[Anchor]

These days, many shops keep their doors wide open while blasting their air conditioning. While this is done to draw in customers exhausted by the heat, the government is not really imposing any restrictions either.

Reporter Kim Minjun has the details.

[Reporter]

If you walk around Myeong-dong like this, you will often find that there are surprisingly few shade tents, making it quite hot.

This is especially true during severe heatwaves like the one we are experiencing lately. As you walk around, you sometimes feel a pleasant, cool breeze, and that is especially the case in front of shops that operate with their doors open while running their air conditioning on high, as you can see behind me.

This is so-called open-door cooling. You can see shops with two-story-high entrances thrown completely open, and foreign tourists gathered in front of the shops enjoying the cool breeze.

Let us compare the temperatures.

If you measure the temperature of the street around a shop operating with its doors closed, you can see it showing high in yellow and red.

If you measure the temperature around a shop operating with its doors open just across the street, you can see it showing lower in a darker navy blue than before.

[Myeong-dong Tour Guide: Actually, it is nice and cooling when the air conditioning breeze comes out from the side, but it does catch your eye if it is cool.]

Amid the recent heatwave, more than half of major commercial districts in Seoul and the metropolitan area have been found to be practicing open-door cooling.

[Hyeong Ji-hyeok / Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province: There have been times when I intentionally went inside for a moment to cool off and then came back out. To be honest, I think it wastes quite a lot of energy.]

Although it consumes about 1.7 times more electricity, merchants say they have no other choice.

[Merchant: It affects sales, so we have no choice. If there is cool air as they walk by, they come in. Even after paying, many people sit here for a while before leaving.]

Except for exceptional circumstances ordered by the government due to a shortage of reserve power, local governments do not carry out crackdowns.

[District Office Official: There needs to be a public notice for us to impose fines or take strong regulatory measures. (During normal times, we) focus mainly on promotion and campaigns.]

In fact, the last time fines were issued for open-door cooling was in the summer of 2016, when a power crisis was anticipated.

(Video reporting: Kang Si-woo, Video editing: Kim Yoon-sung, Design: Cho Su-in)