The Seoul Northern District Prosecutors’ Office's Violent Crimes Division has identified smoking in an apartment unit as the cause of an apartment fire in Dobong-gu, Seoul, which killed two people last Christmas. The number of complaints about smoking between floors rose to 35,148 in 2022, up about 20% from the previous year, but there is no legal basis to sanction smoking between floors.

While the damage caused by 'cross-storey smoking' in apartments and other multi-unit dwellings is emerging as a social issue, Seung Kwan Choi, an attorney at LIN’s Construction & Real Estate Team, said, “It is virtually impossible to sanction cross-storey smoking through the Multi-Family Housing  Management Act or related bylaws due to the difficulty of ‘inspecting’ the space within the unit, which is private property.” “Conflicts are likely to continue to arise unless smokers change their perception or act in accordance with their conscience, or strong measures are taken, such as the total ban on smoking in restaurants, cafes, and bars in the early 2010s,” he added.

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The Apartment Management Newspaper
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