A warehouse with no people in it — Coupang flips the switch in July

On May 21, the Korean logistics trade paper Mullyu Shinmun ran an exclusive: Coupang, South Korea's largest e-commerce company, is building a “manless” automated center at its Yangji logistics facility in Yongin, just south of Seoul, with operations slated to begin in mid-July.

This is no small pilot. The facility spans roughly 14,700 pyeong of dedicated floor space — about 525,000 square feet — with two full floors running entirely unmanned. From inbound receiving to packing and outbound shipping, every step is handled by automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS), palletizing robots, automated packaging lines, and order-consolidation packing technology. There is no station where a human hand touches the goods.

Viewed as an isolated Korean story, this is just one company's automation investment. Set against what's happening around the world right now, a different picture emerges: the arrival in Korea of what's known as the “dark factory,” or “lights-out” manufacturing.

Factories without people are already becoming the standard

A dark factory is one that operates without human presence. No people means no need for lighting, no break rooms, no rest periods. Robots work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That's where the English term “lights-out manufacturing” comes from.

This isn't science fiction. Gartner has projected that by 2026, 60% of manufacturers worldwide will have adopted some form of lights-out manufacturing. The dark factory market was worth roughly $119.1 billion in 2024 and is growing at 8.7% annually.

China is leading the charge. Under its “Made in China 2025” policy, the country rapidly deployed the dark factory model across its semiconductor, electronics, and automotive industries, and hundreds of lights-out facilities are already in operation. Some of them produce one smartphone per second — running without interruption in factories that are nearly empty of people.

In the United States, Amazon is setting the standard for the dark warehouse. Through its subsidiary Amazon Robotics, it has deployed thousands of robots and AI systems to automate sorting, picking, and packing. Japan's FANUC runs near-unmanned automation in the production of its own robot components. The UK's Wootzano has cut human involvement in pharmaceutical and food packaging processes by 80%.

That wave is now landing in Korea. And the first sector to move is logistics.

Why logistics goes first

The dark factory model first took root in manufacturing — automobiles, semiconductors, electronics. But the area where it's expanding fastest lately is logistics. The reasons are clear.

Logistics is a sequence of highly standardized tasks. Goods come in and get stored; they get pulled to fill orders; they get packed and shipped out. The pattern barely changes. The more standardized the work, the easier it is to automate.

Logistics is also physically punishing work in a sector that struggles to find workers: overnight shifts, the repeated hauling of heavy loads, long hours in cramped spaces. Labor is hard to recruit and workplace injury rates are high. The incentive to automate is strong.

And logistics is a business where round-the-clock operation creates value. Dawn delivery, same-day delivery, rapid dispatch. People need rest; robots don't. The same facility can squeeze out two or three times the throughput.

There's one more factor. With friction between companies and labor unions rising across industrial workplaces, building a facility that never employs people in the first place becomes a way to sidestep the conflict altogether. Coupang's decision should be read in that context too.

The new standard global companies are setting

Coupang's Yangji center is not a one-off experiment. It's the Korean application of a global logistics-automation playbook.

Amazon. The company built the prototype of the dark warehouse. Thousands of Kiva robots deployed across fulfillment centers throughout the U.S. move the shelves themselves: instead of workers walking to find products, the products come to the workers. More recently, Amazon has begun operating fully automated centers with almost no humans on the floor.

Alibaba and JD.com. China's e-commerce giants run dark warehouses too. One facility in Guangzhou operates with just four human employees supervising 200 robots — and its throughput is more than three times that of a conventional warehouse of the same size.

Ocado. The automated facilities built by the British online grocer are considered among the most sophisticated examples anywhere. Thousands of robots glide simultaneously across a grid structure, sorting groceries with precision. Ocado has even built a business out of licensing the technology to other retailers.

FANUC. The Japanese industrial-robot maker applies near-unmanned automation to the lines that build its own robot components. Robots making robots.

Within this current, Coupang's Yangji center is a signal that Korea's logistics industry is moving quickly to the global standard. And the fact that Coupang moved first in Korea tells you something about how the next round of competition will be drawn.

But “fully unmanned” is still a myth

It's worth puncturing the fantasy here. Dark factories are spreading fast, but “fully unmanned” remains an elusive goal.

Matthew Johnson-Roberson of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute put it this way: a single robot as intelligent and versatile as a human worker does not yet exist. Wherever non-standard situations, exception handling, or fine judgment are required, people still have to step in.

One task in particular remains a robot weakness: picking up objects of varied shapes and sizes and placing them precisely where they belong. Trivial for a human, this is extraordinarily hard for a machine. Robots are good at moving uniform boxes; handling individual products that come in every conceivable shape is a different problem entirely.

Even Coupang's announcement of a “manless center” doesn't mean every human disappears from every post. The realistic model removes people from the roles that can be standardized while keeping them in supervision, maintenance, and exception handling. That hybrid is what an actual dark factory looks like today.

But one thing is equally clear. Even if “fully unmanned” is still a myth, the speed at which the industry is racing toward that myth is real. And at that speed, the seats held by humans disappear one at a time.

The questions Korean society is about to face

The fact that Coupang's Yangji center goes live in July is not just corporate news. It's the starting point for a series of questions Korean society will soon confront.

How will jobs be reshuffled? The jobs eliminated at the Yangji center alone can be estimated. The bigger question is what happens when the model spreads to other warehouses. If Coupang's other hubs follow, and competitors pour in their own automation investments, the employment structure of the entire logistics industry could look dramatically different within five years.

The barriers to entry in logistics rise. The dark factory model demands enormous upfront investment. A single automated storage and retrieval system runs into the billions of won — millions of dollars — and automating an entire facility costs tens of billions. Only large e-commerce players can shoulder that. Smaller logistics firms get squeezed further out of price competition, and industry concentration accelerates.

What happens to consumer prices? When automation cuts costs, where the savings go matters. They could flow into lower consumer prices, or they could be absorbed into corporate margins. Either way, the competitive map of the e-commerce market gets redrawn in the short term.

What about the environmental impact? Dark factories are said to be energy-efficient — no lighting, no climate control for workers, no break facilities. But the robots and automation systems themselves consume substantial power. That's why it matters that packaging-reduction efforts, like order-consolidation packing, are advancing alongside.

How do urban planning and real estate change? A facility where no one works has different siting requirements. No commute means it can move farther from city centers; no office space means the building itself changes shape. The pricing structure of logistics real estate gets rewritten.

What this means for Korean businesses and workers

For Korean business owners and workers, this shift demands a few specific checkpoints.

If your business depends on logistics, look at the coming cost-structure shift now. When a giant like Coupang drives down costs through automation, direct and indirect competitors have to move in the same direction. Small and midsize logistics firms without the capital for automation will need a different differentiation strategy. One path is to claim ground where automation is hard: cold chain, specialty cargo, delivery to remote islands and mountain regions.

If you work in logistics, prepare for the next step. If your current role sits where automation is advancing, start preparing to move into the roles that operate, maintain, and manage the automation itself. Automation eliminates routine labor, but it also creates new jobs in handling the automation: robot operations engineers, automation systems analysts, exception-handling specialists.

Manufacturing faces the same wave next. The dark factory model that established itself first in logistics is likely to spread into manufacturing. Korean manufacturers will feel mounting pressure to adopt the same model faster to survive global competition. Now is the time to assess who that's an opportunity for — and who it threatens.

The politics of automation are about to get serious. Building a facility that employs no one from day one, as Coupang has done at Yangji, is also a strategy for sidestepping conflict with labor unions. But the detour doesn't last forever. When the job structure of an entire society starts to shake, political and legal responses follow. In the U.S. and Europe, debates over taxing or regulating automation have already begun. The moment for the same debate in Korea is approaching.

After July

When Coupang's Yangji center goes live in mid-July, the landscape of Korean logistics shifts a step. It's the moment the first dark warehouse takes root in Korea, and the effects of that single launch will show up in the data over the next several quarters.

If it succeeds, the model spreads quickly to other hubs and other companies. If it works only partially, refinements follow and the next iteration emerges. Either way, Korean logistics divides into before and after this moment.

What it means that Coupang moved first is plain. When the number-one player in Korean e-commerce is sprinting into automation, competitors have little choice but to follow. Automation is ceasing to be an option and becoming the standard.

The dark factory arrives wearing the name of efficiency. Behind that efficiency are the jobs that disappear, the industries that consolidate, and the new kinds of work that get created. One launch in July is the starting point for all of it.

We've taken one more step out of the era where companies that wield tools well survive, and into the era where tools replace people. There isn't much time left to figure out where your business — and your job — will stand in that shift.