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BBC NEWS in Seoul
Hee-kyung giggle when it enters the new “warm store contained”.
At the age of 29, she is probably not the person who would imagine that he wants to take advantage of the latest efforts of the South Korea capital to combat loneliness.
But the hi-kun visits the free-noodle of the frame every day and spends hours, talking to other visitors and social workers.
“I say to myself,” Another day, another escape from the feeling of lonely, “-says Hi-Kun.
The teenager escaped, she no longer talks to anyone from her family. The friends she met on the Internet through the overall love for the K-Pop Group Superjunior and they live far. Currently unemployed, she has no work comrades.
She lives alone, and at the time she watches cute videos with animals on her phone when she lies on the floor.
“I have no other place if it wasn’t (shop).”
Hee-Kyung-one of 20,000 people who visited four shops because they were open in March. In the first year, only 5,000 were waiting in the city.
This is a specific place, in the northeast district of the city of Dongdamun, every day sees 70 to 80 visitors.
Most of them are the 40s and the 50s, but the hi-kyun is far from being the only young man who accesses the store services.
The study in 2022 showed that 130,000 young people were estimated in the city – those between the ages of 19 and 39 – either socially isolated or closed. The same study also found that the share of households in the capital reached almost 40% – which was disturbed by the government, which tried to abolish the receipt and the level of marriage.
On the day the BBC visited, about a dozen visitors – men and women, young and old – sat on the benches or fell asleep in the styles, watched the movie together.
“We have a movie days to encourage a low-level connection,” whispered by Kim Se-Hehon, the city’s counter-city department manager.
The shops are designed to offer a warm, café atmosphere. In one corner, the older woman closed her eyes as she sank into the automatic goubling massage. The other has a pile of noodles.
“The strap is a symbol of comfort and warmth in South Korea,” explains Kim.
Waiting for the noodles to cook, the visitors are invited to fill out a short survey about their mood and living conditions.
This is just a few growing number of socially isolated people to whom the city is trying to reach.
The change of South Korea survived the seismic: in general the generation it moved from the destroyed agrarian society to the developed economy.
A few decades ago, it was usually seen by large families with six -oysters living under one roof. But the years of migration into cities squeezed families and turned places such as Seoul into spreading metropolitan areas.
Inaccessible housing, expenditures and grueling working hours forced more and more young people to reject marriage or paternity, or both. On the other hand, aging a population that feels neglected children who are racing to keep up.
“You know that the saying is the least delicious food is the one you have?
After the divorce and her adult children who leave the house, she understands how one feels.
For the first time, when the X -Kun – the age of the daughter in the juice – came to the store, she immediately got into her eyes.
Like many visitors, Hi-Kun was quiet on the first day, barely talking to others. The second time she came, she started talking in the juice.
It was worried that there was an increasing number of “single deaths” concerned about Seoul’s official. The elderly died at home alone, and their bodies were found for a few days or weeks.
This mission soon expanded to solve the loneliness itself. But Seoul is not the first who did it.
In 2018, the UK appointed the minister alone. Japan followed the example, creating an agency for solving the problem, which, she said, became more pronounced in the Covid-19 pandemic.
Phenomenon of abandoning society at all In Japan, it is quite common that he has a name: Hikingomor. South Korea also had an increase in the number of young people voluntarily cut off from a very competitive and demanding society.
“Perhaps it was the pandemic that led to this,” says Lee Yuang, who runs one of the anti-Lithuanian programs in Seoul.
She notes how her children remain buried in their smartphones when their friends visit. “Today, people express how difficult it is to have a network of friends. Loneliness is something that needs to be addressed as a society.”
The first step was to open a hotline for people who need to talk to. In a nationwide poll of 2023, she showed that there was no one who sought help in homework or talk when he feels sad in the third Korean adult.
Its advisers offer a 40-minute call to discuss any topic. The SEUNG-AH Park made three calls a day from its cabin.
“I was surprised to see that many young people wanted these classes. They wanted to share the burden on their breasts, but often there is a dynamics of force with parents or friends. So they come to us.”
“Warm shops that are thwarted” go fast, the physical place where the lonely ones were welcomed.
Dongdaemun’s location was chosen due to the proximity to low -income housing, where residents live only in tiny, apartments.
Sleep, 68 years old, visits the store once a week to watch movies and avoid his tight home.
“(Stores) had to open before I was born. Good even two or two hours,” he says.
The dream spent more than five decades of his life, taking care of his mother who suffered aneurysm in the brain when he was a child. As a result, he never married or had children.
The cost of dedication became clear when it died.
Parsha and gait with a cane since a few years ago suffering from brain hemorrhage, he says there are not many places for him.
“Places are worth the money, the transition to the movies is worth the money,” he says.
The shops were created specifically to welcome those who are not welcome elsewhere, explains the head of the Lee Bo Hun shop.
They go beyond a little room and movie – offering air conditioning in the hottest summer months for those who on low income that cannot afford at home.
It should also be a space where the lonely can go to the Stigma request for help. Choosing a name – “convenience shops” – was a deliberate attempt to remove them from psychiatric clinics, important in the country where there is still a stigma against a request for mental health – especially among the elderly.
And yet, some of their reservations can still be seen when they first go through the doors that consist of their experience of isolation.
Visitors are often uncomfortable to talk to another person or eat together initially, says the head of the Lee shop.
“Typical loneliness, when it is repeated all day, months and six months, is more than feeling,” Lee explains.
“These people start avoiding places with people. So many people ask if they can take the frame because they will not eat with others.”
Lee will tell them that they do not need to talk. They can just sit at the same table and have noodles.
A few months have passed since Hy-Kun was one of the new quiet arrival.
So, did this change? In-Duk recalls the conversation, which was conducted with local paper. When she raised her daughter, she felt a sudden Pang, and her voice broke.
“I’m going to hug you,” Hi-Kun said.
She came from the other side of the room and hugged into the sound.