What's actually happening in Korea's consumer trends, AI adoption, and youth culture — written for readers outside Korea, with the data behind it.
Korea coined a word for spending driven by feelings, not price: feelconomy. In one report, 70% of people unsubscribed from brands over message overload in just three months — Optimove. Here's what feelconomy is, and the hidden cost of letting AI manufacture your conviction.
'Slop' was named 2025's word of the year. And the country whose AI-slop channels rack up the most views isn't the US — it's Korea, at 8.45 billion views. Why Korea tops the list, what AI slop actually is, and how to tell the real thing from the flood.
A 3,000-won bottle that sells out in minutes — often made by the same company as the 'premium' version. Korea's beauty-dupe boom rode K-beauty to a record $11.4B in exports in 2025, with the US now its #1 market. Here's what's really happening, and the catch.
Korea's secondhand market grew from 4 trillion won in 2008 to about 43 trillion won in 2025 — Hana Institute of Finance / KISA. In Korea, people increasingly buy not to save money but to resell later, turning secondhand trading from thrift into asset management.
In Korea — a country that turned luxury logos into a status religion — something flipped. Gen Z now shows off the cheap look-alike instead of hiding it. Here's why, and what it says about status itself. (49% of US Gen Z have bought a dupe on purpose — Morning Consult.)
In one of the world's most wired — and loneliest — societies, people are telling their hardest feelings to a chatbot. A Dartmouth trial found an AI therapy bot cut depression symptoms 51% (NEJM AI). But dependence and safety risks are growing just as fast. A calm look at the comfort, the dependence, and the regulation now catching up.
A decade ago young Koreans shouted YOLO. Now the same generation says YONO — 'You Only Need One.' Behind the flip: youth employment fell for a third straight year to the 45% range in 2025 (Statistics Korea). Here's why a whole cohort reversed its battle cry.
