She said she would splurge on a cup every day during her holiday. Online reservations for Jeju tee times were fully booked on one site, and the turnout at Eco Land Theme Park Golf & Resort seemed bigger than during the Chuseok holiday, usually the most crowded of the year, said sales manager Park Sung-wook.Īt a rest area near Seoul heading into the long weekend, a mother looked after her two daughters as she sipped an iced latte. The pandemic crushed Korea's exports in April, with the fastest drop since the global financial crisis signalling grim prospects for Asia's fourth-biggest economy to snap back from its deepest biggest contraction since 2008 in the first quarter.Īt Jeju's Sanbangsan, a rocky peak famous for yellow rapeseed blooms, cars queued for parking spots, while tourists - often without masks - asked strangers to take their picture. "The general unleashing of pent-up demand will lift consumption in the second quarter, but that won't do much in the face of a bleak outlook for international trade and dropping corporate investment," said Park Sang-hyun, chief economist at Hi Investment & Securities. South Korea's stock market has bounced 35% from the year's low in March.
Shares in Hyundai Department Store and Shinsegae Department Stores have rebounded by about one-fourth over the past month, while cinema chain CJ CGV surged more than 50%. The spree is boosting the economy after the pandemic knocked 40% off department-store sales in March from a year earlier, but economists caution the bounce will likely be short-lived. In Jeju travellers crowded the sandy beaches, ate Korean-style barbecue and hit the golf courses, many abandoning face masks and recent separation norms, to enjoy 20-degree Celsius (70 Fahrenheit) weather. A South Korean blog post on Wu's forecast was widely shared, while news outlets increasingly have used the term to describe the bounce-back in spending. "Revenge shopping" quickly spread online after Wu Xiaobo, an economist from neighbouring China, was cited discussing the emergence of "revenge consumption" in February. The government will relax the rules further from Wednesday, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said on Sunday. Seoul began easing curbs on April 19 and has still managed to bring down new daily infections from over 900 in late February to around 10 in the past week. With early-summer weather helping retail therapy return with a vengeance, the term "bobok sobi" - revenge shopping - has trended on the nation's social media, as people rush to make purchases delayed by social-distancing rules.Īfter an initial explosion in infections made South Korea the first major outbreak outside China from the virus and COVID-19, the disease it causes, the authorities have limited the spread with widespread testing, intensive contact-tracing and tracking apps, avoiding the long lockdowns seen in many countries. From malls in Seoul to jammed expressways leaving the capital to South Korea's southern vacation island of Jeju, shoppers and travellers crowded malls and beaches on the first long weekend since the country began easing coronavirus curbs last month.
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