Yangju City Newly Designates and Expands Six Shopping Districts, Accelerating Integration of Neighborhood Commercial Areas into the Formal System

On November 10, Yangju City in Gyeonggi Province announced that it had newly designated or expanded the boundaries of six shopping districts within the city to promote the revitalization of local commercial areas.

Panoramic view of Yangju City Hall. Provided by Yangju City.

The newly designated shopping districts include Deokjeong Alley-Type Shopping District, Okjeong Main Tower Shopping District, and Okjeong Poly Plaza 5th Shopping District. In addition, the boundaries of three existing shopping districts-Garaebi Jungang-ro Shopping District, Eomsang Village Shopping District, and Yangju Picnic Furniture Complex Shopping District-have been expanded.

In April of this year, the city also newly designated two shopping districts. Now, just six months later, it has added six more, accelerating efforts to bring a diverse range of neighborhood commercial areas into the formal system.

Merchant associations in the designated shopping districts become eligible to participate in various support programs offered by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and Gyeonggi Province. In particular, they can now register as Onnuri Gift Certificate merchants, making them eligible for initiatives such as the "Win-Win Payback Program," which reimburses 20% of card spending in Onnuri Gift Certificates. Through such programs, small business owners are expected to receive tangible benefits.

To expedite the registration process for Onnuri Gift Certificate merchants, the city plans to both encourage individual online applications from merchants and directly visit stores that face difficulties with online applications to process bulk offline registrations, thereby enhancing convenience for small business owners.

A city official stated, "The designation of these shopping districts is a meaningful achievement, as it brings neighborhood commercial areas into the formal system and closely links them with government support policies for small businesses. Moving forward, we will continue to do our utmost to strengthen the self-sufficiency of neighborhood commercial areas and revitalize the local economy by expanding shopping districts in line with the government's policy of increasing the issuance of Onnuri Gift Certificates."

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