Knife attack, Covid and heat wave signal red for economy

The summer vacation season has arrived amid torrential downpours and monsoons, but domestic demand is yet to overcome recent hurdles including knife incidents, sweltering heat and the resurgence of Covid-19 that are all weighing on summer spending.

Police commandos patrol a street of a shopping district in Daegu on Sunday. [NEWS1]

The summer vacation season has arrived amid torrential downpours and monsoons, but domestic demand is yet to overcome recent hurdles including knife incidents, sweltering heat and the resurgence of Covid-19 that are all weighing on summer spending.

A total of 12,000 police officers were deployed to 247 places nationwide over the weekend following knife-stabbing rampages in recent weeks that killed two and injured 16 people.

“Seeing officers with guns roaming around the shopping mall was reassuring but spooky at the same time,” a 36-year-old surnamed Lee said near Lotte Department Store Jamsil in southeastern Seoul on Saturday.

Armored vehicles as well as sunglasses-clad police commandos wearing stab-proof vests and armed with rifles were on patrol near Jamsil Station after one of the online threats named the area as a crime scene.

An armored vehicle is dispatched to Gimhae International Airport on Monday afternoon after an online post threatening to murder people and blow up the airport was uploaded in the morning. [YONHAP]

“I used to take the time to go window shopping here and there, but I am going home after buying what I need today,” the 36-year-old added.

On Thursday, a 22-year-old man named Choi Won-jong drove a car onto a sidewalk near a shopping mall in Bundang, Gyeonggi, and rammed five pedestrians before injuring nine more with a knife. A woman in her 60s who was hit by the car died Sunday.

On July 21, a 33-year-old man named Jo Seon stabbed a random stranger in his 20s to death near Sillim Station in southern Seoul and attacked three more pedestrians. The National Office of Investigation said 187 murder threats were made online as of 7 a.m. Monday since Jo's rampage. The police identified 59 suspects and arrested three of them.

Soaring temperatures, on top of public anxiety over random stabbings in crowded spaces, are also prompting people to stay home. The daily maximum temperature is forecast to linger around 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) throughout the week, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration.

Pedestrians carry umbrellas to avoid sunlight in a street in Samcheong-dong, central Seoul, on Thursday. [YONHAP]

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety advised the public to refrain from outdoor activities. Over 1,700 people have fallen ill from the heat between May and Saturday, up 45.3 percent on year, according to the KDCA. Twenty-one people are presumed to have died from the heat this year.

“Running the business was difficult enough during the rainy season, and now the heat is driving customers away,” an owner of a barbeque restaurant in Songpa District, southern Seoul, said. “We have moved all the outdoor tables and chairs indoors.”

Resurging Covid-19 cases are further dampening consumer spending. The number of Covid-19 cases has lingered at around 50,000 per day since late July, with the daily tally of cases last surpassing 50,000 on January 11.

The KDCA expects the daily number to climb to 60,000 from mid-August as more people stay indoors due to the sweltering weather. KDCA Commissioner Jee Young-mee on Wednesday urged people to reconsider wearing masks again to suppress the spread of the infectious disease.

Passengers wearing masks board a subway train at Suyu Station in northern Seoul on Wednesday. [NEWS1]

The resurgence “may play a role in cutting back outdoor consumption among the senior population and vulnerable classes,” according to Lee Eun-hee, a consumer science professor at Inha University.

Domestic demand during the summer vacation season has been pinned as a trigger to turn the Korean economy around going into the second half of the year. Domestic consumption in the first three months this year grew 0.5 percent on quarter to spearhead the 0.3 percent on-quarter economic growth but fell 0.1 percent in the April-June period.

“A third-quarter turnaround in domestic demand was anticipated from revenge buying during the summer vacation season, but the deteriorating weather and high demand for overseas travel could pare down domestic consumption,” said Seok Byoung-hoon, an economics professor at Ewha Womans University.

“The economy’s growth engine may lose power if consumption decreases.”

BY KIM KI-HWAN, SOHN DONG-JOO [sohn.dongjoo@joongang.co.kr]