South Korea’s biggest shopping extravaganza Korea Sale Festa will kick off next month in full scale at a time when the country would be shifting to a “living with Covid-19” mode with normalized business hours.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy on Friday announced its plan to run the country’s largest bargain sale season with lavish sales events across the country in cooperation with the 17 cities and provinces. It expected that this year’s events would attract more corporate participants compared to last year, considering the number of applications from 1,276 companies signed up as of Thursday, up 30 from the same period a year ago.

During the season on Nov. 1-15, various events will be held all across the country for promotion of the unique, regional products. For the festa, the government also will issue discount coupons and support special sale events online and offline.

The 2021 Korea Sale Festa Secretariat plans to confirm the detailed plan for discount and promotions events of each item and industry on Oct. 27.

“To boost domestic consumption through the event, the government, cities and provinces will go all-out to support the Korea Sale Festa and mitigation and distancing measures during the season, timed with the incremental transition to living-with-virus environment,” said Park Jin-kyu, 1st Vice Minister of the Trade, Industry and Energy.

Korea currently readies incremental return to normal lives with the full vaccination rate of 68.2 percent of the entire population or 35,003,778 as of midnight Friday, nearing the goal of 70 percent. It is expected the achieve 70 percent target this week, a threshold for a gradual return to restriction-free normalcy.

By Lee Ha-yeon

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]