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Hundreds evacuated as blaze erupts in slum next to Seoul’s posh Gangnam district
SEOUL, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Fire swept through part of a shanty town in the South Korean capital, Seoul, on Friday, destroying 60 homes, many constructed from cardboard and wood, and forcing the evacuation of around 500 people.
Emergency services took five hours to put out the blaze, which erupted before daybreak in Guryong Village, a slum that lies just across a highway from Seoul’s affluent Gangnam district. Officials said no casualties were reported so far.
Home to around 1,000 people, Guryong is one of the last remaining shanty towns in the capital and has become a symbol of inequality in Asia’s fourth largest economy.
Ten helicopters and hundreds of firefighters, police and troops joined the effort to put out the blaze which, according to officials, razed almost one in ten of the 600-plus homes in Guryong.
“I saw a flash from the kitchen and opened the door, and flames were shooting from the houses next door,” said Shin, a 72-year-old woman whose home was completely burned in the inferno.
“So I knocked every door nearby and shouted ‘fire!’ and then called 119,” she said, giving only her surname.
[1/4] Smoke rises from a fire at Guryong village, the last slum in the glitzy Gangnam district, in Seoul, South Korea, January 20, 2023. Yonhap via REUTERS
Kim Doo-chun, 60, said his family was unaffected by the fire but he told Reuters that the village was constantly at risk of disaster due partly to its cardboard homes and narrow alleys.
“If a fire breaks out in this neighbourhood, the entire village could be in danger if we don’t respond quickly. So we’ve been responding together for decades,” said Kim, who has lived in the area for 30 years.
The slum has long been prone to fires and flooding, and safety and health issues abound.
The government had unveiled plans for redevelopment and relocation after a huge fire in late 2014, but those efforts have made little progress amid a decades-long tug of war between landowners, residents and authorities.
The civic authorities for Seoul and Gangnam district, and state-run developers have been at odds over how to compensate private landowners in Guryong and have yet to agree whether residents, most of whom are squatters, are entitled to government support for relocation and housing.
Informed about the fire while in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, President Yoon Suk-yeol ordered all-out efforts to prevent a bigger disaster, his spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye said.
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon visited the still smouldering village and asked officials to prepare to relocate affected families.
Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Gerry Doyle & Simon Cameron-Moore
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Poshmark to Sell Itself for Less Than Half Its IPO Price to Korea’s Naver
South Korean internet giant
Naver Corp.
035420 -8.79%
is paying $17.90 a share in cash for Poshmark, the companies said. Poshmark priced its initial public offering at $42 a share in January 2021 and the shares more than doubled on their first day. The stock has slumped since and closed Monday at $15.57.
The transaction values Poshmark at about $1.6 billion, including about $580 million of cash reserves, Naver said. Poshmark’s peak market capitalization was $7.3 billion, which it hit on the day it went public, according to FactSet.
Poshmark looks and behaves much like Instagram, motivating sellers to give and receive comments and “likes” and allowing users to follow their favorite sellers. Similar to
eBay Inc.,
EBAY 1.11%
sellers take photos of their own items and sell them directly. Poshmark collects fees on sales on its marketplace but doesn’t hold any inventory.
While the Covid-19 pandemic gave a boost to online shopping, Poshmark’s losses have widened and its revenue growth has slowed this year. After reaching $90.9 million in revenue in the March quarter, revenue edged down to $89.1 million in the June quarter and Poshmark forecast it would come in between $85 million and $87 million for the September quarter.
Naver is South Korea’s largest web portal and operates as a major search engine ahead of Google locally. It also offers mobile payments and online shopping. Outside Korea, Naver is behind the Line messaging app and is a major operator of webtoons, or digital comics made for reading on online and mobile platforms. In 2021, the South Korean company acquired Wattpad, a Toronto-based storytelling platform, for $600 million.
The companies said the Poshmark transaction is expected to close by the first quarter of 2023. The Redwood City, Calif., company will become a stand-alone U.S. subsidiary of Naver. Poshmark’s founder and Chief Executive
Manish Chandra
and his team will continue to lead the company.
Founded in 2011, Poshmark has billed itself as a way to marry sustainable commerce with social media and says it has more than 80 million registered users. The number of active buyers—people who purchased on the site in the past 12 months—was about 8 million in the last quarter, the company reported. It faces competition from
Etsy Inc.,
eBay,
ThredUp Inc.,
the
RealReal Inc.,
Facebook Marketplace and other marketplaces that let people buy or sell secondhand goods.
The companies said the combination would help Poshmark expand into Korea and other parts of Asia. Poshmark currently offers its app to users in the U.S., Canada, Australia and India. It would also give Naver a bigger foothold in the U.S. market.
Naver expects the deal will enable savings totaling around $30 million for the two companies. That includes gains from reducing redundant costs and Poshmark’s expected gains from accessing Naver’s live-commerce solutions and other technologies, said Kim Nam-sun, Naver’s chief financial officer, in a conference call.
Naver’s shares fell by nearly 9% on Tuesday following news of the Poshmark acquisition.
At a press conference in Seoul, Naver CEO
Choi Soo-yeon
played down the stock slide. The purchase was made at a very reasonable price, she said, expressing confidence that the so-called customer-to-customer market that Poshmark operates in would continue to grow in the years ahead.
With the acquisition, Naver expects to help Poshmark improve its marketing campaigns and to pursue partnerships with the South Korean company’s own offerings. As an example, Ms. Choi cited Weverse, an online marketplace for K-pop merchandise it jointly owns with HYBE Co., the agency behind boy band BTS.
“We will continue to pursue new projects and study the best ways to create service synergies between the two firms,” Ms. Choi said.
Write to Jiyoung Sohn at jiyoung.sohn@wsj.com
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