<Anchor> In



a seafood market in Gimpo, electricity was cut off, so fish and other food materials had to be thrown away.



Reporter Park Chan-beom covered the circumstances because the building management company was in arrears for electricity bills.



<Reporter> Even in the



middle of the day, the seafood market is dark.

The merchant takes the dead fish out of the tank.



Enlarging an image


This is because the water tank and refrigeration equipment all stopped operating as the electricity supply was cut off for over 24 hours on the last 3 days.



[Tak Eun-hee / Seafood Market Merchant: Salted chanterelle, salted cod roe, salted fish oyster, everything was thrown away.

The salted fish are very expensive.]



Even the restaurant on the upper floor of the building was damaged.



[Gomiseon/Seafood Market Merchant: I think I should throw it away.

I have to throw this away too.

This is cucumber, scorched and rotten.]



All the live fish died and 10 stores were damaged, including a merchant who said they lost 10 million won.



[Jeong Eul-soo/Seafood Market Merchant: Flatfish, flounder, flounder, sea squid, sea cucumber, shellfish, ...

I think it will be somewhere between 8 million won and 10 million won.]



These are various food materials that merchants are trying to dispose of.



In the end, it is a situation where you have to put everything in a food waste bag and throw it out.



These live fish, as well as salted seafood and kimchi that have been refrigerated and spoiled, are subject to disposal.



The electricity supply was cut off due to non-payment of electricity bills by the building management company.



After several power cut warnings, KEPCO stopped supplying electricity when the arrears exceeded 60 million won.



[Jeong Eul-soo/Seafood Merchant: We thought that the management company that turned off the electricity was responsible because we managed all the management fees and made the deposit…

.]



The management company explains that it is because there are a lot of vacant stores and the maintenance fee has not been collected enough to pay the electricity bill.



While building store rentals have been low since COVID-19, some vacant store owners have not been able to pay their management fees to the management company on time as they have no monthly rent income.



The management company said that they did not receive even half of the 40 million won in the monthly maintenance fee, and said that it was inevitable that electricity bills would continue to be arrears.



In a sluggish economy, the 'domino effect' of delinquency between store owners and management companies occurred, leaving only merchants to bear the damage due to power outages.



(Video coverage: Kim Seung-tae, Video editing: Ha Seong-won)