Seoul to distribute emergency lights with siren for one-person shops

Emergency lights that sound a siren to signal an emergency outside will be installed at “one-person shops” in Seoul, such as cafes and nail salons where customers are served by a single person without other employees.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced on June 2 that it will distribute the emergency lights free of charge to 5,000 stores in the city. The move comes as a recent spate of indiscriminate crimes has increased citizen anxiety to the point that it topped the National Police Agency's list of top security issues for 2023. According to Statistics Korea, 63 percent of the 815,000 self-employed people in Seoul last year were running their own businesses alone without any employees. The businesses include cafes, skin care salons, real estate brokerages, and pharmacies.

Representatives from industries with many one-person shops, such as the Korea Real Estate Brokerage Association, the Korea Restaurant Association, the Korean Beauty Association, the Seoul City Council, the Korean Nail Beauty Association, the Korean Skin Care Association, and the Women's Small Business Owners Association, met with Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon last month and expressed their opinions that they often felt threatened by drunken customers in the evening.

The emergency lights, which Seoul distributes to single-person stores vulnerable to crime from this month, will be turned on outside the store when the emergency bell is pressed and also a siren will sound. By checking the location of the light and nearby closed-circuit (CC) TVs at districts’ control centers, police on duty at the centers can request a nearby patrol car to be dispatched.

Emergency notification texts will also be sent to up to five guardians pre-designated on the Seoul Metropolitan Government's Ansimi App, which is linked to CCTV cameras installed throughout Seoul.

Anyone who owns a one-person shop in the city can apply for the support, and even if there are two or more employees, it is possible to get support if one employee does shift work alone for a long time. Applications will be accepted through the Seoul Metropolitan Government's website (www.seoul.go.kr) until July 7, but may be closed early. The final applicants will be notified later this month after document review and on-site inspection.

※This article has undergone review by a professional translator after being translated by an AI translation tool.