Murders Continue as Anti-Noise Bill Sits Stalled in National Assembly
The bereaved family of a victim murdered amid a dispute over inter-floor noise in rental housing has decided to file a civil lawsuit against the Korea Land & Housing Corporation (LH) and the Housing Management Corporation. The family explained that the two institutions' passive response exacerbated the harm and that they filed the suit to push for improvement measures.
According to the legal community on the 25th, the Daejeon High Court's Criminal Division 1-2 (Presiding Judge Lee Sun-mi) on the 23rd rejected both the prosecution's and the defendant's appeals in the appellate trial of Yang Min-jun, who was indicted on charges of murder and aggravated property damage, and upheld the lower court's sentence of 25 years in prison. Yang is accused of stabbing to death a man in his 70s, identified as A, who lived upstairs, with a weapon at a rental apartment in Cheonan at around 2:32 p.m. on December 4 last year. Even after A, bleeding from stab wounds, locked himself inside the management office, Yang rammed the office with his car, smashed the door, and attacked him again with the weapon.
According to the victim's side, Yang had threatened A over noise for years before the incident. Even when police were called, the disputes ended in mere mediation. When A asked the management office for help, it was decided that both men would relocate to different units, but the murder occurred while they were waiting for vacant units to become available.
Park Chul-hwan, head attorney at law firm Jiwon P&P, said, "While demand for public rental housing and complaints about inter-floor noise are increasing, measures to address the noise remain inadequate. Taking this case as an opportunity, we decided to file the lawsuit to raise the issue and heighten public awareness." Park added that proactive measures such as relocation to other complexes, mandatory adoption of noise-prevention technology from the construction stage, and step-by-step manuals for handling disputes are needed.
More than six months after it was proposed, the inter-floor noise prevention bill remains pending in the National Assembly. In April, Rep. Bae Joon-young of the People Power Party spearheaded the proposal of the 'Act on the Prevention and Management of Inter-Floor Noise in Multi-Family Housing,' which would comprehensively manage noise issues starting from the construction phase. The current Multi-Family Housing Management Act provides for mediation by inter-floor noise management committees and recommendations for noise-blocking measures, while the Housing Act requires floor impact sound performance testing before occupancy inspection.
An analysis of criminal court rulings from 2016 to 2021 by the Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice found that five major violent crimes, including murder and assault, stemming from inter-floor noise disputes surged ninefold over five years, from 11 cases in 2016 to 110 cases in 2021.
