Society, work, and modern Korean life
At the University of Seoul on 3 October and at Yonsei a week later, proctors spotted AI smart glasses on candidates sitting essay exams for admission. Both had passed the glasses check in ordinary frames and switched once the exam began. The 수능 on 19 November already bans the devices; the question is whether anyone can see them.
Korea marked fifty years of underwater archaeology in Mokpo in September 2026. The official story starts with a net and a report. The documented one starts with six pieces of Chinese porcelain given away as presents, a schoolteacher brother who had to get them all back, and officials who did not want the paperwork. Then the state paid a reward, a diver worked out how much of it went in tax, and for the next ten years people stole the wreck faster than the government could raise it — until the navy's own divers could not find the ship, and the excavation hired the looters.
CU's holiday catalogue has a bipedal humanoid at ₩31 million, next to the beef and the gold bars. GS25 has an AI companion robot at ₩5.5 million and a keyring that talks back at ₩110,000. We assumed the pitch was companionship for parents you won't be visiting. It isn't — the retailers say plainly these are there to be noticed, not bought. Meanwhile about twelve thousand robots are already in Korean homes, asking elderly residents whether they've taken their medicine, and nobody put those in a catalogue.
Red fruit east, white fruit west. Jujube, chestnut, pear, persimmon, in that order. Korean families treat these as ancient Confucian law and fight about them every Chuseok. Scholars who have gone through the ritual classics cannot find them in any of them. What they can find is a 1920 newspaper column using the phrase to mock people who quote rules to seem learned — and a sixteenth-century master who laid his own family's table with six things on it.
The number that travelled the world was a share of two product categories on a single shopping site, over nine months, with no total ever disclosed. Four paragraphs below it, the same release reported that spending on baby strollers rose 22% and spending on pet strollers fell 8%. No English-language outlet has ever printed that.
Korea's first-birthday party has a divination ritual at its centre, a gold ring being priced out of existence, and a hotel booking so competitive parents call it an exam. Also: the ritual isn't Korean in origin, and one item on the table used to be bad luck.
Korean couples count anniversaries in days, not years, and the calendar has a gift day on the 14th of every month. Most of those days are dead, the English list of them is wrong, and the biggest one of all was started by schoolgirls — not by the company that sells the biscuits.
At a Korean wedding you hand over a white envelope of cash. At a funeral you hand over another — and the same lifelong ledger connects them. A careful guide to 조의금: how much to give, the two-bows-then-one, incense or a white chrysanthemum, what never to say, and the word for it that the English internet gets wrong.
Skipped 4th floors, fan death, no red ink on names, seaweed soup that makes you fail exams. Korea's superstitions look like a random list of don'ts — but most are one of four things: a pun, a funeral rule, a spirit, or a 20th-century newspaper scare. Here's what's real, what's myth, and where each one actually comes from.
축의금 isn't a gift — it's a reciprocal ledger, recorded by name at the reception desk and repaid to the won at your own wedding. A guide to how much to give in 2026, why ₩50,000 stopped being enough, and the buffet-table math driving the whole system.
57% of Korean adults still say personality differs by blood type. The theory came from a Japanese researcher who used blood groups to argue that colonised Taiwanese were genetically rebellious. Here's the real history, the survey data, the science — and the legal myth every English article repeats.
One in five South Koreans is a Kim. But Kim was never one family — it's a bucket holding hundreds of unrelated lineages, and the story of who acquired the name, when, and why is the story of Korea dismantling its own caste system. Plus: how to actually read a Korean name.
Star fortune-tellers booked out for years, a Disney+ survival show that broke premiere records, AI apps picking 'auspicious' C-section dates — Korean fortune-telling is having its biggest moment in decades. What saju actually is, how it differs from shamanism, what the industry is really worth, and the consumer-protection catch nobody puts on the poster.
Even the biggest band on the planet had to enlist. Nearly every able-bodied South Korean man gives up 18-plus months of his life to the military — because a war that started in 1950 technically never ended. Here's how conscription works, the medal that buys your way out, and why dodging it ends careers.
In Korea, 'What's your MBTI?' has quietly become the new 'What's your name?' — on dating profiles, in job ads, on beer cans. Here's how a mid-century American personality test became a national social language, why it fits Korea so well, and the honest catch: the science doesn't back it up.
For one Thursday every November, a country of 51 million rearranges itself around a single exam — planes grounded, the stock market opened late, police sirens carrying stragglers to their desks. Here's what the Suneung is, why the hagwon machine turns a school day into a 16-hour one, and what all that pressure costs.
From The Glory to a webtoon that beats bullies bloody, school violence has become one of Korea's defining cultural fixations — a story about power, records that never quite fade, and reckonings that arrive a decade late. Here's the system behind the headlines, the scandals that changed it, and why 학폭 resonates the way it does.
For years, South Korea has been the world's cautionary tale: the lowest fertility rate on Earth, a nation supposedly headed for extinction. Then something odd happened. Births have risen for 22 straight months, the fertility rate ticked up two years running, and the doom narrative suddenly needs an asterisk. Here's what actually changed — and why a country can make more babies and still shrink.
In Korea, a stationery shop isn't an errand — it's a destination. Multi-floor temples of cute pens, planners, stickers and character goods, all built on a decades-deep obsession with 문구 (munggu) and a living hobby called 다꾸. Here's what the shops actually are, why Koreans love them this much, and what's genuinely worth buying — for yourself or as the best cheap souvenir you'll bring home.
From an heiress who turned a plane around over a bag of macadamia nuts to a young firefighter's death over forced work dinners — 갑질 is the one Korean word that explains how power gets abused here, and why the country keeps erupting over it.
A parent wrote the teacher's exam for her. Another demanded she kneel for refusing to fetch coffee. Sixty percent of Seoul's elementary schools quietly killed the sports-day podium. Behind the absurd is something far darker — a complaint culture that has hounded Korean teachers out of the profession, and in the worst cases to their deaths. Here's how the classroom broke.
For decades Korea drank like almost nowhere else on earth, and the all-night company dinner — 회식 — was the engine that fueled it. Now the numbers are falling fast, a whole generation barely drinks, and the after-work hours are filling up with gyms, cafés, and running crews instead. Here's what's actually changing, why, and what it means if you visit or work here.
Sing, game, sweat, sleep, study, or break out of a locked room — in Korea you rent the space by the hour. Walk any city street and the neon is stacked with 방 (bang, 'room') signs. Here's the tour, the prices, and the genuinely interesting reason a whole country built its leisure around renting rooms.
The 31-day rainy season is just the warmup. Here's when 장마 arrives this year, why August is worse, and how Koreans actually get through it.
Most Korea articles were written by people who flew in for a week. We live here. Twelve corrections, sorted into the four categories that trip up tourists most: food, money, etiquette, and places.
For a decade, Shuttle Delivery was the only app foreigners could actually use in Korea. Then Baemin launched English support in February 2026. Here's the honest landscape now — when each app wins, and who should use what.
Toilet paper, VT toner, pet snacks, and mask packs — all under ₩5,000. Welcome to Korea's favorite store.
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