As warehouses inch closer to residential areas, a South Korean journalist looks into the safety and social concerns of this urban transformation
Coupang, South Korea’s largest e-commerce platform, is rapidly expanding its delivery network across the country, with a growing number of massive fulfillment centres popping up next to dense residential areas.
But a recent fire at Coupang’s Seoknam centre in the northwestern city of Incheon brought to light the rising safety and social concerns surrounding e-commerce rapid delivery. The fire took nearly 110 hours to extinguish, making it the second-longest firefighting operation for a logistics centre fire in South Korea’s recent history. The longest was in 2021, also at a Coupang centre in nearby Deokpyeong. Journalist Kim Da eun investigated the stark structural difference between these two fires in a recent piece for SisaIN.
The Deokpyeong facility had 387 residents living within a 500-metre radius. In contrast, over 6,600 people live within 500 metres of the Seoknam centre. An elementary school, parks, and homes sit directly adjacent to the now-charred building.
“Some neighbours are still complaining that there’s soot inside their houses. Coupang did say it’d pay for medical bills, but we’ll see…” said Joo, a real estate agent who stayed at a temporary shelter for days after the fire. Flyers announcing “Coupang Damage Support Claims” were posted in neighbourhood alleys.
As online shopping rapidly replaces traditional markets, giant fulfillment centres are moving out of remote industrial zones and into urban neighbourhoods. Companies favour these areas because of the cheap land and close proximity to their customers. Lax zoning regulations, which lack distance requirements between residential buildings and warehouses, are also contributing to this phenomenon.
In the city of Namyangju, northeast of the capital Seoul, a cold-storage warehouse was built only 30 meters from an apartment building. Gyeonggi Provincial Council member Kim Dong-young warned that “these high-risk logistics hubs are approved too easily without proper safeguards, repeatedly turning vulnerable neighbourhoods into back-end logistics bases.”
In rare cases, community opposition to these centres has proven successful. In 2022, in Incheon’s Geomdan district, residents blocked the construction of a logistics centre to preserve the neighbourhood’s community identity. The project was ultimately abandoned in 2025 as a result of the protests. [MB1] [YG2] But Choi Hyo, a Coupang labuor union official, wonders whether this action reflects a stigma against logistics labour itself.
“Is there anyone living in that apartment who doesn’t use the daily necessities or fresh groceries supplied by these fulfillment centers? Logistics centers handle the essentials people need to survive,” he told SisaIN.
As the US and South Korea ramp up trade deals worth billions in infrastructure, parallels are being draw between the two countries’ dependency on e-commerce platforms that often prioritise speed over safety.
Kim’s report ends with a quote from American author Alec MacGills: “Over time in its astonishing proliferation, Amazon had segmented the country into different sorts of places, each with their assigned rank, income, and purpose. It had not only altered the national landscape itself, but also the landscape of opportunity in America, the options that lay before people, what they could aspire to do with their lives.”
Could the same be said for South Korea?
The original article ‘대형 물류센터가 이 동네에 들어서는 까닭’ was first published in Korean by Kim Da eun for SisaIN on August 18, 2026.
SisaIN is a prominent South Korean current affairs magazine known for its investigative reporting.
Summary by contributing editor Yejin Gim.
Yejin’s take: I wanted to summarise this story because I think it reflects a deeper cultural paradox in South Korea today. The country’s rapid post-war industrialization was built on blue-collar labour. Yet older generations, driven by a desire for social mobility, pushed their children toward white-collar careers, fostering a societal bias against manual work. Today, while almost no one in South Korea can live without the convenience of e-commerce, this stigma against logistics labour persists. If we are to rely on these platforms as part of modern life, we cannot simply push their physical burdens and safety risks onto vulnerable neighbourhoods. Instead, we must confront how these facilities are integrated into our shared urban spaces and collectively negotiate their place in our daily lives.
