Seoul's 'warm-hearted convenience stores'
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Coping in our brave new world.
Seoul's 'convenience stores' fighting loneliness
Hee-kyung giggles as she steps into Seoul's new "warm-hearted convenience store".
At 29, she is perhaps not the person most would have imagined wanting to take advantage of the South Korean capital's latest efforts to combat loneliness.
But Hee-Kyung visits every day to grab the free instant ramen noodles and spend hours chatting with other visitors and social workers.
"I tell myself, 'another day, another escape from feeling lonely'," Hee-kyung says.
A teenage runaway, she no longer talks to anyone from her family. The friends she has she met online, through the shared love of K-pop group SuperJunior, and they live far away. Currently unemployed, she has no work mates to chat to.
She lives alone, and whiles away the time watching cute animal videos on her phone as she lies on the floor.
"I have no other place to go if it weren't for [the store]."
Hee-Kyung is one of 20,000 people to visit the four stores since they were opened in March. The city had been expecting just 5,000 in the first year.
This particular location, in the city's north-eastern district of Dongdaemun, sees around 70 to 80 visitors each day.
Most are in their 40s and 50s, but Hee-Kyung is far from being the only young person to access the store's services.
A 2022 study revealed an estimated 130,000 young people in the city - those aged between 19 and 39 - are either socially isolated or shut in. That same study also found the share of single-person households in the capital had reached nearly 40% - that alarmed a government that has been trying to reverse plummeting birth and marriage rates.
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I knew a retired guy who would go every day to sit in front of a grocery store with his buddies. He lived with his kids and their family so he wasn’t alone, but he really liked hanging out. Modern version of the Cracker Barrel at the general store, I suppose.
This sounds similar and it’s a great idea!
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Our neighbor (mid-70s) either bikes or drives to a nearby McDonald's pretty much every day around 10 am. He has a group of buddies there, and they sit around and do a coffee klatch thing.
During COVID they would get their coffees at the drive-thru and then sit outside and talk.
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Sort of related (it's all about connections), and near and dear to my heart..
People’s connection to nature has declined by more than 60% since 1800, almost exactly mirroring the disappearance of nature words such as river, moss and blossom from books, according to a study.
Computer modelling predicts that levels of nature connectedness will continue to decline unless there are far-reaching policy and societal changes – with introducing children to nature at a young age and radically greening urban environments the most effective interventions.
The study by Miles Richardson, a professor of nature connectedness at the University of Derby, accurately tracks the loss of nature from people’s lives over 220 years by using data on urbanisation, the loss of wildlife in neighbourhoods and, crucially, parents no longer passing on engagement with
My small success story.
I've managed to slowly introduce my neighbor to friendlier gardening. Got him to stop having all the trees and shrubs sprayed for bugs every month whether they needed it or not. He also stopped using Orkin, who used to come out monthly and spray the perimeter of his house for ants and spiders.
I gave him some big pots and leftover seed potatoes two years ago and he got hooked on the concept of growing some of his own vegetables. He added cucumbers to his crops last year, and this year he has two 4'x4' raised beds with romaine lettuce, cukes, tomatoes, and peas. And eight pots of Yukon Gold potatoes. A few weeks ago, he made his first batch of refrigerator pickles using his niece's recipe.
He also bought praying mantis cocoons and ladybugs to release in his garden.
I love it!!!
Now if I can only get him to stop using Grub-X....
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We were moving furniture at the lake house and my friend went over to McDonald’s for a coffee. He called me with great news:
“Steve! I found a bunch of guys at McDonalds who aren’t busy and can help us!
Only one problem - the youngest guy is 85!”
