Tenants Rights in RoK

Hello,


Hopefully there is someone who can offer me some advice. I am living in an apartment which has mould growing in it. It has been a health hazard and the spores have affected my partner and apart from having severe coughing fits she has spent in excess of 400,000w on finding out and getting better.  We were able to change rooms and now we have a mattress on the floor in the living room.

Obviously this is not ideal. Our landlord says she will wallpaper over the mould, but there is still the problem of spores.

We are willing to sacrifice the 2nd room for simple ease, however with summer approaching, finally, we need an air con. Are there any laws or anything we can use as leverage to get an air con in our situation?

As a expat what are our tenancy rights living in Korea?


I appreciate your soonest reply.


Thank you

Re: Tenants Rights in RoK

I hate to be the one to break this to you but...You have no rights. Plain and simple. Get outta that apartment asap and get a brand spanking new apartment building. 99% of business owners and landlords care nothing about you or your rights and will look for any opportunity to screw you.  

Re: Tenants Rights in RoK

absolutely right-there are no laws. my wife and i have battled mould in our last two places but there is nothing you can do. we had to throw out our bed frame, a table among other things the last place we had. it was terrible. try spraying vinegar on it. sadly, laws here are very behind the times. even if you move out early because it is a health hazard, you would be stuck paying for the real estate's fee for the landlord. there is no mercy here for the renters. good luck. as an aside, putting new wallpaper over the old one is all the do here. they do not treat the walls at all so who cares about it-spray vinegar on it. it works best i think. 

Re: Tenants Rights in RoK

Like Paul said use vinegar and give it a good cleaning. Have you not tried cleaning it? I've found mildew in one of our closets and after cleaning it, and leaving the door open it has gone away totally. I'd clean it and take the landlord up on the wallpaper deal, that's about the best you can get.

On a personal note: Not to be a downer here but as a landlord here and back home i'm happy that things are tilted more towards the actually owner of an apt. I've lost a conciderable amount of time and rent money because of rules and regulations in regards to tenents. I am or never was a slum lord but let me assure you that getting some troublesome people out of a house in upstate new york can be a real challenge.

Here it's night and day. The worst you can get from someone is the entire monthly rent in advance for the 2years contract(if they fail to pay the monthly rent). Yes, people with children or anyone for that matter can destroy an apt. in two years but the concrete underneath it's a simple wallpaper job and cheap banana floors to replace. It can be done in a few hours.

Re: Tenants Rights in RoK

Thanks for your help everyone. We gave the mould a good clean, we had to rip off wallpaper to get to the mould underneath. It seems that there was five coatings of paper with mould on each one. Hopefully it shouldn't come back.