A small business owner who closes the door...Small and medium-sized enterprises are also on alert due to sluggish domestic demand and high exchange rates.

[Anchor]
Unstable domestic politics and sluggish domestic demand are driving small business owners, the roots of our economy, to close their businesses.

On top of that, the economic outlook for small and medium-sized companies is also dark due to the high exchange rate and global trade uncertainty.

Reporter Park Ki-wan's report.

[Reporter]
It's the end of the year when you have to achieve a part, but the insides of small business owners and self-employed people are burning.

It's already a tightly closed wallet, but reservations for end-of-year meetings, which have been canceled one after another due to the emergency martial law situation and impeachment, are being canceled.

[Kim Eun-hee / Self-employed: Year-end party, year-end party, and many of them were canceled. I'm very worried. In the case of our merchants, December is the highlight, but....]

The crisis of small business owners has become a reality due to prolonged consumption stagnation.

The amount of 'closure deduction' payments received by small business owners who chose to close their businesses exceeded KRW 1.3 trillion this year, the highest record,
Instead of
small business owners, the amount of reimbursement that the Korea Credit Guarantee Foundation had to pay off instead also increased rapidly.

The same goes for small and medium-sized businesses,
Half of the
small and medium-sized enterprises said their funding lines have dried up this year, and many predict that next year will be worse than this year.

In addition to sluggish domestic demand, high exchange rates and global trade uncertainties are cited as major reasons.

The unit price of imported raw materials has soared, but it is difficult to guarantee favorable exports due to concerns over tariff bombs from the United States.

[Lee Jung-hee / Professor of Economics at Chung-Ang University] The Trump administration is in a state where protection trade is strengthened and tariffs are expected to rise. If the U.S.-China conflict grows and the fire falls to Korea, and if the export economy worsens (due to a slump in domestic demand), both sides will deteriorate..]

Financial authorities have predicted a 248 trillion won policy financing supply next year and the Bank of Korea a key rate cut, but it remains to be seen whether it can bring a hopeful new year to the dark clouded economy.

I'm Park Kiwan of YTN.

a photographer for

video editing;Jung Kook-yoon

Design;Im Byul