'Is Homeplus Open?' website turns one-note joke into charity

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

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Mon, October 2, 2023 | 08:14

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'Is Homeplus Open?' website turns one-note joke into charity

Posted : 2022-05-15 13:47

Updated : 2022-05-17 14:35

The "Is Homeplus Open?" website shows that Homeplus, as well as Lotte Mart, E-mart and Costco, is open at the time the image was made. / Screengrab from Is Homeplus Open?

By Jon Dunbar

The creator of ishomeplusopen.com, a singular-purpose but sometimes lifesaving website, has revealed his identity, surprising even some of his friends, in an announcement the website was adding a new feature supporting charities.

"I wasn't trying to keep it a secret," its creator, Jake Kwon, told The Korea Times. "There haven't been many opportunities to bring it up. I figured if anyone was curious, they would email me and ask. So far no one did."

Kwon, who works as a producer for CNN based at the network's Seoul bureau, launched the site in January 2016 and started promoting it Feb. 1 that year, due to frustrations remembering the operating hours of Homeplus, a major retail store chain, as well as its local competitors Lotte Mart and E-mart plus the U.S.-headquartered Costco.

According to a law passed a few months earlier, the hypermarkets must close down for two days each month, as part of a government effort to allow smaller businesses and traditional markets more of an opportunity to sell their services and products. The two chosen dates are the second and fourth Sunday of each month in most locations, but not all. For many consumers, the law can be a real headache because the shutdown dates aren't so intuitive.

Jake Kwon / Courtesy of Jake Kwon

Kwon explained why the website address namedrops only the former Samsung subsidiary, saying the closest such store to his home is a Homeplus. In his online announcement, he said he often walked 20 minutes to the store, only to find out it was one of the Sundays when it shut down. To help him figure it out, and to practice his HTML coding, he created the website.

But the site took off, as people really were checking online whether the stores were open. Kwon says the site has since received over 157,000 users and 345,000 visits. Last month alone, he received 4,700 visits.

Originally it was intended as a conversation piece, a "small protest against the law that made me walk several hours in total for a closed store" or a joke. Kwon cited similar one-note joke sites like "Is Jonah Hill Fat?" and "Is Gucci Mane in Jail?" as inspiration, where the joke is in opening a website only to get a simple yes/no answer.

The site is minimalist in design and function, as it does what it says right in the URL: answer whether Homeplus is open. Visitors to the site get an all-caps "YES" or "NO" answer, depending on the status at the time of checking.

Further down, there is also a timer showing how long until they next open or close, and below that it also indicates whether the stores will be open the following Sunday. At the very bottom of the page, he lists several other retail stores outside Seoul that have even more irregular operating hours, with some closing at 11 p.m., some closed on Wednesdays and some with even more irregular hours.

But there's a new feature now, which Kwon broke his silence to announce to the world: now, visitors see a prompt asking them to support a charity, followed by two randomly selected charitable organizations from a list selected by Kwon. The organizations include Korean Unwed Mothers Families' Association (KUMFA), Korea Legacy Committee for Elderly and Migrants Trade Union. There were eight at the time of interview, although Kwon expressed interest in increasing the list.

A new prompt on the "Is Homeplus Open?" website recommends two randomly selected charities for users to consider supporting / Screengrab from Is Homeplus Open?

"If this site saved [users] 30 minutes or hours like it did for me, perhaps they will be inclined to give a few dollars or won to help others. If a few of those 4,000 visitors donate each month, it could be helpful," Kwon said. "I don't know if this will turn out to be substantial but hopefully a seemingly silly idea will prove useful for someone again."

Visit ishomeplusopen.com to see if Homeplus (as well as E-mart, Lotte Mart and Costco) is open in Korea right now.

jdunbar@koreatimes.co.kr