Delivery rider leaves food as a gift after customer pays 30,000 won in coins

A delivery rider who brought food to a shantytown neighborhood left both the meal and the payment behind as a gift after finding the customer had scraped together the entire bill in 100-won coins.

The story was shared Saturday on FM Korea, an online community, under the title "Delivered food and got paid 30,000 won in coins."

The poster, identified only as A, said he had been dispatched to deliver food near a shantytown in Gwanak-gu, Seoul. The customer had left a note in the delivery instructions asking that the cash be collected from the doorstep and the food left there as well.

When A arrived, he found a small ziplock bag sitting in front of the door. Inside were a few 1,000-won bills and a large number of 100-won coins. A handwritten note accompanied the money. "It's 30,000 won," the note read. "I counted it more than 10 times."

"I left the money and the food right there," A said. He added that the steep hill and slow delivery conditions had sent him to the address himself, and that he chose to treat the whole thing as a gift.

It was not the first time A had gone out of his way on the job. He said that on a previous delivery he had heard someone trapped inside a home calling for help, canceled the order and called emergency services. He stayed at the scene until rescuers arrived, then used more than 1 million won ($736) he received as a token of gratitude to send food to a childcare facility.

"I did it hoping good things would come back to me, and hoping that one act of kindness would be passed on and on," he said of his actions at the time.

Online readers responded warmly to the story. "The line about counting it more than 10 times really stays with you," one commenter wrote. Others said he was "sure to have nothing but good things ahead," called him "impressive given how tough the delivery route must have been," and praised him as someone with "the mindset to succeed at anything" and "a generosity worth admiring."