By John Rule
Contributing Writer
The sounds of outside life start to filter through ― car horns from the street below, the constant pounding of the pneumatic drill that has taken up residence next door, the desperately urgent cries of another ajossi selling yet more water melons through a loud speaker, motorbikes, buses, cats fighting, babies crying, people shouting. A new day has begun. You look at the clock, and its 5:35 a.m. You swear. Then you realize it's Sunday.
Noise, it seems is everywhere, just another part of living in a big city. But does it have to be, or more importantly, should it be?
In environmental terms, noise is defined as unwanted sound, think car alarm more than Celine Dion. Experts believe noise to be one of the most pervasive environmental pollutants around today, with adverse health effects to boot.
For example, a pneumatic drill running for two hours is loud enough to cause damage to your ears. I can only guess at the damage the one camped outside my front door has done these last three months. So if noise is so bad why isn't it regulated? Well it is, of a sort.
Now I admit there are a lot of regulations in the United Kingdom concerning noise, and that if you want to break them, you have to sift through a mountain of red tape big enough to make you scream, which you could if you had the correct forms with you at the time.
But there doesn't seem to be any more or any less than say somewhere like Seoul. Now, Seoul also has noise regulations. These regulations are similar in every way, except one. And it is this one that seems to make the difference.
Acceptable noise levels in Korea for busy industrial, traffic areas, pretty much the whole of Seoul, are currently set at 70db during the day, 65, for evenings and mornings, and 55 at nighttime. There is a 10db reduction during weekends and holidays. These levels are pretty much the same as everywhere else regarding busy built up areas.
So what is the difference? Well the difference is time. In the United Kingdom, it is illegal to use loud speakers, etc, in streets between the hours of 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. This includes car horns, building machinery, and advertising.
While definitions of time do exist here, such as morning classed as between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m., the law only says that noise levels during these times be lower than other times, not that it can't exist.
And this is the problem, running out in your underwear to the guy drilling a large hole in the street at 6:30 on a Sunday morning and asking him to turn it down a few decibels, is unrealistic. What is perhaps more realistic is running down there and screaming at him to shut the, well you know the rest. The fact that his drilling might be at the legally acceptable level is immaterial, its 6:30 in the morning, a Sunday morning. So time plays a huge role.
Of course noise is noise and its unavoidable, and noise levels in cities are always a problem. But like anything, there has to be a time and a place.
There are of course other differences, outside of regulations and red tape, and these are given that huge umbrella of a tag known as ``cultural." Of course, cultural has been given as an excuse for some of the biggest crimes in history, but it's easy, it works, so why fight it.
For example, I know for certain, 100 percent, that if a guy selling garlic was to pull up outside my father's house at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning and start announcing his arrival by loud speaker, it would take approximately 1.3 seconds before he or one of the neighbors would be on the phone to the police, who in turn would probably arrive en masse, helicopters and all, to deal with such a blatant act of terrorism. O.K., where my parents live is quiet, obscenely quit in comparison with here, and of course it should be, here is a city, millions of people, etc, etc, etc. What I am getting at here is not noise, but the reaction to it.
If someone was to make noise back home one early Sunday morning, they would be met with serious tuts and disapproving shakes of the head from their peers, and helicopters of course.
But as Seoulites it seems we accept the noise as just ``one of those things." Just another part of living in a big crowded city. But should we? And what, if anything, can be done?
Well, ultimately, unless the law is changed, the only option left to us is a bit hippyish. We need to make less noise, everyone one of us. We have to remember, that this huge sprawling city is our home, and that, like it or not, we have millions and millions of close neighbors. We need to be more considerate of those around us, but we also have to tell those around us, politely of course, ``shush.''
We all need to do our bit, from the taxi driver leaning on his horn for no other reason than he's bored, to my upstairs neighbors and their guitars who are sadly more YouTube than U2. Impossible? Perhaps.
But imagine a Seoul at night without the orchestra of car horns and shrill of bus brakes, imagine slowly opening your eyes one Sunday morning, the chipper of birds wafting in through the mosquito net, you unable to guess the time, imagine no screaming politicians outside the subway first thing in the morning demanding you vote for them, imagine builders waiting for the sun to rise before firing up the pneumatic drill, Imagine, go on its easy if you try.
The writer lives and works in Seoul.