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Due to the increasingly thin wallet, 'half price' foods are popular these days.

After chicken and pizza, half-price sweet and sour pork was also served.



It was successful in attracting attention at a low price, but reporter Hyemi Lee covered whether there is any problem behind it.



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Sweet and sour pork, priced at 7,800 won per pack, made its first appearance at the supermarket.



The 30 morning batches ran out in less than 5 minutes.



Consumers lined up for half the price of a bowl of sweet and sour pork at a restaurant.



[Kim Ok-soon/Consumer: I bought it because people were lining up.

It's cheap, it's very cheap.]



A convenience store half-price chicken event, which gives you an extra piece when you buy 2 pieces, has also started.



The competition for half-price products, which started with 6,990 won chicken, is spreading across distribution prices.



From the point of view of consumers who are burdened with spending money as prices continue to rise, this half-price event is welcome, but there are several concerns behind the half-price and lowest-priced marketing.



First of all, it is the small business backlash.



Large retailers buy ingredients in bulk to lower their cost burden and increase sales to make a profit, but chicken restaurants and Chinese restaurants have a different position.



[Yoon Mi-young/Chinese restaurant operation: Food materials are very expensive right now, but it is so expensive that I barely manage it, but at that (mart) price, I can't sell it at all.

There may be more stores that are getting harder and harder.]



Because half-price products are sold in small quantities, there are also criticisms that they are 'bait products' to attract customers to the store.



[Seo Yong-gu/Professor of Economics at Sookmyung Women's University: Since large marts are offline stores, we need to increase the number of visitors, but there was a reason to visit large marts when the number of visitors was not increasing.]



Labor exploitation controversy was also raised.



Homeplus chicken cooking workers, who sold more than 460,000 chickens within two months of launch, demanded more manpower, saying they did not have time to go to the bathroom because they fried chicken.



In the era of high prices, the distribution industry is expected to continue to compete at half price, so we need to come up with a win-win strategy.



(Video coverage: Hwang In-seok, video editing: Lee Jung-taek, CG: Lee Jong-jeong)