watching him walk around his living room on tiptoe, taking unusually light, quiet steps. Having never lived in an apartment myself, I thought it was a rather strange way to walk.
After fourteen years as a journalist, I left my job, went to the U.K. to study, and eventually returned to Korea.
That was when our apartment life began.
In our first apartment, a newly built one, we lived much as we always had, comfortably and without giving much thought to noise.
Our second apartment was older and had some issues with noise between floors, but the building was solidly constructed, with thick walls.
We knew our upstairs and downstairs neighbors, exchanged greetings, and generally understood one another.
After eleven years in those two apartments, we left Daegu and moved to Seoul, where we would spend the next five and a half years.
When Noise Became a Problem
Our first apartment in Seoul was near the Han River, where we could easily go for walks.
It was old, but spacious and nice.
We spent our first year there happily.
Then someone moved into the apartment downstairs.
And things began to change.
On my birthday, we had planned to have a simple dinner at home, just the five of us.
The children were excited and came hurrying over to the dining table.
Just then, the intercom rang.
“We’ve received a noise complaint from the apartment downstairs.”
“Oh, really? Were we being noisy?”
I was completely taken aback.
It was my birthday. My grown children had simply come to the table in a happy mood.
Yet that one phone call was enough to dampen the atmosphere of our family dinner.
Another day, I was in the bedroom when I heard someone downstairs banging on the ceiling with something.
What’s that?
The banging seemed to follow wherever I walked.
I was shocked.
Wow. So this is what I’ve seen on the news…
I decided I had to do something.
I ordered thick noise-reducing floor mats online and laid them along the areas where we walked most often, from the living room to the kitchen.
I asked my family to walk on the mats.
But cleaning became a problem. Dust collected in the gaps between the thick mats and the wooden floor. The mats were heavy and covered much of the living room and kitchen, so I couldn’t possibly lift them all every time I cleaned. I couldn’t use the vacuum cleaner properly and ended up sweeping with a broom. I even worried that the mats might damage the wooden floor.
Then the management office called again.
“It wasn’t us. We heard that loud thud too, as if someone had thrown something. It sounded like people were fighting.”
Ding-dong.
The building security guard was at the door.
“I’m sorry. We just can’t figure out which apartment the noise is coming from…”
“I see. I read somewhere that noise in apartment buildings doesn’t always come from directly above or below. It can come from neighboring apartments too.”
I had begun to wonder myself where those occasional loud noises were coming from.
Sometimes, when I stood near our dining table, I could hear what sounded like a father and daughter arguing somewhere above us.
Gradually, I became more and more conscious of every sound.
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
One day, a repetitive tapping sound continued somewhere in the building.
I didn’t think much of it.
Then a young man from the management office came to our apartment.
“Let me check something.”
He opened the access panel in the bathroom ceiling and looked inside.
“It’s not coming from here… We received a call from downstairs about the noise.”
After he left, I felt irritated.
They thought it was our apartment again…
The following day, the tapping stopped.
I called the management office to ask what had happened.
They told me the sound had come from somewhere in a shared corridor and that the problem had been fixed.
I calmly explained that we had installed floor mats and were living quietly, yet our apartment kept being suspected whenever there was a noise complaint.
“Call the management office.”
One day, when the upstairs neighbors were making a lot of noise, my son suggested that I report it.
“Okay.”
I called the management office and told them about the noise.
A little while later, it stopped.
Then the same thing happened again.
This time, the noise continued even after I called, so I phoned the office once more.
“The upstairs apartment isn’t answering the phone. We’ll try again.”
A little later, everything became quiet.
I had learned something new.
Oh, so they don’t answer the phone. Then the office probably assumes no one’s home.
It was my first time living in an apartment like this in Seoul, and I had been caught off guard more than once.
But I was beginning to understand how things worked.
I even thought I had been rather naive at first, accepting the management office’s calls as proof that we must have been making noise and asking whether we had been too loud.
After a year, the downstairs neighbors moved out.
The people who moved in afterward were quiet and never complained.
We lived in that apartment for four years.
A New Officetel, Another Sound
Then we moved to a newly built officetel on a busy road, where we stayed for another year and a half.
It was our first time living in such a modern building, with ceiling-mounted air conditioning and all the conveniences of a new officetel. I was amazed that I could call the elevator from inside our officetel and find it waiting for me when I stepped out.
We moved in as soon as the building was ready for occupancy.
At first, it was wonderfully quiet, and we were very happy there.
Thud!
I woke with a start at a noise from upstairs and checked the time on my phone.
2 a.m.
What on earth are they doing at this hour?
After that, I occasionally heard similar noises around one or two in the morning.
They would last for a short while and then stop.
I began to think that perhaps someone upstairs came home from work around that time.
Before moving in, I had considered installing blinds. They would have looked nice and cost less.
But my husband was concerned about traffic noise from the road and suggested curtains instead.
We chose thick curtains that would block light and help reduce noise, along with a pretty white sheer layer.
During the day, we kept only the white curtains drawn.
At night, we closed both layers and slept comfortably.
But whenever a sudden thud came from upstairs, I would wake up, startled, and feel uneasy again.
That uneasiness was connected to what I had experienced in our previous apartment near the Han River.
Back in Daegu
When we decided to return to Daegu, we looked at three apartments available for rent.
I was particularly interested in living on the top floor. The last apartment we saw was on the top floor, and it was vacant, so we could move in right away.
It was old but spacious, with a wide, open view.
I thought it would be fine for a temporary home.
As time passed, I grew increasingly fond of it.
The apartment was bright and sunny, with fresh air and quiet surroundings. There were mountains all around and plenty of convenient facilities nearby.
Then came our first winter.
We closed all the balcony windows against the cold.
One night, around eleven, I closed the bedroom door. Everything was quiet.
Suddenly, I heard a television.
Someone must be watching a movie…
I went out to the living room to see where the sound was coming from.
Nothing.
I couldn’t hear it in the kitchen either.
Only in the bedroom.
Maybe the elderly neighbor downstairs has the television on…
Sometimes, I would suddenly hear the television around four or five in the morning.
“Older people don’t sleep much. Maybe they’ve turned on the TV.”
My husband said with a laugh.
“But it wakes me up.”
I was beginning to feel uncomfortable.
Sometimes, I could hear running water near our bedroom bathroom, even though no one in our apartment was using it.
In summer, when we left the balcony windows wide open, the breeze was wonderful.
But I could also hear doors in other apartments slamming shut when the wind blew through.
And each time, I noticed my body tense up immediately.
Then something began to change.
I used to wake up quite often to the sound of my husband’s study door slamming shut.
But at some point, I simply started sleeping through it.
Sometimes I could still hear it in my sleep, but the sound would pass, and I would keep sleeping.
“The couple downstairs are quite old, and they don’t seem to mind the noise much.”
I gradually became more comfortable.
Living on the top floor meant I no longer had to worry about noise from upstairs.
And in all that time, no one from the management office had called or come to our door.
“It feels a little like living in the countryside. People seem comfortable just going about their own lives without paying too much attention to what others are doing.”
My husband and I liked the atmosphere of the neighborhood.
We had lived in Daegu before moving to Seoul, but coming back and experiencing this kind of life felt surprisingly new.
Half asleep one night, I heard the soft shuffle of slippers in the living room.
Oh, my son must be walking around…
The sound lasted a moment and disappeared.
Another day, I left my bedroom door wide open, took a chilled sheet mask from the refrigerator, placed it over my face, set a fifteen-minute timer on my phone, and lay down.
My eyes were closed when I heard footsteps approaching.
Bare feet.
I had a feeling my daughter had come over to take a look at my timer.
A little later, I heard the familiar sound of my son’s slippers coming closer.
He seemed to have come over just to see what I was doing.
Lying there with my eyes closed, I found it amusing and smiled to myself.
