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Comment by AYBABTME | Hacker News Reader

Different cultural norms. Korea has a strong paternalistic tangent running through. Corporations are paternalistic, governments are paternalistic. As a foreigner you might feel this is simply oppression, because you lack the context so it comes to you as simply oppressive and nothing more.

I'm one of those foreigners who didn't appreciate that my apartment's management office would blast public broadcast messages directly inside my apartment at 8AM to say stuff like "there's a farmer's market in the parking lot today (like every week)". I asked them to stop spamming my household via their PA system for non-emergency stuff and they thought I was a antisocial psychopath.

Then I learned and just disconnect the PA system. They don't mean to invade my privacy, but my privacy boundaries aren't the same as theirs.

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Wait, is this typical to had PA system in your apartment controlled by your landlord there? Can you tell more about this? I'm genuinely interested.

Wasn't controlled by the landlord, but by the management team which is paid by the condo fee. If you own the condo, you pay that fee, if you rent it from a landlord you also pay it. The management team I believe is hired by the residents committee which is elected by the residents. Sort of like an HOA, I guess? There were elections during my stay and we were invited to participate, but I didn't care enough and this was a temporary situation.

This was in a large apartment tower complex in the semi-countryside. Not sure if it's always like that, it's the only apartment I stayed in. In Seoul I've only lived in villas.

Perhaps it's a countryside thing because I've also noticed noisy public speakerphones in the streets blasting PAs about random stuff, but I haven't seen it in Seoul.

Overall though, the local governments do spam your phone with alerts about all sorts of remotely relevant (IMO) things on a daily/hourly basis. I find it annoying but it's just how it is here. Today they were spamming about possible debris from a NASA satellite deorbiting.

Here is a very collectively oriented society. That's my take on it. High trust communities, so much so that things like this are possible: https://mobile.twitter.com/AntoineGrondin/status/16123864859...

Apartments in Seoul is mostly similar to your experience in countryside.

It was very interesting to me that South Korea is a high trust society in terms of crime (cash boxes left unattended, bicycles unlocked, people feel safe to walk the streets alone late at night), however it is very tribal and low trust in terms of providing assistance (less help provided to strangers in the streets compared to the US.. I've had to step in multiple times as I noticed that local Koreans were not helping). Maybe it's a big city thing (above experiences were in Seoul).

Haha, now I vaguely remember something like that in soviet union’s “rest houses” (was a kid, may mistake it for something else). I think I slept next to a speaker on the wall and wanted to kick it.

It’s very nice of you to respect cultural aspects, but I suspect that at least some koreans also simply disconnect it and accept the risks :)

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