Dicing with death to deliver a meal: how South Korea’s appetite for ordering in endangers drivers
- At least 86 teenagers have been killed and hundreds injured making food deliveries in South Korea in the last decade
- The country has become the world’s fourth-largest food delivery market, with one platform doubling food deliveries in the last year alone
The proliferation of delivery apps and the rise in single-person households is fuelling the appetite for food deliveries, with the country’s biggest delivery platform Baedal Minjok doubling its deliveries in the last year alone. It made 36 million deliveries in August, translating to about 1.2 million per day.
But this comes at a cost. The death of a teenage delivery driver last year has highlighted the pressure drivers face to make deliveries as quickly as possible, often driving recklessly and ignoring traffic rules without full accident insurance to get the food delivered while still warm.
The most popular of these food deliveries is fried chicken, according to Baedal Minjok. Pizza, Chinese food and steamed pork dishes are some of the other preferred menu items for people hungry for a quick lunch or a late-night meal. Diners can even order a full Korean dinner set that includes soup, meat, rice and banchan (side dishes).
Even though most food orders are still placed through phone calls, the proportion made via delivery apps increased from 24.9 per cent in 2017 to 34.7 per cent in 2018, according to TrendMonitor.
Baedal Minjok, which started in 2011, has over 80,000 affiliated restaurants. Its operator, Woowa Brothers, became a unicorn start-up – a company worth at least US$1 billion – and Baedal Minjok’s net profit for 2018 was US$227.3 million.
