Lee, a 62-year-old who runs a small cafe in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, has recently been struggling with a shoplifting problem. He discovered that a customer who visited as a regular had secretly taken a 2,000 won cookie from the display counter while waiting for his ordered coffee.
"I even secured CCTV footage, but the damage appears to be less than 20,000 won, so I'm wondering whether to report it," Lee said. "With raw material prices rising, my worries are already significant, and when ambiguous thefts like this keep happening, I feel like shutting down the business."
Amid the so-called "triple-high phenomenon" of high prices, high interest rates and high exchange rates deepening the woes of self-employed business owners, small-value damage cases targeting small merchants — including petty thefts under 100,000 won and dine-and-dash incidents — are showing no signs of declining.
According to data submitted by the Korean National Police Agency to Rep. Chae Hyun-il of the Democratic Party of Korea and obtained by the Seoul Economic Daily on Tuesday, the preliminary tally of petty theft crimes involving amounts under 100,000 won reached 74,244 cases last year. This marks an approximately 40% increase from 53,060 cases in 2020. Ultra-small thefts in the thousands of won range are also rising. Thefts under 10,000 won totaled 23,403 cases last year, nearly double the 12,991 cases recorded in 2020.
While petty theft is clearly a crime, when the damage amounts to just 10,000 to 20,000 won, the time and cost burden of police reports and investigations often outweigh the loss. As a result, many self-employed owners give up on reporting despite suffering damage, leading to analysis that the actual scale of petty theft may be larger than statistics suggest.
A self-employed owner surnamed A, who runs an unmanned store in Seoul's Gwangjin District, said, "Recently, some customers pretended to scan barcodes but actually took items without paying." He added, "I was told it's difficult to prove intent and that I might have to take it to civil court, but I can't file a lawsuit just to recover a few thousand won."
Dine-and-dash cases are also on the rise. According to the Korean National Police Agency, reports of dine-and-dash and fare evasion reached 136,835 cases last year, a record high. Related reports have steadily increased from 105,547 cases in 2020 to 120,818 in 2023 and 129,984 in 2024.
Experts analyze that the prolonged economic downturn and the increase in unmanned stores are contributing to the spread of small-value damage crimes. As high prices continue, the number of vulnerable people struggling to afford a single meal has grown, while unmanned stores have rapidly expanded to reduce labor cost burdens, exposing more self-employed owners to petty theft. Some also point out that the relatively light punishment for dine-and-dash limits its effectiveness in preventing repeat offenses.
Lee Yoon-ho, a professor of police administration at Dongguk University, said, "Beyond survival-driven crimes, the nationwide increase in unmanned stores is also significantly contributing to the rise in petty theft." He added, "Since there are limits to police administrative capacity, it is necessary to establish an efficient response system while self-employed owners operating unmanned stores also need to strengthen their security systems."
Rep. Chae also said, "Even if the scale of theft is small, the damage felt by small merchants is significant." He added, "We need to build a tight social safety net to minimize survival-driven crimes and the damage they cause."
