For shopping malls in Busan, the days are dark or deserted

Three floors of Neospot, the first large shopping mall to open in Busan, were dark early afternoon yesterday. About 1,200 stores in the building were closed, as electricity has been cut now for more than six months. Only about 20 outlets on the first floor operated under makeshift electrical power, with few shoppers on hand. On the first floor, many stores were closed and had sale ads taped to their doors. “We put our store on the market, but it did not sell. So we just keep the store open,” lamented Sung Gi-su, 49, who runs a woman’s clothing store at the deserted mall. Zioplace, another large shopping mall in the same district, displayed a similar atmosphere: On three of its floors, more than half of the stores were shut down, bearing the attached “on sale” advertisements. Large shopping malls that have mushroomed in Busan since 2000 were hit hard by an oversupply and the economic slowdown, in contrast to the boom in the real estate market in the Seoul metropolitan area. Since 2000, more than 13,000 large shopping mall chains have opened in Busan, such as Neospot, Zioplace, Easebell and Migliore. Industry observers expected the large shopping malls to contribute to stimulating the local economy. Busan, despite being the No. 2 city in South Korea, has noticeably lacked large shopping malls, when large shopping malls in Seoul were raking in the cash. Industry analysts were wrong: Shopping malls fail to attract customers, and their businesses have been on decline. An excessive number of shopping malls popped up in the narrow commercial district, heading into cannibalistic competition. Cheap clothing started to flood in from China, which lured people to traditional markets or discount stores. Easebell was the first to go under in 2001. Neospot, the largest shopping mall for clothes in Busan, saw its electricity cut, and has been virtually out of business since November. It had 1,267 stores; now only 20 remain. “Most of the survivors run their stores at a loss,” said Song Dae-suk, 41, chairman of the merchants’ association for Neospot. “More than 1,000 merchants have lost up to several hundreds of million won each.” Citycore, which opened in August last year in the new Haeundae area, shares a similar experience. Because of slow sales, about half of the stores in the building were closed. Shopping malls that managed to stay alive are desperately looking for breakthroughs. Zioplace is considering transforming itself into an entertainment shopping mall. Migliore will launch an Internet shopping mall. by Kim Guan-jong