Korean Self-Employed Culture

Korean Mini Market

When we walk around cities in Korea, we will see stores everywhere; from a small restaurant selling Korean traditional dish, Kimbap; up to convenient store where we can get our daily needs; and even those stores who sell clothes. When I firstly had more curiosity about Korean culture, I found that those market is a part of Korean characteristics.

Korea is among countries with highest rate of self-employed or enterpreneurship. Rather than looking for jobs, most of the prefer create their own. No matter in which city you visit, there are always abundant of small stores everywhere.

And eventhough there are many of them, none of them are out of customers. I was wondering how such thing happens. When I had a walk in the downtown of Daejeon, I was going through the market and there are a lot of small restaurants there that are selling various kind of food. I was shocked when some of them are selling almost similar menu, and they are next to each other, but still, the customers are a lot. And it happens everywhere. Nearby my apartment for 2-month staying in Incheon, there are also a lot of small restaurants, convenient stores, noraebang, hair-dressers, and others. But I dont any of them was out of customers. I was thinking that if in almost everybody in Korea has small shops, then who will buy it? I just cannot get the logic in here.

Street Vendors selling food

Small Street Vendors

Another interesting phenomenon in Korea is the number of street vendors. They are almost everywhere. We can find them on the market, nearby the subway station, next to bus stops, a few steps from supermarket, or some meters from school. It’s a little bit strange for a country as developped as Korea. While in most developped country like USA and UK, people don’t have many street vendors, but in Korea, they’re still on the street. The greatness, however, they dont create the garbage problem! Eventhough they’re selling things on the street, they know that street is a public area, and therefore, they cannot disturb the people walking through it. Every of them has a big tong for the trash.

Street Vendors in Daejeon, South Korea

They sell very simple goods; some of the old ladies just have some vegetables to sell, some of them sell cooking materials, some uncles sell fruit, some old granny sit nearby the bus stop just to sell a few box of tomatoes and onions, and even some of them sell underwear in the subway station. Looking that they sell trivial goods, I was wondering how such people understand the importance of cleanness in public area, while those sellers in most developing countries will leave the government with garbage and traffic problems because their presence.

The moral that I get from this characteristics of Korea is that they dont want other people to feed them. No matter how hard their life is, they want themselves to feed their own family. And that’s one of the significant factor why the un-employment rate in Korea is very low. Moreover, this kind of habit will help the government to develop the nations since its work on the employment rate is not really a big problem, the people can do it for themselves.

That’s all that I can wrote tonight guys. I hope it’s not a junk news.

best regards,

~nasikun