The stationery and toy wholesale market located in Changsin-dong, Jongno District, Seoul (Yonhap)
SEOUL, May 5 (Korea Bizwire) — Once bustling with children and parents shopping for notebooks, pens, and toys, the alleyways of Seoul’s famed Changsin-dong stationery and toy market now echo with silence. On what used to be one of the busiest shopping days of the year—Children’s Day—a handful of families wandered through the stalls, their presence a faint echo of past decades.
“Ten years ago, this market would be packed on Children’s Day,” said Ms. Lee, 68, who has run a shop in the area for 43 years. Gesturing toward a quiet row of shops, she added, “Now, it’s rare to see such crowds.”
Today, only a few toy stores still draw visitors. The aisles lined with traditional stationery and novelty supplies, once a magnet for schoolchildren, now sit largely untouched.
Stationery shops, or munbanggu as they’re called in Korean, have seen their numbers plummet from around 30,000 in the 1990s to fewer than 7,800 as of early 2024, according to Statistics Korea and the Stationery Distribution Cooperative. These mom-and-pop stores, once fixtures near schools and community hubs, are quietly disappearing.
The Hwanghak-dong stationery market in Seoul’s Dongdaemun district, known for its concentration of stationery wholesalers
The reasons are manifold. A major blow came in 2011 when the government rolled out a nationwide “learning materials support system,” providing essential school supplies directly to elementary students. Schools began sourcing from large vendors through the Public Procurement Service, sidelining local stationers in the process.
At the same time, Korea’s declining birthrate has reduced the school-age population. Big-box retailers and convenience stores, offering cheap and diverse stationery products, have further eroded the market. The pandemic accelerated a pivot to online shopping, dealing another blow to physical shops.
“I’ve worked in this market for over 20 years,” said one middle-aged vendor. “Online orders really surged during COVID-19. This year’s been the worst I’ve seen.”
The spread of digital devices like tablets among schoolchildren is accelerating the trend. “My daughter just started school, and her grandparents bought her all these notebooks and pens,” said Ms. Kang, a 42-year-old mother. “But all the kids use tablets now—they’re just not needed.”
In a bid to survive, some remaining stationers are transforming into unmanned stores—selling stationery or even ice cream in fully automated shops. While such changes reduce labor costs, their long-term viability remains uncertain.
Industry associations are calling on the government to include neighborhood stationery stores in the learning materials distribution program and to curb the encroachment of large retailers into the stationery market.
As South Korea’s urban landscape evolves, the humble munbanggu—once a symbol of childhood and neighborhood life—may soon become a relic of the past.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
