A new dating app in South Korea is causing a stir online for requiring users to prove they live in an apartment before they can even sign up.
APTING is also restricted to people in their 20s and 30s, and anyone living in other housing types, including villas or officetels, is excluded entirely.
According to the Korea Herald, the app has been met with mixed reactions since its launch on 22 June.
The app doesn’t care whether you own your unit or are staying with your parents; living in an apartment is enough.
Source: APTING on The App Store
Even so, many see it as a way of sorting people by wealth.
One Threads user said the app makes it feel like your address determines your worth, rather than who you are as a person.
Others pushed back, arguing that wanting to date someone from a similar financial background isn’t discrimination, just a preference.
Source: APTING on The App Store
Connect Seoul, which operates the app, insists the service isn’t meant to sort people by assets.
Instead, it says apartment data is mainly used to show the physical distance between two potential matches.
The company has also added a feature that avoids matching users with people from their own apartment complex, reasoning that if a relationship doesn’t work out, running into an ex in the lift could get awkward.
APTING may be the newest name in the space, but it isn’t the first to match people by housing status.
A handful of apartment complexes in South Korea already run their own private matchmaking services for residents.
One luxury high-rise, for instance, set up a service pairing residents with well-off potential partners from nearby neighbourhoods.
This comes as new-launch apartment prices across the country hit a fresh high in June.
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Featured image adapted from APTING and APTING on The App Store.