[Gettyimages Bank]
According to the Korea Internet & Security Agency, South Korea's internet watchdog, the country has an online secondhand trading market standing at about 24 trillion won ($19.5 billion) as of December 2021, about six times larger than four trillion won in 2008. The watchdog analyzed that the growth of the market was accelerated by the increased consumption of goods by individuals. People bought more new things more frequently and sold old items through online markets.
Secondhand trades in South Korea are mainly done in an old-fashioned meet-up style where the seller and buyer select a place to meet and trade. Remote trading using local parcel delivery services became popular during a coronavirus pandemic due to social distancing guidelines, but fraudsters disguised as sellers tricked buyers to send money first without sending the actual item. To prevent such situations, Joonggonara partnered with 7-Eleven on January 9 to test a safe pick-up service for secondhand traders at some 195 stores in Gangnam.
Joongonara said that the online market platform operator and the convenience franchise officially launched the secondhand trade pick-up service. Joongonara said the test service was successful with more than one thousand items traded at Gangnam 7-Eleven stores during the two-week test period.
Now, Joongonara users can select from some six thousand 7-eleven convenience stores across the country to trade their secondhand items. The seller will leave the sold item at a designated store where the buyer will visit to pick up the goods.
"We will strengthen our monitoring system so that our customers can use our services more stably and improve inconveniences caused by lack of service to offer easy and convenient secondhand trading experiences," Joongonara head Hong Joon said in a statement on January 30.
Joongonara was launched as an online secondhand trading community of Naver, South Korea's web service giant in 2003. The online platform soon became the country's largest online secondhand marketplace with some 1.9 million registered users. Joongonara provided middlemen services for secondhand trades worth four trillion won in 2020.
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