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| Sinchon Boxquare, a mall made of shipping containers, is located in front of Sinchon Railway Station. / Couretesy of Seodaemun-gu Office |
By Kang Seung-woo
A mall made of shipping containers has opened in Sinchon, western Seoul, with high hopes it will boost the local economy and enhance youth employment.
Seodaemun-gu Office held an opening ceremony, Saturday, for "Sinchon Boxquare." The mall is made out of 29 shipping containers in front of Sinchon Railway Station — a stop on the Gyeongui Line.
The three-story, 745-square-meter facility was devised to help street vendors become more stable owner-operators, improve the street environment around Ewha Womans University and create employment via startup companies run by young entrepreneurs.
Through these, the district office hopes the new mall will help revitalize the economy of the region, which used to be bustling with college students and visitors but has lost many visitors to other newly emerging hot places such as Hongdae and Gangnam.
The container mall houses 32 stores on the first floor, 27 on the second floor and a rooftop park, where visitors can enjoy craft beer, concerts and other cultural events.
Twenty-three street vendors who were doing business near the university and 17 young startups have filled the shopping mall after being chosen through a review by the district office.
"Sinchon Boxquare is the nation's first public rental shopping arcade allowing street vendors in," a Seodaemun-gu official said.
Most stall keepers have no legal status, as occupying streets with unauthorized facilities is officially forbidden in Korea. In that respect, they have long been subject to crackdowns by the central and local governments, which used to regulate them and demolish their facilities.
As of last October, nearly 7,300 people were running street stalls in the capital. Only 1,000 among them had city permission, meaning over 6,000 vendors sold food and other merchandise on the streets illegally.
To build trust with street vendors, the district office held more than 40 business information sessions to communicate with them. Plus, in May it started providing customized consulting services and on-the-job training to the young startup owners as well as the street vendors.
"Minimizing removing street stalls, we are set to develop Sinchon Boxquare as a new model of improving the pedestrian environment through constant trust-building discussions with street vendors," district office head Mun Seok-jin said.
"We are planning to take advantage of Boxquare as a tool to develop the area around Ewha Womans University as a hot place to visit as we did to Sinchon by creating Yonsei-ro Street as a cultural hub."
The district office plans to replace old drain pipes with new ones, maintain the trees on the sidewalk and repair streetlights and sidewalks around the women's university, previously occupied by the street vendors.
