Sharing refrigerators full of ‘warm affection’ inside spread across country

Employees of the Imgye-myeon Community Service Center in Jeongseon-gun, Gangwon Province organize the \

"'Bok Nanumi,' 'Onbingo,' 'Hangbok-chaeum,' 'Dapumda.’ Even though the names are different, the affection inside the refrigerators is the same.”

Sharing refrigerators, which receive donations of food and other items and make them available to those in need, are spreading across the country. Mostly installed in accessible public welfare centers, sharing refrigerators are a welfare project similar to the German concept of Food Sharing. Donors who want to share can put food and other items in the refrigerators, and anyone who needs them can take them out and use them.

Until now, most of the cases have been that the public and private sectors, such as local governments, resident councils, and volunteer organizations, cooperate to operate sharing refrigerators.

Recently, however, social and religious organizations have begun to operate refrigerators independently without the help of local governments. It is more than welcome for low-income people who are finding it harder to eat properly due to high food prices.

Recently, at the Imgye-myeon Community Service Center in Jeongseon-gun, Gangwon Province, 30 to 40 low-income people visit every week and take food items from the refrigerator. The reason why elderly people living alone and recipients of basic living can take various groceries for free is that in April, the Imgye-myeon Residents' Association made an “Onbingo” refrigerator on the first floor of the center and opened it to the public. It was named “Onbingo” to mean sharing a warm heart with neighbors in need.

The members of the residents' association organize donated agricultural products and various foodstuffs in the refrigerator and distribute them to low-income people. Onbingo has never been empty because the food bank of the Jeongseon Regional Self-Support Center regularly sponsors various foods and groceries and also the residents voluntarily donate items.

"After discussing how to distribute local agricultural products to low-income families at last year's general meeting, we decided to operate Onbingo, a sharing refrigerator,” said Lee Jae-eok (54), chairman of the Imgye-myeon Residents' Association, in a phone interview on July 23.

Imgye-myeon, a mountainous village adjacent to Baekdudaegan Mountain Range, has a population of 3,334, of which more than 45 percent (1,502) are the elderly aged 65 or older. There are 886 basic livelihood recipients from 82 households and 28 people from 24 households in near poverty. Most of the basic livelihood recipients are elderly people who live alone without family care. As there are many vulnerable elderly people who are in desperate need of help from their neighbors, the number of cases using the shared refrigerator continues to increase.

Lee Dong-ok, an official at the Imgye-myeon Community Service Center, said, "There are many cases where life support workers who take care of elderly people living alone take out groceries from the fridge and deliver them to the elderly after writing their personal information in the goods delivery ledger," adding, "The response of low-income people about the sharing refrigerator seems to be very good."

It was only nine years ago that the sharing refrigerator business began in Gangwon Province. From its first implementation in 2015 in Joyang-dong, Sokcho, to 2017, the number of sharing refrigerators has grown from just four or five to 55 in nine counties and cities, including Chuncheon, Gangneung, Donghae, Sokcho, Samcheok, Pyeongchang, Jeongseon, and Goseong.

As a welfare platform that provides food and groceries to neighbors in need, the sharing refrigerator is expanding to most regions of the country, including South Chungcheong Province and Gyeonggi Province.

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