People ask me sometimes, well, not people, mostly it’s just me imagining someone asking, what is Cheonan like to live, and honestly my first answer is nobody asks that. Nobody asks because almost nobody comes here on purpose. You come here because a factory needs you, or because Seoul got too expensive, or you married someone from around here. That’s about it, I can’t really think of a fourth reason but maybe there is one, I just haven’t met that person yet.
I’ve been in the same apartment since it was new, well it was built in 2007 so by Korean standard that’s already kind of old now, apartments here get judged fast. But I’ve lived here long enough that it just feels like living, not some experience I’m having. I don’t really know how to explain that better than just saying it plain.
What’s actually here
Cheonan is close to an hour from Seoul on the regular train, and I think the KTX cuts that down to more like 30-something minutes, though honestly I take the slower one more often because it’s cheaper and I’m not in a hurry to get anywhere. There’s also subway Line 1 that comes all the way down here from Seoul, which people in Seoul don’t really think about, they just see the map end somewhere south and don’t wonder what’s actually down there.
What’s down there is factories. A lot of them. Samsung Display has a plant here I think, that name gets recognized outside Korea sometimes. There’s also smaller places, metal processing, auto parts. I’m at a metal fabrication place myself. Outside of rush hour it takes about 25 minutes by car to get there. During rush hour it’s over an hour. Same road. Same distance. Everyone’s just leaving at the same time, that’s the whole difference.
There’s a university area too, a few colleges, so downtown has this younger crowd that doesn’t overlap with people like me much. Different bars, different hours. And there’s Independence Hall, the big museum about the independence movement, that’s basically the one thing tour buses stop for here. One museum, and a train that passes through on its way somewhere else. That’s the tourist side of Cheonan, pretty much.
The apartment thing
I should say how apartment life works here because it’s not what people picture when they hear “apartment” in English. Mine isn’t fancy. 2007 means it’s got that early-2000s layout, long hallway, small balcony that’s mostly for drying laundry and keeping kimchi containers out of the kitchen. I’m on a high floor, top of the building basically, so I get good light, but when the elevator’s out of service I really feel it in my knees walking all the way down.
Complexes like mine are everywhere here, whole neighborhoods are just these blocks with numbers instead of names, and this is what most of Korea outside Seoul actually looks like if you’re being honest. Not glass towers. Not hanok villages. Gray and beige blocks from the 2000s, a mart on the ground floor of one building, a hair salon in another, playgrounds squeezed in between.
I’m not totally sure on the exact numbers but a place like mine, similar size, similar age, I’d guess goes for somewhere around 250 to 300 million won to buy, maybe 800,000 won to a million a month if you’re renting with a deposit. That’s roughly 190 to 230 thousand dollars, or 600 to 750 a month, don’t hold me to the exact figure, prices move. In Seoul that same money gets you a studio an hour outside downtown if you’re lucky. That’s why people close to retirement, or people who don’t need to be in Seoul for work, end up here quietly.
Weekends, or the lack of them
Here’s the part that probably sounds strange. I almost never leave the city on weekends. I could count on my fingers how many times a year I go outside Cheonan on a Saturday or Sunday. It’s not because there’s nothing else, Seoul is an hour away, I could go if I wanted. I just don’t. I do my home workout, pull ups, ab roll out, push ups, nothing fancy, no gym membership, just stuff in the living room. I grind coffee beans by hand every morning, pour over, that’s the one thing in my day that doesn’t change no matter what. And then the rest of the weekend is just, I don’t know, being in the apartment. Writing this now is kind of part of that too, another thing I do at home instead of going anywhere.
I’m not saying this to complain. If you’re picturing Korean weekend life as café hopping and hiking groups in matching outfits, sure, that happens, that’s real. But there’s also a lot of people who just stay in. My son is around too when he’s not out with friends, he’ll be off to the army before long and honestly I think about that more on weekends than I used to, when the apartment’s quiet and I’ve got nothing else pulling my attention.
The English thing
I’ve been doing something a little obsessive for a while, training my English listening. Not classes, not really apps, just podcasts, hours and hours, most of it playing in the background while I do something else, some of it me actually paying attention to a video. I’m past 12,000 hours at this point, aiming for 15,000 sometime around next October. Used to be 12 hours a day easy. Lately it’s down to 3 or 4 hours, because of some trouble at work — I made mistakes before, and now even small things I do get looked at through that old lens, so I’ve been more careful, more tired, less able to just relax and put a podcast on during the day like I used to. I listen more at night now instead.
My speaking is still way behind my listening. My writing has its own rough edges, you’re reading them right now. But the point is, Cheonan isn’t a place where you bump into English speakers to practice with. No expat street like Itaewon. If a foreigner comes here for work, mostly for the plants, they won’t be surrounded by English. They’ll need Korean, or patience, or coworkers willing to slow down. There’s no scene here you plug into by just showing up. You kind of build it yourself, same as with anything else here.
Prices, food, the normal stuff
A bowl of gukbap here is maybe 8,000 to 9,000 won, so around 6 to 7 dollars, I think, exchange rate moves around. Coffee at a local place, not the chains, maybe 4,500 won. Samgyeopsal for two with drinks, somewhere around 40,000 to 50,000 won total, so maybe 35 dollars, could be a bit more depending on the place. None of this should shock anyone who’s already spent time in Korea, but compared to Seoul it’s noticeably cheaper across the board, except imported stuff, that costs about the same no matter where you are since it ships the same distance either way.
For groceries there’s Lotte Mart and Homeplus both here, and then the smaller local markets, which have better produce for less if you know which stall to trust. That part takes time. Nobody can just hand you that, you learn which ajumma sells the good stuff and which one doesn’t, the same way anyone learns anything here, slowly, by paying attention.
If you actually wanted to come
If anyone reading this ever seriously wanted to see this part of Korea, the part that isn’t in guidebooks, I’d walk you around on a weekend. Doesn’t matter who, man, woman, older person, whoever. I barely go out myself so honestly it’d probably do me some good too, force me to actually use this city instead of just commuting through it. I know a gukbap place with no sign in English, barely one in Korean either. I know which platform to stand on so you’re not running for the escalator. Small stuff, but it’s the stuff that makes a place feel a little less foreign after two hours instead of two years.
I’m not saying Cheonan competes with Seoul for excitement. It doesn’t, and it’s not trying to. But if you already did Gyeongbokgung and Myeongdong and want to see what regular Korean city life runs like day to day, the commute, the apartment block, the same coffee every morning, this is closer to how most people actually live than the postcard version. It repeats a lot, I won’t pretend otherwise. But it’s cheap, and people mostly mind their own business, which some days I need more than I’d like to admit.
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