Seoul ‘comfort shop fights loneliness

Hee-kyung laughter is included in the new “heated comfort store” in Seoul.

At the age of 29, it may not be that most wanted to take advantage of the final efforts of the South Korean capital to deal with loneliness.

But hee-Kyung visits every day to catch free instant noodles and chat with other visitors and social workers.

“I tell myself” another day, escaping another lonely, “hee-kyung said.

A teenager escape, he no longer talked to anyone in the family. He met his friends online, through the shared love of the K-Pop group’s superjuni, and live far. Unemployment today, he doesn’t chat with work.

He lives alone, and in the face of time he will see the pretty videos of animals on the phone as the ground.

“I have no other place (shops) if not.”

Hee-Kyung is one of 20,000 people to visit four stores since they spread in March. The city was only expected to be 5,000 in the first year.

This particular location sees about 70 and 80 visitors to the northeastern district of Donddayemun.

Most are in the 40s and 50s, but he is the only young man to access the services of Hee-Kyung.

Research in 2022 revealed about 130,000 young people in the city. It is between 19 and 39 years old, socially isolated or closed. Moreover, the share of single-capital houses reached almost 40%.

The day he visited the BBC, a dozen visitors – men and women, young and old – were sitting in the chairs, seeing a movie together.

“We have films to promote low-level link, whispers Kim Se-Heon, the distribution of the loneliness of the city.

Stores are designed to provide a hot atmosphere, the atmosphere of the cafe. In a corner, an old woman closed his eyes, humed when he sank in an automatic massage chair. In another, there are stacks of noodles.

“It is a symbol of south Korean comfort and warmth,” Kim explained.

While waiting for noodles are waiting, visitors are asked to comply with a brief survey about their mood and living conditions.

These are the growing number of people insulated in society when the city is trying to reach.

South Korea has changed the seismic change: in a generation, the war has gone from a violated agricultural society to develop the economy.

A few decades ago, it was common to see large families with six and eight children, living under the same roof. However, years of migration years have shrunken families and have become places like Seul in metropolitages.

Housing, high costs and tired workers have brought more young people to exclude marriage or parents, or both. At the other end, the old population who feels about the children who are racing is the old population.

“It’s the least sweet meal to say you’re alone? I’m going to agree to the older people who are eating. He would tear that question,” says Lee’s SOK, the directors of the store.

The kids that leave the house after a divorce, understands that it feels alone.

Hee-kyung’s first time – SOO lives around the daughter of his daughter, he arrived at the store immediately.

Like many visitors, hee-kyung was quiet on the first day, barely talking to others. The second time came, he began to talk to SOOK.

He worried the officials of Seoul to grow “lonely deaths”. The elderly people were dying alone at home, and their bodies were not found until days or weeks later.

This mission was soon expanded to deal with the loneliness. But Seoul is not the first to do this.

In 2018, the United Kingdom named a minister of loneliness. Japan followed the example, to establish an agency to deal with the problem that he was more pronounced in the Covid-19 pandemic.

The phenomenon of withdrawal from society is completely Japan is enough Name: Hikikomori. The South Korean has also risen by the number of young people Very competitive and cut from a high-precision society.

“Perhaps it was Pandemia that brought this,” Lee Yu-Jeong manages one of the solitude programs against Seoul.

His children are buried in their smartphones when they visit friends. “People today expresses having a friend’s network. Loneliness has become something that needs to be practiced as a society.”

The first step was to open a phone for people who need someone to talk. In 2023 by a national survey found a third of Korean adults to talk when no one can do homework or feel sad.

His advisers offer a 40-minute call to discuss any issues. Park Seung-Ah made three calls a day from her cubic.

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

“Heated comfort stores” continued quickly, lonely physical locations that were welcome.

DONGDAEMUN Location was received due to proximity to low-income housing, where the residents live only small apartments and parts.

Sohn, 68 years old, visits the store to see movies once a week and escape from escaping home.

“(Stores) should be opened before birth. It is good to spend only two or three hours,” he said.

Sohn has spent more than five decades after taking care of his life, his mother suffered an aneurism of the brain when it was a child. As a result, he never married or had children.

The cost of dedication was clear when he died.

If you walk with penniless and a cane, the bleeding of the brain has herself a few years ago, says there is a lot of places for him.

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

Shops were specially created to welcome those who are not welcome in other places, the Lee Bo-Hyun store manager.

A little room and go beyond a movie – those who offer air conditioning in the hottest summer months at the lowest income that cannot afford home.

Lonely is also believed to be a space that can sid the stigma to ask for help. Name Option – “Convenience Stores” – It was an intentional attempt to move away from psychiatric clinics, it is important to ask for a stigma in a country where there is still a stigma.

And yet, they can see when some of their reserves rides at the first time when they were composed of the experience of isolation.

Visitors are often uncomfortable to talk to another person or eating at first, Store Managers.

“If a typical loneliness is repeated in days and a half days, that’s more than a feeling,” Lee explained.

“People begin to avoid places to people. Many people ask us because they will not eat rumes with others.”

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

Months have just arrived at Hee-Kyung.

So has it affected the difference? In-Soook remembers conversation with a local paper. When he brought his daughter, he felt a sudden pang and the voice broke.

“I’ll hug you,” Hee-Kyung said.

He walked on the other side of the room and soot penetrated.