Outside a free meal distribution center near Seoul Station, a fight broke out during a recent afternoon.

"You just cut in line," accused one elderly man. The other man, similarly aged, denied the accusation, claiming he was there first. Then, without warning, fists flew and the squabble turned into a brawl.

Those standing nearby, however, barely seemed concerned. They were more preoccupied with making sure the backpacks they had placed on the pavement were not mixed up or pushed aside.

Each one marked its owner’s place in line to receive a free meal. Here, a volunteer group called Truly Good Friends hands out 200 meals. Competition for the meals, distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, is fierce, in part because the food is unusually generous: grilled short rib patties, stir-fried kimchi, Korean chive pancakes and purple rice.

The trail of backpacks already stretched to the end of the street, even though the meal service was still three hours away. Here, cutting in line is treated as practically a felony. When an elderly woman tried to slip into the line, she was immediately met with a roar of protests and curses. One man even marched up to her and began shouting in her face.

A staff member at Truly Good Friends said fights break out over places in line almost every distribution day, as around 10 people inevitably have to leave empty-handed.

“We’re trying to serve as many people as possible, but we’re stretched so thin financially that we can’t even offer a bottle of water with the food,” the staff member said.

The organization originally served meals to homeless people every day for 35 years, beginning in 1987. As its finances deteriorated, however, it reduced the service to twice a week in 2022 and then to once a week this year. Even that is possible only because of boxed-meal donations from Bonif, the company behind the Bon Dosirak chain. Without its support, the organization would be forced to close the meal center altogether.

The organization’s plight is far from unique. Behind headlines celebrating record stock market highs and an export surplus fueled by a historic semiconductor upcycle, more and more people are lining up for free meals. Yet volunteer groups across Seoul are struggling to keep their meal programs running as persistent inflation and the weakening won drive food prices higher, while financial strain leaves fewer people able to donate.

The House of Thomas, another volunteer group that serves free meals outside Yeongdeungpo Station four times on weekdays and once on weekends, requested 150 10-kilogram sacks of government-supplied rice from the district office in May.

The main reason was a 15.1 percent surge in rice prices in the first half of the year alone, which added to the pressure on the group’s finances. The strain forced it to seek assistance from the district office for the first time since 2024.

Other food items, including instant noodles and fruit, also carry considerable costs. The organization spends 4 million won (around $2,700) each month on instant noodles alone. To prevent people from collecting additional food more than once, it marks the back of each visitor’s hand with a red dot.

“We’ve recently begun serving slightly smaller portions while telling those who are still hungry that they can ask for seconds,” a staff member at the House of Thomas said. “We would like to give everyone generous portions, but with so many people coming and not enough food to go around, we have little choice.”

Meanwhile, donations continue to decline, putting volunteer groups in an increasingly precarious position. Wongaksa, which runs a daily free meal program at Tapgol Park in Seoul, has secured only two new donors this year, compared with around 15 in a typical year. Longtime donors have also begun withdrawing their support, even as the monthly number of visitors to the meal center has nearly tripled, from 3,000 a decade ago to 9,000 today.

“With ordinary people struggling financially, they seem to have little room left to look after neighbors in need,” said Ko Young-bae, secretary-general of the Wongaksa free meal center. “Our monthly operating costs have risen 15 percent from last year, while donations have declined. It is a serious concern.”

But closing the centers or scaling back meal services is hardly an option when organizers know how early people rise to secure a place in line and how much a single meal means to them.

“I rarely have proper side dishes at home, and I can’t afford to eat at restaurants,” one visitor said. “I’m grateful that I can at least fill my stomach here.”

Ko said the center would continue serving meals to those in need, no matter how difficult the situation became.

“For now, we hope the government will do more to ease the burden of rising prices so that people have enough breathing room to look around and help neighbors in need,” he said.

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.