[Initial Report] Looking for Rental

On the morning of the first day of the new year in the Year of the Blue Dragon, Gapjin year. Even on holidays, I wake up at six o'clock. Visiting my parents' home for Seollal, I went for a walk to avoid waking my family, who were still asleep. Just as I was feeling grateful that the morning air was not as cold as I had expected, my eyes caught a white piece of paper posted on the door of a store right in front of the apartment complex. It read, ‘For Rent’. It was a poster seeking a new tenant.

The inside of the small fruit shop, about 4 to 5 pyeong in size, was empty, but the plastic boxes that used to hold fruit were folded and stacked neatly in a corner of the store. This was proof that the ‘For Rent’ note had been posted only recently. Surely, just a few weeks ago, the store had been operating normally. Seeing the rental sign on the place where I often bought tangerines, strawberries, and apples for my family made the downturn in small businesses, which I had always felt was someone else’s problem despite seeing many ‘For Rent’ signs, hit home.

I have a similar memory. The toast shop I often visited near my office closed last month. It wasn’t a fancy store like the specialized toast chains on the market, but it was a place where I could enjoy warm toast with a mother’s touch early in the morning. Because of the unusually cold weather, I hadn’t gone to buy toast for a few days, and when I returned, a ‘For Rent’ poster had already been put up.

For many small business owners, this winter was probably exceptionally harsh. According to Statistics Korea, the retail sales index recorded a negative growth for the first time in 20 years from January to November last year. The retail sales index, including restaurants, declined for eight consecutive months from April last year, marking the longest period of decline since related statistics began in 2010. The reasons are varied: falling apartment prices, the burden of high interest rates, high inflation caused by war and abnormal weather, and a surge in endemic overseas travel. However, the impact has directly hit small businesses. The delinquency rate on loans for small business owners stood at 1.24% at the end of the third quarter last year, nearly double the 0.69% recorded at the end of 2022, clearly reflecting the hardships faced by small business owners.

That is why the shoulders of Choi Sang-mok, the newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance, are inevitably heavier. Our exports, which passed through a dark and long tunnel last year, ultimately succeeded in turning to an upward trend in the second half thanks to the resilience of key industries such as semiconductors and automobiles. Experts generally agree that this export momentum will continue into the first half of this year. However, the grassroots domestic economy still shows no signs of revival. Even if exports recover, it takes quite a long time for that warmth to spread throughout the economy. In the meantime, many more grassroots economic actors may collapse. Among them, the situation of small business owners is particularly serious.

The fruit shop owner who handed over well-packaged tangerines and apples, and the lady who fried eggs for the toast, both always wore smiles in front of customers. But behind those smiles might have been the pain and hardship of having to continue their businesses while accumulating debt. Unlike large corporations with the strength to withstand global economic crises, grassroots small business owners may be barely hanging on the edge of a cliff. I hope that the soon-to-be-announced ‘Choi Sang-mok’s New Year Economic Policy Direction’ will include bold and effective policies that can breathe warmth into the domestic economy.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.