Korea's Convenience Store Map, 2008–2025: 4x the Stores, a Big Two, and Two Years of Decline

Store-count shares over 18 years and 2025 revenue and operating profit, from DART filings.

Korea’s convenience store count quadrupled over 18 years, then fell two years in a row from 2024. Over the same period the market concentrated around two operators, CU and GS25, and profitability split into two profitable and two loss-making chains. This article walks through the infographics we published on Instagram.

USD figures are converted at KRW 1,450 = USD 1.

4x the stores: 12,485 (2008) to 53,266 (2025).
A Big Two: CU and GS25 went from 60% to 69% of stores.
7-Eleven shrank despite acquisitions: it absorbed Buy the Way and Ministop, yet its share fell from 26% to 21%.
Emart24 arrived: from 501 stores as With Me in 2014 to about 10%.
Two years of decline: 55,254 (2023) to 53,266 (2025).

Shares here are by year-end domestic store count, not revenue. Buy the Way is included in 7-Eleven; Ministop sits in “Ministop and others”.

2. 2020 vs 2025: stores and profitability

Convenience store map, 2020 vs 2025

Stores of the four chains (CU, GS25, 7-Eleven, Emart24) fell from 54,852 (2024) to 53,266 in 2025, down 1,586 or 2.9%. GS25’s store count fell for the first time. CU and GS25 together went from 61.8% of stores (2020, five chains) to 68.9% (2025).

Stores vs revenue and operating profit, 2025 (same scale)

Profitable: CU $153.1m operating profit (2.5% margin), GS25 $128.4m (2.1%)
Loss-making: 7-Eleven -$47.3m, Emart24 -$31.9m

Revenue and operating profit share one scale, so the profit bars are thin: convenience retail earns very little profit relative to sales.

3. 7-Eleven keeps shrinking; the Big Two go abroad

7-Eleven acquired Ministop in 2022 ($222.4m paid in cash), but its stores fell from 12,152 (2024) to 11,040 (2025). CU runs 855 stores abroad, including Mongolia, Malaysia and Kazakhstan (mid-2026, press reports citing the company), and GS25 runs 407 in Vietnam and 283 in Mongolia (end-2025, DART).

Limitations

Revenue and operating profit bases differ by company (CU and Emart24 standalone, GS25 convenience segment, 7-Eleven Korea Seven standalone).
Store counts are year-end domestic stores; the 2020 Ministop count is from press reports.
Sources: company DART filings, Korea Association of Convenience Store Industry, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

Sources are noted on each chart and in the text. This is market research, not investment advice, and its accuracy is not guaranteed.