Digital technology often has a profound effect on old things -- like the telephone booths on the street that have become a legacy of a long-gone time when people did not own cellphones. 


In the era of smartphones, those telephone kiosks have gone unused, replaced and demolished. There are now about 78,000 of them nationwide, a sharp decrease from a peak of about 570,000 in 1999.

Now, efforts are underway to give these booths new purposes of life.

Many are being repurposed into shelters, mini libraries and storytelling kiosks --and even electric car charging stations.

Phone booths turned into book-lending or storytelling kiosks offer a little respite in this era of digital overload. Anyone can stop at the booths, choose a title from the shelves and have a read, or write down a story or anything to share with others and post it on to bulletin boards inside. 


Some of the phone boxes have been reborn as “safe booths,” where those who feel they are being followed or may be a target for crime can take shelter. Once you push the button, the door locks, a siren goes off and you can call the police for help. 


There are also 10 phone boxes that have been remodeled into charging stations to cater to the growing number of electric cars here, with authorities and phone booth operator KT Linkus in talks to set up five more in the near future.

 
Written by Ock Hyun-ju
Photo by Park Hyun-koo