For consumers’ benefit, large discount stores should be allowed to operate 24/7, 365 days a year

The ruling party and the government are pursuing deregulation that would allow large discount stores to offer online dawn delivery for the first time in 13 years. It is long overdue, but welcome. Under the rigid business restrictions that ran from midnight to 10 a.m., large discount stores could not even get to the starting line in a retail market that has been rapidly reorganized around online commerce. This measure is meaningful at least in that it partially restores distorted competitive conditions to normal.

But to speak candidly, allowing dawn delivery alone is not enough. As long as the mandatory closure day system, the core regulation under the Distribution Industry Development Act, remains intact, this measure is likely to remain only a half-finished reform.

The regulations on large discount stores, introduced in 2012 in the name of protecting traditional markets, centered on mandatory closure twice a month, restrictions on late-night operations, and limits on new store openings.

At the time, the policy was designed on the premise that large discount stores and traditional markets were in a directly substitutable relationship. But more than a decade later, the competitive landscape of the retail market has changed completely. The main axis of competition has shifted not from “large discount stores versus traditional markets,” but from “offline versus online.” The share of online retail has risen steeply since the mid-2010s and now exceeds half of the overall retail market. By contrast, the market shares of both large discount stores and traditional markets have either declined together or remained stagnant.

The decision to allow dawn delivery should be understood in this same context. The essence of dawn delivery is “daily grocery shopping.” For everyday consumption centered on fresh food, continuity and convenience are key. But if the service is suspended twice a month, and on weekends at that, the flow of consumption is bound to be interrupted. Consumers will ultimately return to e-commerce platforms that allow ordering and delivery 365 days a year. As long as mandatory closure days remain in place, dawn delivery by large discount stores is structurally likely to remain only a supplementary service.

Moreover, more than 10 years of policy experience show that “business restrictions” have failed to strengthen the structural competitiveness of traditional markets. The survival and revitalization of traditional markets should not come from tying up their competitors’ business operations, but from enhancing their own competitiveness through digitalization, modernization, stronger branding, and tailored support.

What is more, the current system also poses problems from the standpoint of fair competition. Online platforms can operate 24 hours a day, but only offline large discount stores are constrained on weekends and late at night. When both sides compete for the same consumer demand, a structure in which only one side is subject to time restrictions can hardly be considered equitable. Policymakers must face the fact that when regulations excessively restrict only a particular business format, they may deepen market distortions rather than correct them.

The issue also needs to be reconsidered from the perspective of consumer choice. With the increase in dual-income households and changes in lifestyles, weekends and nighttime are in fact the most important shopping hours for many consumers. One cannot help but ask whether a system in which the state uniformly dictates, “Do not do business on this day,” is truly consistent with today’s consumer reality.

Allowing dawn delivery is clearly a meaningful starting point, but it must not become the end point. Discussion of the pending amendment to the Distribution Industry Development Act in the National Assembly should go beyond permitting online operations and expand to a full reexamination of the mandatory closure day system. Rather than stopping at partial easing at the local government level, this is the time to redesign the retail regulatory framework as a whole.

Now is the time to move away from a protection-centered regulatory paradigm and shift toward one centered on competition and innovation. The party that should decide when large discount stores open and close is not the government, but consumers and the market. If allowing dawn delivery is “the restoration of common sense,” then abolishing mandatory closure is “the restoration of principle.” Whether to normalize competition in the retail industry and give consumers back their time now depends on the choices of policymakers.

Gwang yong Go, Policy Director, Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

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Original title: 소비자 위해 대형마트 영업, 24시간·365일 허용해야

Author: Gwang yong Go

Date: 2026-02-19

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&idx=28614