Living from cradle to grave in the apartment

Sometimes on Fridays, when I have a day off, I pick up my two daughters at 4 p.m., when daycare ends. Their next stop is the playground—not the old playground in our apartment complex, which is over 40 years old, but the new playground in the apartment building complex across the street. It is surfaced with rubber urethane, has a big slide, and even has a pond with freshwater snails.

However, the apartment complex is surrounded by a steel fence both inside and outside. To enter from the outside, you need to use a code; from the inside, you need to press a button to go outside. Some entrances require a code from the inside and a button from the outside.

Apartment fences symbolize many things. They represent the enormous cost of building an apartment, the high price of the apartment, concerns about security and privacy, the sense of connection for those living within the fence, and a sense of difference from those outside. An apartment building in Seoul recently tried to arrange marriages among its residents. The rationale behind this was that living in the same apartment complex implies similar economic and social status, reducing potential concerns. This is a well-intentioned idea in an era of declining birthrates and fewer marriages, but it leaves a bitter aftertaste.

In a large apartment complex, there is a kindergarten and daycare center, as well as a school. That's why most friends live in the same apartment. In a world where you can find your lifelong partner in an apartment, it is possible to go beyond that. You could be born in the same hospital, go to the same elementary, middle, and high school, leave the complex for a while to finish college, return to the apartment, start a family, and grow old and die there. I don't know if this will lead to a crematorium or a columbarium only for residents.

In Korea, an apartment is more than just a house. Married women who live in apartments are more likely to intend to have children than those who live in single-family homes, townhouses, or multi-family residences, according to the Seoul Institute. According to a March report from Statistics Korea, 78.6 percent of the average household's assets are in real estate. An apartment is both an infrastructure for childbirth and an asset that defines one's status and community, so it's no wonder that the radius of life is tied to it.

However, only 51.9 percent of the population lives in apartments—the other half lives in various dwellings, including single-family homes and multifamily residences. I wonder if our obsession with apartments reflects our anxiety about the future, growing polarization, and life-threatening uncertainty.

At the playground, I visited with my girls; kids from the neighborhood mingled regardless of the fence. As if they arranged a playdate or something, kids from other apartments and multifamily residences gathered at the new apartment's playground at 4 P.M. They ran and pushed scooters together.

As I watched them, the sun was setting. I realized we had to go home, but the gate next to the playground required a code to get out. While thinking, "What should I do?" my daughter and her friends ran behind the bushes by the gate. "Dad, come," I heard them say, and I followed them to a small doghole. The kids quickly slipped through the hole, cheerfully opened the gate, and grinned. At least in that apartment complex, adult fences were useless against children. The children waved to each other and scattered to their respective homes.