“Convenience Store” and loneliness in Seoul.

Hee-kyung giggled as she walked into Seoul’s new “Heart-hearted convenience store”.

At 29, she may not be the latest effort most people imagine to want to take advantage of the South Korean capital against loneliness.

However, Hee-kyung visits every day to grab free instant ramen noodles and spend hours chatting with other tourists and social workers.

“I told myself, ‘One day, another escaped loneliness’,” Hee-kyung said.

She is a teenager out of control and she no longer talks to anyone in her family. Through the shared love of K-Pop Group Superjunior, the friends she met online, who live far away. She is currently unemployed and has no work partner to chat with.

She lives alone, and the time she watches cute animal videos on her phone while she is lying on the floor.

“If it weren’t (the store), I had no choice.”

Since opening in March, Hee-kyung is one of 20,000 people visiting four stores. The city expects only 5,000 in its first year.

This particular location, in the eastern district of the northeastern region of the city, has about 70 to 80 tourists a day.

Most people are in their 40s and 50s, but Hee-kyung is far from the only young people to get store service.

A 2022 study shows that an estimated 130,000 young people (ages between 39) in the city are socially isolated or closed. The same study also found that the capital’s share of single families has reached nearly 40%, shocking a government trying to reverse the decline in birth and marriage rates.

On the day the BBC visited, there were about a dozen tourists – men and women, young men and women – sitting on benches or burrowing into bean bags and watching movies together.

“We have movie days to encourage low-level bonds,” whispered Kim Se-Heon, manager of the city’s loneliness countermeasures department.

These shops are designed to provide a warm, cafe-like atmosphere. In one corner, an older woman closed her eyes as she sank in a buzzing automatic massage chair. On the other hand, there is a bunch of noodles.

“Ramen is a symbol of comfort and warmth in Korea,” Kim explained.

While waiting for the noodles to cook, visitors are asked to fill out a brief survey about their mood and living conditions.

These are just a few of the growing number of social isolation the city is trying to achieve.

What happened in South Korea was earthquake: in a generation it had gone from a war-torn agricultural society to a developed economy.

Decades ago, extended families with six to eight children were usually seen living under the same roof. But years of immigration to cities has shrunk families and turned places like Seoul into metropolis.

Unaffordable housing, rising costs and hard working hours have led to an increasing number of young people refusing to marry or parenthood, or both. On the other side is an aging population that feels overlooked by children who are following the competition.

Lee In-Sook, a consultant at the store, said: “Do you know the worst meal is a meal you stay alone? I asked the elderly who I want to eat.

After divorce and her adult children leave home, she understands how it feels like to be alone.

Hee -kyung (about the age of In -Sook’s daughter) first arrived at the store and she immediately caught her attention.

Like many tourists, Hee-kyung was quiet on the first day and barely talked to others. The second time she came, she started talking to In-Sook.

It is the growing number of “lonely deaths” that have made people worried Seoul officials enough to take action. Elderly people die at home alone and do not discover their bodies until a few days or weeks later.

The task quickly expanded to coping with loneliness. But Seoul is not the first to do so.

In 2018, the UK appointed the Minister of Lonely. Japan followed the example by establishing an institution to address the problem that became more obvious during the 19th pandemic.

The phenomenon of completely withdrawing from society is Common enough in Japan, it has a name: hikikomori. There are also many young people in Korea Voluntary separation from highly competitive and strict social.

“Maybe it was the pandemic that caused this problem,” Lee Yu-jeong was busy managing one of Seoul’s counter-narrative plans.

She noted how her kids stayed on their smartphones when friends visited. “People today express how difficult it is to network a friend. Loneliness has become something that needs to be dealt with as a society.”

The first step is to open a hotline for people who need to talk to someone. A nationwide survey conducted in 2023 found that one in three Korean adults either have no one to seek household chores or talk to them when they feel sad.

Its counselors provide a 40-minute call to discuss any topic. Park Seung-Ah made three calls from her compartment every day.

“I was surprised to see many young people want these meetings. They want to share the burden on their breasts, but often have motivation with their parents or friends. They come to us.”

“Athletic Convenience Store” follows right after, a lonely physical location.

Dongdaemun’s location was chosen due to its proximity to low-income housing, where residents live only in small subdivided apartments.

Sohn, 68, goes to the store to watch movies once a week and escapes his narrow home.

“(The store) should have opened before I was born. It only takes two to three hours to spend it,” he said.

Sohn spent fifty years caring for his mother, who suffered from a cerebral aneurysm when she was a child. As a result, he never got married or had children.

When she passed away, the cost of dedication became obvious.

He said he didn’t say much since he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage a few years ago.

“It costs money to go to the cinema,” he said.

Store manager Lee Bo-hyun explained that the stores were created specifically to welcome people who are welcome elsewhere.

They go beyond some rooms and a movie – providing air conditioning in the hottest summers, providing air conditioning to those with low incomes.

It should also be a lonely space that can avoid the stigma of seeking help. The choice of name – “convenience stores” are intentional attempts to distance them from mental clinics, in a country where there is still stigmatization, unwilling to seek help for mental health, especially among older residents.

However, when they first crossed the door, some of their reservations could still see their quarantine experience.

Store manager Lee said visitors are often uncomfortable talking to others or having dinner together at first.

“The typical feeling of loneliness, if those days, months and half a year repeat, it’s more than just a feeling right now,” Lee explained.

“These people are starting to avoid being with people. A lot of people ask if we can bring ramen because they won’t eat with others.”

Lee will tell them they don’t need to talk. They can simply sit on the same table and have noodles.

It’s been months since Hee-kyung was one of the quiet newcomers.

So, has it made a difference? In-Sook recalls her conversation with local newspapers. When she raised her daughter, she suddenly felt pain and her voice broke.

“I’m going to hug you,” Hey-Keen declared.

She walked past the other side of the room and hugged the forest.