6 Guides to How Koreans Live: Wages, Population, Phones & Spending
Seoul · Korea · By the Numbers
You notice it in fragments. The convenience store clerk who looks about your age, working a shift that pays close to minimum wage. The quiet elementary school playground on a Tuesday afternoon. The subway car where everyone over 40 is holding the same phone brand, and a cluster of 20-somethings nearby holding a different one entirely. None of it adds up to a story until you see the numbers behind it — and then a lot of what you noticed on the street stops being a coincidence.
At a Glance Below are six data-driven guides from Seoul Window — one overview, plus five deep dives into wages, part-time work, population, phone brands, and where foreign visitors actually spend their money in Korea. This is background reading, not a sightseeing list — it’s the context that makes the rest of a Seoul trip easier to read.
Want the one-page version first?
Start here if you only have ten minutes.
→ How Koreans Actually Live (2026): Wages, Spending, Free Time and Population, by the Numbers The overview piece that ties wages, consumption, population, and leisure together in one place, sourced from Korean government statistics and platform data rather than impressions.
What do Koreans actually earn — and where do they work part-time?
Pay in Korea is defined less by role than by company size, and the gap between a chaebol salary and a small-company one is wider than in most developed economies.
→ How Much Do Koreans Earn? Salaries in Korea Explained — Part-Time to Big Tech Lays out the real numbers from minimum wage up to conglomerate starting salaries, using 2026 government and job-listing data, converted to US dollars throughout.
→ Where to Find a Part-Time Job in Korea? 39,778 Brand Job Postings Analyzed A tally of every brand job posting on Albamon — logistics warehouses had more openings than convenience stores or cafes, and Olive Young alone posted more part-time jobs than any other single brand.
💰 Minimum wage: ₩10,320/hour in 2026. 📊 Median salary: ₩42.7 million a year.
Why are the streets quieter than the population numbers suggest?
This is the statistic that reframes almost everything else on this list.
→ Why You Don’t See Kids in Korea: A Travel Writer Encounters the Population Collapse Traces the fertility rate from 6.0 in 1960 to a record-low 0.72 in 2023, and what that looks like at ground level — closed schools converted into cafés, and neighborhood markets where most vendors and shoppers are well past 60.
What does the data say about phones and tourist spending?
Two very different angles on the same idea: Korean consumer behavior is more specific, and more split by age and nationality, than it looks from outside.
→ Which Phones Do Koreans Actually Use? Galaxy Wins 81%, But Women in Their 20s Are 67% iPhone Korea is one of the most Samsung-concentrated markets on earth, except for one sharply defined demographic slice that flips the script entirely.
→ Where Foreign Tourists Actually Spend in Korea — 5 Myths Verified by Spending Data Uses Seoul Metropolitan Government card-spending data to check five common assumptions about who spends where — some hold up, some don’t.
📱 Galaxy: 81% overall. 🛍️ Foreign tourist spending: 46.4% shopping, 24.4% medical.
Where KPLANZ fits into this
Honestly, not much — and that’s fine. This hub is background reading, not a sales pitch. If any of it is useful in practice, it’s this: a lot of the spending data above happens in Seoul’s shopping districts, and if your day includes one, dropping bags at KPLANZ’s counter at Hongdae Station Exit 3 is a way to move through it without carrying everything you buy.
🧳 ₩30,000 minimum · Hongdae Station Exit 3 · open 10:00–17:00
Frequently asked questions
How much do Koreans earn in 2026?
The minimum wage is ₩10,320 an hour (about US$7), which comes to roughly ₩2,156,880 a month full-time. A typical (median) salary across all full-year workers is about ₩42.7 million a year (~US$29,000); the mean is higher, around ₩54.8 million, because a small group of high earners pulls it up. New graduates at major Korean conglomerates typically start at ₩45–60 million a year. For scale, KPLANZ’s ₩30,000 luggage-storage minimum is a little under three hours of minimum-wage work.
Where do Koreans actually work part-time jobs?
Logistics warehouses lead with 6,010 brand job postings as of July 2026, ahead of convenience stores (5,890), coffee chains (5,446), and beauty stores (5,301) — these four categories make up 57% of all postings tracked. Olive Young alone accounts for 5,242 postings, 13.2% of the total and 99% of the beauty-store category. Regular sit-down restaurants barely register on brand listings, at just 465 postings.
Why do you see so few children in Korea?
Korea’s total fertility rate fell from 6.0 in 1960 to a record low of 0.72 in 2023 — the lowest ever recorded anywhere — before ticking up slightly to 0.80 in 2025. Travelers notice it as quiet playgrounds and an older-skewing crowd at neighborhood markets on weekday mornings, though it’s far less visible in dense, young districts like Hongdae or Seongsu.
Do Koreans use iPhones or Galaxy phones?
Galaxy dominates overall — 81% of Korean smartphone users aged 13 and up use one, per a 2026 Gallup Korea survey, rising to near 100% among people 60 and older. The one clear exception is women in their 20s, who are 67% iPhone, the highest of any age-gender group surveyed. As a traveler, either phone works fine in Korea: KakaoTalk, not iMessage, is the dominant messenger.
Where do foreign tourists actually spend their money in Korea?
Shopping and medical care dominate — 46.4% of foreign card spending in Seoul went to shopping and 24.4% to medical and wellness in H1 2026, together 70.8% of the total. Gangnam-gu alone captured 29.3% of all foreign card spending in the city. If your day includes a shopping stretch, KPLANZ’s staffed counter at Hongdae Station Exit 3 (₩30,000 minimum, open 10:00–17:00) is one option for dropping bags mid-day rather than carrying purchases around.
Questions about the trip itself?
We’re not economists, but we know Hongdae. If you need help planning around any of this, get in touch.
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