More than 50 furniture stores selling beds, wardrobes, chairs, and sinks are aligned on the sides of the street at a furniture street in Bugahyeon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, on the afternoon of Feb. 27. However, 14 shops were either empty or closed. Among the open stores, only a few managed to attract customers. Some stores were unstaffed, with only signs reading “Look around for free” or “big sale” welcoming the customers. Few stores were open without any business, lights on, but doors locked. “Furniture stores demanding substantial space grapple with high rental and electricity expenses. The current economic downturn has led to a drastic reduction in furniture demand,” said Lee, 65, who sells office furniture. “We find ourselves compelled to sell furniture cheap with no profit margin when customers visit.”
Specialized districts, characterized by a dense concentration of stores in the same industries, such as furniture streets, wedding streets, and handmade shoe streets, are witnessing a decline in vitality. Emerging in the mid-to-late 1900s, these specialized streets initially thrived by allowing customers to explore various stores in one place and compare prices while allowing merchants to share information, including logistics service. However, the surge of online shopping malls offering features such as price comparisons to delivery services, significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, has decreased the number of consumers shopping on these specialized streets. Amid this, housing redevelopment projects and shifting trends in commercial districts contribute to the disappearance of some of Seoul’s longstanding specialized streets.
The printing district around Eulji-ro and Chungmu-ro in the center of Seoul, housing more than 4,000 small printing companies, is facing an immediate threat of extinction due to the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s redevelopment project of Sewoon district. While the city promised to build a public rental site for existing printing businesses, the proposed size is only 25 percent of what merchants deem necessary.
In protest of the project, small printing stores argue that the redevelopment project will “remove the printing street and take away the business owner’s right to live.” On Feb. 21, over 100 merchants from printing stores rallied in front of the Jung-gu office and Seoul city hall to defend their rights. “I’m extremely worried because I invested in a new machine worth 1.5 billion to make a breakthrough in the recession,” said Cho, 70, who has been managing a printing business in Eulji-ro for 50 years. “The number of printing works keeps declining, and if printing stores scatter away due to redevelopment projects, many of them will go out of business.”
Many places have lost their uniqueness as specialized streets due to changes in commercial districts. In Seoul’s Seongsu-dong, Seongdong-gu, many leather and shoe factories established in the 1970s have recently closed, and cafés, restaurants, and pop-up stores have taken their place. The “Wedding Street” near Ahyeon Station on Line 2 in Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, once boasted over 100 wedding dress shops, but the number has drastically decreased to about 20 since the 2000s. The decline was due to the loss of competitiveness as wedding-related businesses concentrated in Gangnam-gu’s Cheongdam-dong and Nonhyeon-dong areas and the inability to withstand commercial changes triggered by apartment redevelopment projects.
Walking about 300 meters along the toy street in Changsin-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, on the afternoon of Feb. 28, only about 10 people were encountered, including store employees. “With the low birth rate, there are fewer households raising children, and those who visit the toy street out of curiosity do not end up spending money,” said So Jae-kyu, chairman of the Korea Toy Industry Cooperative. “Many consumers think platforms like Coupang or AliExpress are much cheaper, so traditional toy stores have no effective strategy.”
There are many specialized streets that are still thriving, such as the machinery and tool shopping center in Guro-gu, Seoul. “If you have your own competitiveness, such as offering lower prices, high quality, or unique products, you can survive,” said Cha Nam-soo, head of policy and public relations at the Korea Federation of Micro Enterprise. “Like creating a Hanbok street or cosmetic street next to the wedding street, gathering related upstream and downstream businesses around a specific industry can also be a good strategy.”
For small merchants, simply being part of a specialized street is a marketing tool, so there are also opinions that support should be provided to make these unique areas competitive. “The government and local governments could collaborate to transform specialized streets into a kind of urban tourist attraction, which could help attract customers and foster related industries,” said Noh Min-sun, a researcher at the Korea Small Business Institute.
