Public Announcements

There are lots of public announcements in South Korea. Some of them take the form we are used to, like signs above highways letting drivers know traffic conditions. But even these are slightly different because they also tell you the day's air quality. Bad air quality is a huge problem here and anything past level orange you really aren't supposed to go out unless you have to. So every time you get on the highway you are informed about what the current levels of ozone and PM2.5 are.

We also get regular public safety announcements on our mobile phones. Since we've been here we've had warnings about high temperatures, low temperatures, excessively bad air, public safety officials hunting wild boar (there was a bad swine flu epidemic in the early fall), and today we got a warning about the corona virus going around Asia. That announcement was a bit entertaining because we were warned to do the usual things, like frequent hand washing, but also to mind our "coughing manners" and to wear face masks.

All of the above announcements are always in Korean, but with translation apps and context we can usually figure out what the announcements are about. The one kind of announcement we still can't figure out is the loudspeaker announcements. These come about once a week, but not on a regular schedule. We can clearly hear the announcements even from inside our (concrete) house. We've asked neighbors what's being announced, but we haven't gotten clear answers—even from the Korean-speaking neighbors. The best answer we've gotten is that it is "community matters." I guess it might be things similar to the text messages we get, but Korea is a pretty high-tech society and mobile phones are ubiquitous. Also, the loudspeaker announcements are much longer than would be needed to communicate all the other kinds of messages. It's just one more mystery for the foreigners!