Apartment Renovation Noise Is Increasing, but There Are No Laws to Address Growing Neighbor Conflicts

Cho, 37, thought she was simply signing an upstairs neighbor’s renovation consent form in May. Instead, she spent the next month waking to construction noise. The form gave only the project’s start and end dates, not the hours of demolition, drilling or hammering. Her apartment complex allowed noisy work only after 10 a.m., yet the crews began around 7 or 8 a.m. The demolition noise woke her child, and repeated complaints to the management office changed nothing. Cho said staff seemed irritated by her calls and effectively told her to deal with the problem herself.

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The management office seemed annoyed when I called several times and responded as if there was nothing more it could do, telling me to handle it myself.

For Lee, 37, renovation work in Seoul’s Dobong-gu district brought a different kind of ordeal. Following the management office’s instructions, she posted notices at the building entrance and elevators, visited neighbors door to door and handed out small gifts. The resident next door initially said the gifts were unnecessary and that Lee could proceed. Once work began, however, the neighbor objected that there had been no prior consultation. Lee stopped construction for two days and then tried to finish the job while the neighbor was out.

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At the management office level, owners and construction companies should be required to specify in detail not only the renovation period, but also the dates and time slots when the most noise will occur.

Such disputes are increasingly visible in Korean apartment communities. Online posts describe residents fleeing to friends’ homes with young children because of renovation noise. In one case, a resident said an upstairs renovation became so loud when her baby was about 50 days old that she had to leave home with the child. Some conflicts have escalated further. Last year in Seoul’s Jungnang-gu district, police arrested a man in his 40s on a special intimidation charge after he allegedly threatened a neighbor with a weapon over renovation noise. In Busan, a man in his 30s received a six-month prison sentence for threatening a worker at an upstairs renovation site with a weapon.

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The apartment management office rules belong to the sphere of resident self-governance, so authorities cannot take strong measures such as imposing administrative fines.

The legal framework leaves a gap. The Apartment Housing Management Act defines inter-floor noise as sounds such as running or walking, or noise from audio equipment. Temporary noise from renovation work does not qualify. Residents generally must notify the management office and obtain neighbors’ consent, while the management rules often require only notices or signatures from 50% to 60% of residents. Management offices can ask owners and contractors to be careful, but lack stronger enforcement tools. A Seoul district official said local authorities receive one or two related complaints each month but can do little beyond forwarding them to the apartment management office. Experts say consent forms should specify the dates and hours when the loudest work will occur. Others want the law expanded so public agencies can regulate renovation noise and mediate disputes before they reach civil litigation.

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Now that buying older apartments, remodeling them and living in them has become an established trend, it is time to consider revising Article 20 of the Apartment Housing Management Act, which is limited to existing inter-floor noise, to expand management bodies’ authority to intervene in household noise, including renovation noise.