A cooling shelter for delivery workers in Seoul’s Yongsan District. Courtesy of Yongsan District Office
For the thousands of delivery couriers, postal workers and gig laborers weaving through the dense, steep alleys of Seoul, the arrival of the summer season brings an increasingly perilous threat: severe heat exhaustion. With concrete heat islands accelerating urban temperatures, municipal authorities are transforming civic infrastructure into an active shield for the city's most vulnerable workers.
The Yongsan District Office said Wednesday that it launched a coordinated extreme heat safety initiative centered at the Yongsan Workers Support Center. The defensive strategy combines immediate physical relief with an unprecedented expansion of operating hours for municipal cooling centers, specifically targeting "mobile workers" whose livelihoods depend on continuous outdoor exertion.
The district has deployed cooling infrastructure stock-piled with 2,000 bottles of specialized spring water, subsidized through a joint campaign with the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency. Industrial ice chests have been positioned both inside and outside the facility, giving transit couriers access to hydration resources on the fly without disrupting strict delivery schedules.
