“I’m itching to death every night,” Bed bug bloodstains cover the walls of a cubicle home, a.k.a. jjokbang

This is the feces of a bedbug found above a high school in Dongdaegu that I visited on the 30th of last month. Eggs that have already been laid by bedbugs can also be seen on the side of the sheet. Reporter Oh Dong-wook

“These stains are from the bed bugs I killed this summer,” said Ahn (55), a manager of a gosiwon (dormitory-style single-room accommodation) in Dongja-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, pointing to the wall on October 31. Black stains dotted the wallpaper of the gosiwon. The self-adhesive paper above the door was torn and the gap was filled with countless black grains, presumably bed bug droppings.

This wasn’t a problem of just one gosiwon. The wallpaper in a room occupied by Han (69) in another gosiwon in Jungnim-dong, Jung-gu was covered with the same stains, only more densely. “This summer, I killed about 300 bed bugs in a week,” he said, adding “In the evenings, they would crawl up from my toes to my groin. It was painful.” Even as he spoke, he continued to scratch his arms and legs.

As reports of bed bugs continue to flood in from all over the country, residents with poor housing are especially suffering from the pests. The shantytowns, known as jjokbangchon, in Dongja-dong and Jungnim-dong have been infested with bed bugs since May. More and more residents are calling on the local government to take action.

Bed bugs were first discovered in the area in 2020, and they have been appearing more frequently year by year. “I started seeing bed bugs 3-4 years ago, but this year is the worst,” said A (66), the owner of a gosiwon in Dongja-dong. Jeong (47), who owns a gosiwon in Jungnim-dong, said, “The Jung-gu Office and local governments only take measures to prevent covid. They have never done anything to control bed bugs.” “Even the officials from public health center never told us anything about bed bugs or asked us about them,” he added.

An official from the Jung-gu Office said, “In June, we once carried out bed bug control in some areas of Jungnim-dong to help the vulnerable.” An official from the Yongsan-gu Office said, “This year, we received four complaints about bed bugs. In the case of people with poor housing, we carried out pest control.”

Residents of gosiwon and shantytowns all argued that there was a limit to individual efforts at bug control. “I went to the drug store to buy bed bug repellent, but the pharmacist asked, ‘Where are there bed bugs these days?’ and gave me an indoor bug spray,” said Kim (64), who resides in the Dongja-dong gosiwon. Jeong, the owner of the Jungnim-dong gosiwon said, “I called a pest control company when bed bugs appeared in 2021, but I couldn’t hire them because they asked for 35 million won to get rid of the bugs in the building.” Her Sun (Heo Seon), a professor of social welfare at Soonchunhyang University said, “Currently, people in poor housing are having their rights to health and survival violated, and if it is difficult for individuals to respond, then the central and local governments should intervene.”