Control your Apartment with your Smartphone

Have you ever had that chilling moment ten minutes after you left the house? "Oh yeah, I forgot to turn off the TV!" Worse, "Wait, did I forget to turn off the gas on the stove?" Or, that annoying and self-torturing question that's more profound than Hamlet's famous soliloquy, "Did I unplug the iron or not?"

Well, you will be worry-free if you moved to the new Hillstate Apartments in Sejong City; every apartment has a personal (electronic) butler built in. With Hillstate's smartphone App, you can control gas, electricity and heating from the sofa, the office or almost anywhere.

Built by Hyundai Construction, residents can check their electricity usage (in real-time or for a specific time period) and remotely control gas, lighting and heating. Residents can also compare their energy use to the building's average usage. There's no word on whether building managers will add an element of gamification, challenging residents to use less electricity than their neighbors.

Keeping with the low-energy theme, all lighting in the parking lot is of the eco-friendly LED variety. sensors throughout the parking lot monitor wherecarsare parked and vary the lighting accordingly. Unused areas get less light than heavily occupied ones.

Moving from the parking lot into the building is as easy as it is secure. A Ubiquitous Keyless System (UKS) controls access to doors using RFID tags so you don't have to carry around a key.

Once upstairs in your apartment you'll find with what's been dubbed a Magic Transform Mirror. Essentially the mirror includes a seamlessly embedded LCD panel that shows up-to-date information on weather, traffic and news. The mirror even keeps track of where you parked your car.

These apartments are in Sejong Special Self-Governing City, named in honor of the Joseon Dynasty King Sejong the Great, the father of Korea's national alphabet, Hangul. Formerly known as Yeongi, it is a planned city about.

In early 2007, the South Korean government decided to create a special administrative district that would be home to nine ministries and four national agencies that are currently located in Seoul. The city officially opened on July 2, 2012.

As a fully planned city, Sejong is likely to have more high-tech apartments like these. We'll bring you more news as we receive it.

by Woosung Kang