Residential Issue

[Anchor Lead]

With the growing popularity of officetels, which, in Korea, refer to small a studio-type apartment in muti-purpose buildings, more residents are taking issue with the maintenance fees of their officetels.

[Pkg]

This is a 14-story officetel building with 148 units in Gangseo-gu District, Seoul. A woman surnamed Kim runs an online shopping mall at one of the officetels and gets stressed whenever she receives monthly bills of about 150,000 won for maintenance fees. A close look was given to the details of her maintenance bills. It consists of various categories, including power and water rates. 780 won is charged for elevator maintenance. However, the elevators often break down, causing inconvenience to residents. Residents filed a lawsuit, demanding the full disclosure of maintenance bill details. A similar conflict is under way at other officetel. Residents insist that monthly maintenance fees are too steep, although their units are measured at just 13.62 square meters. The number of complaints about officetel maintenance bills is increasing annually. The Seoul city government received 116 such complaints in the first eight months of this year.

[Soundbite] Song Joo-yeol(Movement Against Apartment Administrative Irregularities) : "Even if maintenance bills are exorbitant, residents pay them just as they are notified, since there is no way for them to examine related documents."

The Justice Ministry plans to revise a related law to make it mandatory for officetels to receive audits, as apartments do. However, the revision will only affect officetel buildings with 150 units or more.