"Hiring a regular moving company would cost anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 won. If I call a small van and buy my friends a meal, it comes to about 80,000 won ($58). It's hard work, but I'd rather do that than spend the money."
On Thursday morning, a 23-year-old university student surnamed Park was hauling boxes through a studio apartment neighborhood in Nogo-san-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, sweat streaming down his face. Park had taken a year off from school to earn living expenses and gain work experience, moving from Paju in Gyeonggi Province to Seoul. The room he found — a roughly 16-square-meter studio — was among the more affordable options nearby, with a deposit of 5 million won and monthly rent of 380,000 won including management fees.
"I applied for the youth monthly rent support program back in April but unfortunately didn't qualify," Park said. "Between rent, living expenses, tuition, textbooks and club fees, it all adds up fast. Not everyone can get the youth rent subsidy, so a lot of my friends are really desperate for that kind of help."
Students already stretched thin by rent and food costs are now putting their moving budgets on a diet as well. Some are opting for gosiwon study-room lodgings or boarding houses where rent and deposits are relatively lower, while others are turning to small-scale moving services to cut relocation costs.
Lee, 23, who was helping Park move that day, said the financial squeeze had forced a series of cutbacks. "I work part-time for seven hours on each day of the weekend — 14 hours total — but there's only so much I can earn," he said. "I didn't want to ask my parents for money, so first I cut back on food, then on transportation. With rent becoming such a burden on top of everything else, it just felt natural to try to save on moving costs too."
The trend is showing up in moving industry data. According to Isa Daehak, a moving service company, 481 moves were completed across 13 university neighborhoods in the Greater Seoul area in the first half of this year. The average cost per move was 150,000 won — about 30,000 won cheaper than the average for non-university areas.
The company said that while students once commonly chose semi-packaged moves — where two or more movers pack and carry everything — demand has recently shifted toward smaller options: van-only moves where the customer packs their own belongings and a single driver handles transport, or moves where the customer helps carry boxes alongside the driver. Instead of a semi-packaged move typically costing 180,000 to just over 200,000 won, more students are opting for van-only moves at 80,000 to 120,000 won.
"The moving industry as a whole is in a slump, but near universities we're actually seeing growing demand for van moves and customer-assisted moves," said Han Seung-jae, chief executive of Isa Daehak. "As more students try to keep moving costs as low as possible, the way people move has in some ways gone back to how it used to be."
The pressure on housing costs has also sent students searching for vacancies in gosiwon and boarding houses. A 25-year-old student surnamed Kim started renting a boarding house room in Jeonnong-dong, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, this year, paying a deposit of 1 million won and monthly rent of 300,000 won.
"The deposit is low and basic kitchen and cleaning supplies are already provided, so I figured it would be a good way to start living on my own," Kim said. "I work at a cafe and do private tutoring, but paying more than 600,000 won a month in rent as a university student is just too much to handle."
Data from real estate platform Dabang, based on its own listings, put the average monthly rent for a studio apartment near major Seoul universities at 625,000 won last month — up 7.7 percent from the same period last year.
A real estate agent working in the gosiwon district near Sinchon in Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, said rising rents had shifted the mood among student tenants. "Since rents kept climbing last year, a lot of student tenants have been talking about using their lease renewal rights rather than moving," the agent said. "There aren't many listings to begin with, and even when a vacancy opens up, landlords won't lower the price — so both supply and demand have shrunk."
kido@heraldcorp.com
