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| Customers shop at an unmanned convenience store. Korea Times file |
By Lee Kyung-min
Kim Hyeon-sik, a man in his 50s who runs an unmanned convenience store in the city of Sejong, south of Seoul, said the yearly increase in the hourly minimum wage stopped being a headache for him when he decided to operate an unmanned store.
"I don't know why I didn't buy the machine to do the job sooner. The minimum wage increases will never be a concern for me for good," he said.
According to Kye Sang-hyeok, head of the Convenience Store Franchisees' Association, this is how about 200,000 part-time workers at the country's convenience stores could jobs to machines in the coming months. The government said on June 30 that the state-set minimum wage will be increased to 9,620 won ($7.41) per hour, up 5 percent, or 460 won, from a year earlier.
Kye says that an increasing number of store operators have installed a kiosk to replace cashiers, and more will be inclined to operate unmanned stores to reduce labor costs in order to make ends meet.
The number of unmanned convenience stores operated by the four convenience store companies ― GS25, CU, 7-Eleven and Emart24 ― stood at 2,783 as of last month, 14 times the 200 in 2019. The spike was sharpest last year, as illustrated by the figure standing at 2,125, over four times the 499 in 2020.
Unmanned convenience stores operated by GS25 soared to 723 last month, up from 140 in 2020. It plans to add 250 more this year. And 7-Eleven, the first to embrace unmanned stores in 2017, has 330 now. Emart24 had 1,050 unmanned stores last year, up from 85 in 2019.
Some say behind their explosive growth is the minimum wage increases during the former Moon Jae-in administration. The figure increased to 9,160 won this year, up from 6,470 won in 2017.
According to the Korea Enterprises Federation (KEF) representing employers, Korea's minimum wage increased by a total of 41.6 percent over the past five years, four times higher than the average 9.7 percent consumer price jump during the same period.
OECD data cited by the KEF showed Korea's minimum wage relative to its median wage stood at 62.6 percent this year. This figure was up to 31 percentage points higher than Korea's advanced global peers such as the U.S., the U.K., Germany and Japan.
