The convenience groups of Seoul ‘fight against solitude

Hee-Kyung laughs while entering Seoul’s new “hot convenience store”.

At 29, she may not be the person that most would have imagined wanting to take advantage of the last efforts of the South Korean capital to fight against loneliness.

But Hee-Kyung visits every day to take free ramen noodles and spend hours chatting with other visitors and social workers.

“I say to myself:” another day, another escape to feel alone “, says Hee-Kyung.

A fleeting teenager, she no longer talks to anyone about her family. The friends she met online, thanks to the shared love of the K-Pop Superjunior group, and they live far. Currently unemployed, she does not have a workmaker to discuss.

She lives alone, and all the time watching cute animal videos on her phone as she went on the ground.

“I have no other place to go without (the store).”

Hee-Kyung has been one of the 20,000 people to visit the four stores since their opening in March. The city expected only 5,000 people in the first year.

This special place, in the northeast district of DongdaEmun in the city, sees around 70 to 80 visitors each day.

Most are in her forties and fifties, but Hee-Kyung is far from being the only young person to access the store services.

A 2022 study revealed that 130,000 young people in the city – those aged 19 to 39 – are either socially isolated or closed.

The day the BBC visited a dozen visitors – men and women, young and old – were seated on benches or locked in bags of beans, watching a film together.

“We have cinema days to encourage the low-level link,” whispers Kim Se-Heon, the director of the City Solitude Division.

The stores are designed to offer a warm atmosphere of Cafe. In a corner, an older woman closed her eyes as she flowed into the automatic massage chair that hummed. In another, there are stacks of noodles.

“Ramen are a symbol of comfort and heat in South Korea,” explains Kim.

While waiting for the noodles to cook, visitors are invited to fulfill a brief investigation into their mood and their living conditions.

It is only a handful of the growing number of socially isolated people that the city is trying to reach.

The change in South Korea has undergone is seismic: in a generation, it has gone from an agrarian society torn by the war to a developed economy.

A few decades ago, it was common to see large families with six to eight children, living under the same roof. But years of migration to cities have reduced families and transformed places like Seoul into sprawling metropolises.

The unaffordable accommodation, the increase in costs and the exhausting working hours have led more and more young people to reject marriage or parenting, or both. On the other side is an aging population that feels neglected by the children who run to follow.

“You know the saying that the least tasty meal is the one you have alone? I ask the elderly who entered if they ate well. They would tear themselves away, just asking themselves this question,” said Lee In-Sook, the store advisor.

After a divorce and her adult children leaving the house, she understands what it is to be alone.

The first time Hee -Kyung – who is about the age of in -Sook’s daughter – arrived at the store, she immediately caught her attention.

Like many visitors, Hee-Kyung was calm on the first day, barely speaking to others. The second time she came, she started talking to In-Sook.

It is the growing number of “lonely deaths” who worried the officials of Seoul enough to act. The elderly died alone at home and their bodies were only discovered days or weeks later.

This mission quickly expanded to the fight against solitude itself. But Seoul is not the first to do so.

In 2018, the United Kingdom appointed Minister of Loneliness. Japan has followed the example, creating an agency to solve the problem which, according to him, had become more pronounced in the Pandemic COVID-19.

The phenomenon of completely withdrawing from society is common enough in Japan so that it has a name: Hikikomori. Also in South Korea, an increasing number of young people have voluntarily cut themselves off from a highly competitive and demanding company.

“Perhaps it is the pandemic that led to that,” thinks Lee Yu Yuong, who manages one of Seoul’s anti-onceality programs.

She underlines how her children remain buried in their smartphones when visiting their friends. “People express today how difficult it is to have a network of friends. Loneliness has become something that must be addressed as a society.”

The first step was to open a hotline for people who need someone to talk to. A national survey in 2023 revealed that a third of Korean adults have no one to ask for help with household work or to speak when they feel sad.

His advisers offer a 40 -minute call to discuss any subject. Park Seung-Ah made three calls a day from his cabin.

“I was surprised to see that many young people wanted these sessions. They want to share the burden on their chest, but there is often a dynamic of power with parents or their friends. So they come to us.”

The “warm convenience stores” followed quickly, a physical location where the solitary were welcome.

Dongdaemun’s location was chosen because of its proximity to low -income housing, where residents live alone in tiny subdivided apartments.

Sohn, 68, visit the store once a week to watch movies and escape your cramped house.

“(The stores) should have opened before my birth. It is good to spend even two to three hours,” he said.

Sohn spent more than five decades of his life taking care of his mother, who suffered a brain aneurysm when he was a child. As a result, he never got married or had children.

The cost of dedication has become clear when she died.

Without the penny and walking with a cane since he had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage several years ago, he says that there are not many places for him.

“Places cost money, going to the movies costs money,” he said.

The stores have been specially created to accommodate those who are not welcome in other places, explains the director of the store Lee Bo-Hyun.

They go beyond a little space and a film – offering air conditioning during the hottest summer months to those who cannot afford it at home.

It is also supposed to be a space where the loner can bypass the stigma of asking for help. The choice of name – “convenience stores” – was a deliberate attempt to keep them away from psychiatric clinics, important in a country where there is still a stigma against the demand for mental health – especially among older residents.

And yet, some of their reserves can still be seen when they cross the door for the first time, aggravated by their isolation experience.

Visitors are often uncomfortable talking to another person or eating together at the start, says the director of the Lee store.

“Typical loneliness, if it is repeated for days, months and half year, is now more than a feeling,” explains Lee.

“These people are starting to avoid places with people. So many people ask us if they can take the ramen to leave because they will not eat with others.”

Lee would tell them that they don’t need to speak. They can simply sit at the same table and have noodles.

Hee-Kyung has been one of the new silent arrivals for months.

So did it make a difference? In-Soook remembers a conversation she had with a local newspaper. When she spoke of her daughter, she felt a sudden pang and her voice broke.

“I’m going to hug you,” said Hee-Kyung.

She headed on the other side of the room and kissed in-sook.