Independent verification notes on cosmetic medicine in South Korea

Seoul · No sponsorship, no clinic names, no paid placements

Category: Food & Drink

What Korea’s rules say about buying, carrying and drinking food and alcohol.

  • Korea Has 107,029 Coffee Shops — Twice as Many as Convenience Stores. Here’s Why That’s Great News for You.

    Note № 59
    VERIFIED  2026-08-17PRIMARY SOURCES  2SPONSORSHIP  NONE

    Stand at almost any Seoul intersection and count the cafes you can see without turning your head. Two is normal. Four is not unusual. First-time visitors assume they have wandered into a coffee district; the truth is that the whole country is one. Korea’s national statistics agency counted 107,029 coffee shops in its most recent census — roughly two for every convenience store in the country.

    Quick answer: Korea’s cafe count doubled in six years (51,551 in 2016 → 107,029 at the end of 2022, per Statistics Korea), while the four big convenience chains together run about 55,000 stores. There are even more registered coffee brands (886) than fried-chicken brands (669). For a visitor this is excellent news: you are never more than a short walk from a clean seat, a toilet, fast Wi-Fi and air conditioning — for the price of one drink. Verified 2026-08-18.

    COFFEE REPUBLIC · SHOP COUNTSKorea has twice as many cafesas convenience stores.Coffee shops doubled in six years. The convenience store —itself everywhere — is outnumbered two to one.Coffee shops · 2022107,029Coffee shops · 201651,551Convenience stores · 2024≈55,000050k100kstores nationwideSource: Statistics Korea (2016, 2022); industry store counts (2024). Verified 2026-08-18.COFFEE REPUBLICKorea has twice asmany cafes asconvenience stores.Coffee shops doubled in six yearsand now outnumber conveniencestores two to one.Coffee shops · 2022107,029Coffee shops · 201651,551Convenience stores · 2024≈55,000050k100kstores nationwideSource: Statistics Korea; industry counts.Verified 2026-08-18.

    Coffee shops in Korea: 51,551 in 2016 and 107,029 in the most recent national count (end-2022, Statistics Korea), versus roughly 55,000 convenience stores across the four major chains (2024). Different counting years are marked on each bar.

    How a country ends up with 107,029 cafes

    Part of it is demand — coffee is treated as a daily staple here, not a treat. But the striking number is on the supply side: in the government’s franchise registry there were 886 registered coffee brands as of the 2022-baseline report, more than the 669 chicken brands Korea is famous for. Opening a cafe is one of the most common first businesses in the country, which is why you will see a gleaming new one two doors from an established one, both full.

    Even industry insiders called the level excessive in 2024 — the growth has been slowing since — but nobody expects the density to meaningfully reverse. The cafe has become infrastructure.

    What this means for you, practically

    • The cafe is Korea’s public living room. Meetings, study, dates, waiting out the rain — one drink buys you a seat for a long time, and nobody will hurry you at most places.
    • It solves three traveller problems at once: toilets, Wi-Fi and charging. If you need any of the three, look for the nearest cafe rather than a public facility.
    • Price range is wide by design. Low-cost chains sell an americano for around ₩1,500–2,000; specialty cafes charge ₩5,000–7,000 for hand-brews. Same block, both busy.
    • Etiquette is simple: order before sitting, one drink per person is the polite norm at busy hours, and bus your own tray — return it to the counter shelf.

    One caveat on the numbers

    The 107,029 figure is the most recent full national census (end of 2022, published by Statistics Korea); the convenience-store figure is the four major chains’ combined store count reported in 2024. The counts come from different years and methods, which the chart marks on each bar — but the two-to-one picture is not close enough for that to change the story.

    This article was verified on 2026-08-18. If you find something here that’s changed, I’d like to know, through the contact page.

    Sources and last verification

    Prices, fares and hours in Korea change often. Everything above was checked against these sources on the dates shown. If you spot something out of date, please tell me via the contact page.

    About the author — H.I. Kang

    I was born in Korea and still live here. Travelling abroad, I have been the person stuck at a ticket machine in a language I could not read, holding up the queue and guessing — and I know how small a thing it takes to ruin an afternoon. This site exists so that visitors to Korea do not have to guess. Every price, route and rule here is checked against an official source before it is published, and dated so you can see how current it is.

    Related guides

  • You Don’t Tip in Korea, and There’s a Rule Behind It

    Note № 42
    VERIFIED  2026-08-04PRIMARY SOURCES  3SPONSORSHIP  NONE

    The advice every guide gives is correct: do not tip in Korea. What none of them explain is why it stuck, in a world where tipping has spread almost everywhere else.

    There is a rule underneath it, and once you know the rule the whole question stops being about etiquette.

    The price on the menu is the price

    Under Korea’s price display rules, a restaurant’s displayed price must be the final amount the customer pays.

    VAT and service charge cannot be shown separately

    The Seoul city food-safety authority states it plainly: VAT and service charges cannot be listed separately and must be included in the food price as the actual final amount the customer has to pay. Verified 2026-08-05.

    Seoul brought this in for food businesses on 1 January 2013. It applies to ordinary restaurants, snack bars, bakeries and licensed drinking establishments.

    So there is no line at the bottom of a Korean restaurant bill where a tip could naturally go, because the format that produces such a line is not permitted. The number on the menu is the number on the card reader.

    It has teeth

    The penalties escalate: a corrective order for a first violation, a seven-day suspension of business for a second, fifteen days for a third, with fines available in place of suspension.

    That is a real enforcement regime for what looks like a formatting rule. It exists because opaque pricing was a genuine consumer problem, and the fix was to make the displayed price the whole price.

    Service charges are optional and mostly hotels

    봉사료, a service charge, is not mandated by any law. Where it appears it is typically around 10%, and it is the establishment’s own decision.

    In practice you will meet it at luxury hotels rather than restaurants — precisely because the display rule pushed it out of restaurant menus. Some major hotels apply it, others do not.

    Where tipping is creeping in anyway

    It would be wrong to say tipping does not exist in Korea in 2026. It exists in a few narrow places, and it is unpopular.

    The taxi app

    Kakao T, which dominates ride-hailing here, added a voluntary “thank-you tip” in July 2023. It appears only after you give a driver five stars, only on premium tiers rather than standard taxis, and offers ₩1,000, ₩1,500 or ₩2,000.

    You will probably never see it. Standard taxis are excluded.

    The pattern in both cases

    Notice what these two have in common. Both arrived through an app interface rather than through anyone’s behaviour changing, and both attach to a screen you were already looking at.

    Tipping spreads that way now — not as a custom people adopt, but as a default someone adds to a checkout flow. Korea’s price-display rule blocks that route for restaurants, which is most of why the practice has not travelled further here.

    The delivery “tip” that is not one

    Delivery apps charge a 배달팁, literally “delivery tip.” It is a distance-and-demand-based delivery fee, not a gratuity, and consumer groups have complained precisely because calling a mandatory fee a tip is misleading.

    If a delivery app shows you a “tip,” it is a shipping charge. You are not deciding anything.

    How Koreans feel about it

    A 2023 survey of 12,106 people found 73% said they could not accept tipping culture at all. Nineteen percent were neutral, treating it as acceptable only if genuinely voluntary. Five percent were positive.

    A tip jar that appeared in a Seoul bakery around the same time drew enough public criticism that it was removed. That is the temperature.

    What to actually do

    At restaurants, cafes and bars

    Pay the price shown. Nothing else.

    Leaving cash on the table is more likely to produce a staff member chasing you down the street with it than gratitude. This is not a test of generosity — the money is genuinely not wanted, and the transaction is over.

    In taxis

    No tip, and no rounding up. Pay the meter.

    If you are using a premium ride tier through an app and want to add the in-app tip, that is a supported option. Cash pressed on a driver is not.

    For tour guides and drivers

    Here is the one real exception, and it is a foreign-facing one.

    Private guides and drivers working with international tour operators do often expect gratuities, because the operators tell their customers to expect it. When a tour’s fine print says “gratuities not included,” that is the operator’s own convention, not Korean practice — it means the tip is not in the package price and you are expected to budget separately.

    Ask the operator what they actually recommend rather than applying a home-country percentage.

    Quick summary

    • Do not tip in Korean restaurants, cafes, bars, taxis or hotels. It is not expected and can be awkward.
    • Korean price-display rules require the menu price to be the final payable amount, with VAT and service charge included, not listed separately. Verified 2026-08-05.
    • Seoul applied this to food businesses from 1 January 2013, with escalating penalties from a corrective order to a 15-day suspension.
    • 봉사료 service charges are discretionary, not legally required, typically around 10% and mostly at luxury hotels.
    • Kakao T added a voluntary tip in July 2023 — premium tiers only, ₩1,000–₩2,000, after a five-star rating.
    • A delivery app’s 배달팁 is a delivery fee, not a gratuity.
    • A 2023 survey of 12,106 people found 73% could not accept tipping culture.
    • The exception is private tour guides and drivers working with international operators, where “gratuities not included” means budget separately.

    Before you go

    The interesting part is the mechanism. Tipping does not thrive where the posted price is legally required to be the final price, because the gap tipping lives in has been closed by regulation rather than by custom.

    That is worth carrying beyond restaurants. When a Korean business shows you a number, it is far more often the whole number than you would expect coming from somewhere with sales tax added at the till.

    Verified 2026-08-05. If a restaurant has added a service charge on top of a displayed price, that is worth reporting — to me through the contact page, and arguably to the district office.

    Sources and last verification

    Prices, fares and hours in Korea change often. Everything above was checked against these sources on the dates shown. If you spot something out of date, please tell me via the contact page.

    About the author — H.I. Kang

    I was born in Korea and still live here. Travelling abroad, I have been the person stuck at a ticket machine in a language I could not read, holding up the queue and guessing — and I know how small a thing it takes to ruin an afternoon. This site exists so that visitors to Korea do not have to guess. Every price, route and rule here is checked against an official source before it is published, and dated so you can see how current it is.

    Related guides

  • The Korean Phone Number Wall, and How to Get Around It

    Note № 40
    VERIFIED  2026-08-04PRIMARY SOURCES  3SPONSORSHIP  NONE

    You try to book a restaurant and the app wants a Korean phone number. You try to call a taxi and it wants the same thing. You try to sign up for anything and hit a screen you cannot pass.

    This is one obstacle wearing many costumes, and once you understand the mechanism you can route around most of it.

    What is actually blocking you

    The screen you keep hitting is 본인인증, real-name identity verification.

    The mechanism

    Korean services verify identity by matching your mobile number against a telecom subscription registered under a government identity number — a resident registration number for citizens, or an alien registration number for foreign residents with a residence card.

    The check is not “do you have a phone number.” It is “is this number tied to a registered identity in a government-linked database.”

    Why your tourist SIM fails

    A tourist prepaid SIM or eSIM gives you a working Korean number. It does not give you a number registered against that identity system.

    So the verification fails, and it fails in a confusing way — you have a Korean number, you enter it, and nothing happens. Only an ARC-linked postpaid line clears this, and an ARC requires a visa longer than 90 days.

    Worth saying plainly: buying a Korean SIM does not solve the verification problem. It solves data and calls. Guides that suggest otherwise are conflating two different things.

    Why it exists at all

    Korea built consumer internet on top of a national identity number, decades before most countries had anything comparable. Almost every service that handles money, tickets or reservations inherited that assumption.

    It is not aimed at foreigners. It simply never contemplated them, and the workarounds were bolted on later — which is why they exist but are invisible.

    What is blocked, and what works instead

    Almost every blocked service has a foreigner-facing version. Nobody tells you they exist because Korean users never need them.

    Restaurants

    The domestic Catch Table app wants carrier verification. Catch Table Global does not — you sign up with Google, Apple or email, and notifications come by push and email rather than SMS.

    Same restaurants, same bookings, different app. Download the global one before you arrive.

    Taxis

    The local Kakao T registration flow wants a Korean number, and foreign cards frequently fail at its card-verification step.

    Two routes work. Uber operates in Korea and your existing account and home card carry over with no new registration — availability is lower and prices are higher than Kakao T, but it works on landing. Alternatively, Kakao T users report that selecting the pay-the-driver option lets you call a car without registering a payment method, then settle in cash or by card in the vehicle. That second one is a user workaround rather than documented policy, so treat it as a fallback.

    Concert and event tickets

    Domestic Interpark and Melon Ticket require verification by phone or I-PIN, which is why so many overseas fans fail at checkout.

    The Global versions of both exist and accept passport-name signup with an email address and no Korean number — Melon Ticket Global is the clearest example. The catch is coverage: not every event listed domestically appears on the global site, and foreign card payments still fail more often than they should.

    Delivery food

    This is the weakest link and I am not going to overstate it.

    Baemin rolled out English, Chinese and Japanese interfaces in February 2026, which makes ordering readable. Whether the checkout still demands Korean verification for a foreign account is something I could not confirm either way, so plan for it possibly not working rather than counting on it.

    Banking and government services

    Not available to tourists. Full stop. These need an ARC, and an ARC needs a long-stay visa. Anything you read about opening a Korean bank account as a visitor is describing a resident’s process.

    For anything a visitor genuinely needs from officialdom, the Korea Tourism Organization’s visitor pages and the 1330 helpline cover it without any verification at all.

    The one thing to do before you fly

    Install and register the global apps while you still have your home phone number working normally.

    Registering Catch Table Global, Uber and any ticketing accounts from home, on your home network, avoids the situation where you are standing in a Korean street trying to receive a verification email on hotel wifi.

    Everything on this page is easier to set up before departure than after arrival, and none of it requires being in Korea.

    Quick summary

    • The barrier is 본인인증, which matches your phone number against a government-registered identity — not merely a check that you have a number.
    • A tourist prepaid SIM or eSIM does not pass it. Only an ARC-linked postpaid line does, and an ARC needs a visa over 90 days.
    • Catch Table Global books restaurants with Google, Apple or email sign-in — no Korean number.
    • Uber works in Korea with your existing account and home card; Kakao T’s pay-the-driver option is a reported workaround.
    • Melon Ticket Global and Interpark/NOL Global accept passport-name signup, but list fewer events than the domestic sites.
    • Baemin added English, Chinese and Japanese interfaces in February 2026; foreigner checkout verification is unconfirmed.
    • Banking apps and government services are closed to tourists — they require an ARC.
    • Register the global apps before you fly, while your home number still works.

    Before you go

    The pattern to carry: when a Korean service blocks you, the question is not “how do I fake a Korean identity” but “is there a global version of this.”

    There usually is. It is usually a separate app or a separate domain with the word Global in it, and it is usually invisible in search results because the Korean version dominates them. Search the service name plus “global” rather than the service name plus “foreigner.”

    Verified 2026-08-05. App sign-up flows change constantly — if one of these has stopped working or started working, the contact page is there.

    Sources and last verification

    Prices, fares and hours in Korea change often. Everything above was checked against these sources on the dates shown. If you spot something out of date, please tell me via the contact page.

    About the author — H.I. Kang

    I was born in Korea and still live here. Travelling abroad, I have been the person stuck at a ticket machine in a language I could not read, holding up the queue and guessing — and I know how small a thing it takes to ruin an afternoon. This site exists so that visitors to Korea do not have to guess. Every price, route and rule here is checked against an official source before it is published, and dated so you can see how current it is.

    Related guides

    One part of this wall came down in June 2026: Naver now accepts overseas passport verification for reservations. What that does and does not cover is in our note on Korean salon pricing and booking.

    Booking accommodation runs into this wall too, and the refund rules on the other side of it are their own problem — set out here.

    Booking around the wall raises a second question — whether the property is lawfully registered. There is no way to look that up, but four things are visible on the listing.