Online bookstores hit hard by economic slump, heated competition
Unable to survive ever-heating market competition and economic downturn, one of South Korea's top five online bookstores will go out of business next month, industry sources said Wednesday.
Daekyo Libro (
), the fifth largest player, has suffered from management difficulties as online bookstores engage in fierce competition to discount prices amid deepening economic woes.
It will be the first of the country's big five online bookstores to drop out of the market since their first emergence in 1997.
According to industry sources, Daekyo, an educational service provider, sent formal documents to its book publishing subsidiary, Daekyo Publishing Co., Tuesday to impart its decision to pull out of the online bookselling business by Dec. 31.
Under the decision, the online bookstore will stop accepting new members from Thursday and cease taking book orders about 10 days before the closure, they said.
Daekyo's online bookstore officials confirmed the news.
"Last year, the company's revenues were more than 30 billion won ($27 million) but it could not escape a deficit," one of the officials said. "So, we decided to pull out of the business after analyzing the prospects for revenue growth." (Yonhap)