LIVING IN KOREA
KOREAN APARTMENT LIVING
You are viewing: Living in Korea → Korean Apartment Living → Why Doesn’t My Korean Apartment Have an Assigned Parking Space?
Korean Apartment Living
Why Doesn’t My Korean Apartment Have an Assigned Parking Space?
I assumed living in an apartment meant having one parking space that was simply ours. It doesn’t always work that way — and it’s now something I’d check before choosing another apartment.
One of the things that genuinely surprised me was realising we didn’t have a parking space that was simply ours.
Living in a Korean apartment doesn’t automatically mean you get one personally assigned parking bay — parking is often shared across the complex instead. Our own building is reasonably manageable for parking, but my mother-in-law’s apartment has fewer spaces relative to the number of households, and double-parking is a recurring problem there. Parking capacity is now something I’d genuinely check before choosing a future apartment.
The underground parking entrance at our own complex — shared parking, not an assigned bay.
What I Assumed, and What Was Actually True
I’d assumed, without really questioning it, that an apartment would come with a space the way a house might come with a driveway — something that was simply ours. It wasn’t until we’d actually moved in that I realised parking worked more like a shared resource across the whole complex than a personal allocation.
Two Very Different Experiences
Our own complex has been reasonably manageable — finding a space hasn’t been a constant headache. My mother-in-law’s building is a different story. There are fewer parking spaces relative to the number of households living there, and double-parking is something that comes up again and again as an inconvenience. Seeing both side by side is what actually changed how seriously I now take parking capacity as a factor. This is our own two households’ experience, not a claim about every complex in Korea — parking capacity varies by building, and it’s worth confirming directly rather than assuming either of our experiences is typical.
What This Changed for Us
Parking capacity has become one of the specific things we’d investigate before choosing another apartment, rather than assuming it would simply work itself out. It’s an easy thing to overlook when you’re focused on the size of the unit or the location, but it affects daily life in a very direct way.
What I’d Tell Someone Choosing an Apartment
Ask specifically about the ratio of parking spaces to households, not just whether parking exists. “There’s parking” and “there’s enough parking for how many people actually live here” turned out to be two very different questions. Getting a visitor’s car past the gate, separately, is its own system — the intercom and the Apartmentner app are what we actually use for that, covered in our article on the apartment intercom.
Over to You
“There’s parking” turned out to mean very different things at two buildings we know well. Ask the more specific question before you move in.