image-93e862094a3735614e33f960aff4473f02354ae4-3164x2013-jpg

South Korea

Examining what it’s like to live, work and play in South Korea, our experts guide you through the nuances that define its culture.

Explore behavioural developments in South Korea

image-c03b9db9788c21a2ef39ab47136c570da7dae7ee-1200x684-gif

Download the Cultural Snapshot of South Korea

Latest South Korea articles

·
26 Jul 2024

Gucci’s New Cultural Project to celebrate Korean Arts

signal·
26 Jul 2024

Gucci's cultural initiative aims to pay tribute to the heritage of Korean culture by spotlighting the work of those who have brought local arts to a global stage. Luxury brands are localising their strategies, appealing to a growing group of shoppers in the world's largest luxury market.

report·
24 Jul 2024

Why pop-ups are Korea’s go-to marketing strategy for Gen Y and Z

report·
24 Jul 2024

South Korean Gen Y and Gen Z – known in the country as Gen MZ – prefer online shopping, but offline pop-ups are more popular than ever. What makes these IRL experiences so attractive to younger shoppers, and what does this say about the retail landscape in a place that's usually dominated by tech?

report·
16 Jul 2024

Are ‘tweakments’ the future of K-beauty?

report·
16 Jul 2024

Idols and actors who promote flawless and healthy skin through 10-step routines and effective products dominate South Korea’s beauty industry. In 2024, quick ‘tweakments’ that promise natural results are on the rise. But with fads evolving faster than ever, can K-beauty keep up?

case study·
15 Jul 2024

How Life4Cuts imprints visual memory amid a global crisis

case study·
15 Jul 2024

South Korean self-photo studio Life4Cuts is snapping its way to Australian shores. Despite the global cost-of-living crisis, customers are branding the four-cut photo strip craze as a necessity – ‘a small but guaranteed happiness’ tapping various age groups and subcultures.

report·
11 Jul 2024

South Koreans are curing their loneliness by spoiling their pets

report·
11 Jul 2024

Young Koreans are coping with burnout, a poor job economy, and loneliness by adopting dogs and – increasingly – cats. They’re also spending lots of money on them, creating a growing pet service industry in South Korea. The trend highlights what they value – independence, relaxation, and alone time.

case study·
10 Jul 2024

Why Jinro Soju toasts the softer drinking habits of Koreans

case study·
10 Jul 2024

Jinro Soju, locally known as Chamisul, is one of the only manufacturers that adopted a softer branding image instead of a masculine one as it taps into the female market. How is it maintaining its status as the world’s most popular spirit brand amid falling alcohol drinking rates in South Korea?

View all

Experts on Access

Book a call with a leading expert in our network

image-5bd7801b02873795dbc20807f2516a944e4caa1e-352x394-png

Cultural Insider

Max Kim

Journalist specializing in research-intensive longform projects

Seoul-based journalist Max Kim has written on the intersection of tech and South Korean politics for publications such as The New Yorker, MIT Technology Review, The Guardian, covering topics such as the political and economic impacts of Big Tech, the platform economy, and the impact of both on human behaviour. He offers a big picture view of how tech interweaves Korean society and share reflections on what's next.

image-0c21ff04c19e802babd32829f72acd090d9d59dd-4500x2525-jpg

Macro Expert

Ingyu Oh

Expertise in organisations and cultural studies

Ingyu Oh is a professor of business management and Korean and Japanese cultural industries at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan. He is also a researcher at the International Centre for Organization & Innovation Studies, Singapore. Before coming to Japan in 2018, he had taught at Korea University, Bristol Business School, Middle East Technical University, UC Berkeley, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, the University of Waikato, and the University of Oregon. His main teaching and research interests include organisational studies, innovation, international business, business history, and cultural studies. He is an associate editor of Asia Pacific Business Review.

image-47f815721ad7696f74f67792a2abc0bc5c8f19a4-1362x1310-jpg

Macro Expert

Hyeyoung Woo

Professor specialising in family and health in Korea and the US

Hyeyoung Woo is a professor of sociology and the director of the Institute for Asian Studies at Portland State University. She received her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008. Woo's research centres on status attainment, such as in education, work, and family, and its associations with health and wellbeing over the course of a person's life, particularly those in the US and Korea. Her current project is titled 'The Making of Women in Korea', funded by the Academy of Korean Studies. Her work has been published in several journals and books, including Redefining Multicultural Families in South Korea.

image-3124b2bafcaae061fa0ef02713f2f58d2b0f3513-200x200-jpg

Cultural Insider

Lorraine (Lorr) Ye

Head curator for digital artists and K-culture writer

Lorraine (Lorr) Ye is the Head Curator at thehug.xyz, helping their community of 14,000+ global digital artists navigate how to become entrepreneurs and multi-modal creators of the future. When she's not working on HUG, she is a features writer at AllKPop.com, the largest English-language K-Pop news site in the world. There, she focuses on marketing, communications, and PR and holds interviews with renown artists.

image-ff937eae01e071750abb703e55121654fdc991db-3807x4601-jpg

Sector Expert

Hawon Jung

Journalist/author on gender issues and feminist movements in South Korea

Hawon Jung is a former Seoul correspondent for AFP and the author of Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea’s Feminist Movement. Jung spent over a decade writing about the Korean Peninsula, focusing on the military confrontations between the two Koreas and gender issues in South Korea. Flowers of Fire is based on her years-long reporting on the #MeToo and feminist movements in the South – an economic, technological and cultural powerhouse that still has one of the worst records on women's rights in the industrialised world. Her coverage of the country's #MeToo movement was also shortlisted in the Awards for Editorial Excellence by the Society of Publishers in Asia.

Toolkit

Bespoke solutions

Our most effective techniques, distilled into templated solutions for fast, affordable and tailored research solutions.

Discover Toolkit