[Yesan Traditional Market. Photo Credit to Min Hyuk Yoo]

The traditional market located at Yesan was finally reopened, renewed and polished, with new items and high tech facilities.

The main leader that contributed to this result was Baek Jong Won, a famous chef influencer. 

Thanks to his investment of over 3 thousand million won, many retailers who were at the brink of bankruptcy were saved.

Baek Jong Won used his experience in his career as a chef for over 25 years, not just to create new menus such as apple korean pancake, green onion oil noodles, and LA cow ribs, but also to renew shops’ names and interior designs.

The names originated from village names in Yesan, such as Bongsan Udon or Ogamyeon Snack Bar, and are said to be used to promote the county’s society. 

The result of Baek Jong Won’s labor shined off by reaching 15,000 visitors on the first day, and it is now reaching 230,000 visitors per month.

However, this is just a successful case thanks to a famous person's help. Most traditional markets were and are not able to reach this level of success.

Before the Covid Pandemic, most people preferred to visit big discount markets, for the advantage of  close proximity, cheap prices, and  the hospitable climate. 

According to Yeonhap News, in 2018, big marts striked 35.6% as a mainly shopped store.

But on the other hand, traditional markets hardly passed 14% as a main shopping store. 

Also, in 2019, according to KORCHAM, or the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, traditional markets selected big marts as their biggest threat to survival, by 28.8%, and Internet shopping malls as 27.1%.

But after the climax of Covid-19, the trend of the young changed to a “staying home trend”, and delivery services developed alongside it. Also, the retro trend returned to light.

Furthermore, the young preferred traveling inland rather than abroad, and filming their experiences and posting on SNS, which was the key to bringing more individuals of the MZ generations to traditional markets. 

It was at this point where Traditional markets and small retailers started to change.

They actively changed interior and exterior designs of their stores and brought in new technologies such as self-serving robots.

Additionally, many traditional markets around the country are introducing delivery applications specialized for this purpose to their stores.

Through this advancement, they met the needs of the MZ generation and started to rise back to the mainstream.

It is true that the number of traditional markets has decreased to about 1,200 in 2020.

However, due to the fact that we can’t let go of the benefits such as advertising our country to the world (ex. the Sinpo International Market, which is built next to the Kimpo International Airport, sells traditional snacks to foreign tourists), traditional markets are developing to catch up with the trend.

For example, the Danyang traditional market used their community specialities, garlic, to their advantage.

The market actively advertised their food by creating garlic characters, and creating garlic shaped menus in famous coffee shops in the market. 

As a result, the Danyang traditional market is called the “King of traditional markets”, and is selected the “9th” 8 sights of Danyang, with over 120 stores in 2023 and crowded all the time.

Like this, the traditional market has now started to take place as a mainstream “hot-place”, and we’ll have to watch further on to see how these markets affect our lives.