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is Poeun-ro, Mangwon-dong, Seoul, embracing the famous Mangridan-gil. Even if you look around 1.5km, there are more than 10 unmanned stores, which are popular these days. There are various types of pet supply stores, ice cream shops, photo studios, and so on, but the number of unmanned stores is increasing.



Reporter Ahn Seo-hyeon covered the story.



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man and a woman drinking alcohol without wearing a mask. Not only smoking, but also children riding bicycles around the store.



It all happened in an unmanned laundromat.



The police even come to the scene every night because of people who come to sleep.



[Mr. B / Unmanned laundromat operation: We have been reporting this for 5-6 hours without a mask for several days. You're a guest (I'm lying). I've never done (washed). We see it every day... ]



There are two main types of this unmanned store market.



One is to remove the checkout counter altogether, and simply take it with you to automatically checkout, and the second is to install an unmanned self-checkout counter so that customers can pay by themselves.



The first one is a state-of-the-art system typified by Amazon Go, and AI watches the shopping with various cameras and sensors, so even if you hide it in your clothes and go out, you can pay for everything.



However, most of the unmanned stores in Korea are self-checkout rather than high-tech.



It's often the last hope of small business owners, because they can't afford expensive Amazon-style installations.



[Mr. B / Unmanned laundromat operation: At night and in the morning, I keep checking the CCTV once in the middle. Maybe someone is weird... ]



Theft of unmanned stores is also steadily increasing year by year, and customer dissatisfaction increases when a machine or system malfunctions and the store does not run at all.



[Unmanned coffee shop operation: (machine breaks down) Every time a customer comes, I keep it open, take out (coffee), and pay. I did it 60 times by 7pm, me. (Guests) 'Why is the boss sitting there when it's unattended? It's Yooin, it's Yuin Caffeine' (said)... ]



In addition, since there are no restrictions on store openings, it leads to overcrowding of stores, which in turn leads to confrontations between small business owners, that is, conflicts between the euls.



[Professor Lee Jung-hee / Department of Economics, Chung-Ang University: In a word, I think we should start knowing that unmanned stores are not a store that I don't have to worry about.]



Enjoying the brilliance and closing the business with only debt

.

We need to look into the circumstances of the small business owners who are hiding the other side of the craze so that they don't become a 'floating cafe' style store. 



(Video coverage: Lee Seung-hwan, Yang Doo-won, Choi Dae-woong, video editing: Kim Cho-a, Writer: Lee Ji-yul, VJ: Kim Cho-a, CG: Hong Seong-yong, Choi Jae-young, Sung Jae-eun, Jeong Si-won, Ahn Ji-hyeon)