Why does a speaker inside the apartment make me feel creepy?

Why does a speaker inside the apartment make me feel creepy?

Is it because the speaker can't be turned off and the volume can't be adjusted? The idea that the powers that be can broadcast a message into your home at any time of day or not strikes me as Orwellian. Is this a vestige of the days when South Korea was a highly militarized society? Or is it just a cultural difference that I'm instinctively misreading as an intrusion into freedom and privacy?

It's not that the speaker is often used, or that it broadcasts messages generated by the government. Most probably it is there in case of emergency, to give directions in the event of a fire or a North Korean missile strike. Erma tells me that in her parents' previous apartment building in Pohang, the speaker—regardless of why it was installed—was mainly used to broadcast the exciting news that the watermelon truck had arrived in the parking lot and was selling "sweet, delicious watermelon".

A few days ago, March 1, was one of the Korean Independence holiday. Known as "3-1" (3·1절) it commemorates the start of the March 1 movement in 1919, when Korean nationalists (rather impotently) proclaimed independence from imperial Japan. Although the movement wasn't successful, it did lead to the establishment of a provisional government in exile, which provided a framework for establishing the South Korean government after World War II.

Anyway, 3-1 is an important national holiday, and, as with the Fourth of July in the US, it's a day on which one is supposed to fly the national flag, known as the Taegeukgi 태극기. You know, this one:

Erma with the Korean national flag on 3-1 National Independence Day. The flag dates to the 1880s.

The managers of our apartment complex decided that they wanted to encourage all residents to fly a Korean flag for the holiday. Every apartment already has a flagpole bracket attached to an exterior railing. And the managers were offering free flags to any resident who needed one.

But the weird thing was that a few days before they holiday, they started broadcasting messages over the apartment speakers. Some were made at 8:00 pm (when we were trying to put the little one to bed). Some came in at breakfast, some at midday, some at dinner time. It just struck me as the weirdest thing. They were aiming, they said, for 100% participation. I was tempted to consider this ominous, but in fact nobody there was no actual pressure to put up a flag and nobody seemed to care too much about it one way or another.

Of the ten apartments pictured in this photo late on the morning of March 3, seven had a flag flying.

Where's Ermdo?

Here's some video of the final announcement, during breakfast on the morning of the holiday.