Shared kitchen rules nobody explains

The rules are consistent across buildings and nobody writes them down. Here they are.

The non-negotiables:

1. Wash what you use, immediately, and put it back. This is the single rule that generates every complaint. Leaving a pan to soak is leaving a pan.
2. Do not leave food out. Anything on the counter overnight will be thrown away, and rightly.
3. Label your own food and only take your own. The communal rice, kimchi and eggs are for everyone; the container with someone's name on it is not.
4. Keep it quiet, especially after 22:00 and before 07:00. Thin walls run through the whole building, and the kitchen is usually next to somebody's room.
5. Do not cook anything strongly aromatic late at night. This is the one foreigners get caught by most — the smell travels through the corridor into 20 rooms. Curry, fish and heavy frying at 23:00 will get you spoken to.

The softer conventions:

- Peak times are 08:00 and 19:00. If you can eat off-peak, everyone is happier.
- Wipe the hob after you use it, not just your pan.
- Take your rubbish out rather than filling the shared bin.
- If someone is waiting, keep it short.

On the food-smell point specifically — it is not cultural fussiness about foreign food. It is that the ventilation is poor and the walls are thin, and a Korean student frying fish at midnight would get the same reaction. Cook what you like at a reasonable hour with the extractor on.

And the practical tip that solves most of this: get a small rice cooker or induction plate for your own room if the building allows it. Many do. You then cook simple things privately and use the shared kitchen only when you want to make something properly.