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In most countries, bankers worry about companies running out of money. In Seoul, they are worried about the opposite. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are generating cash so quickly that Korea’s financial industry cannot model what happens next. One brokerage analyst put it plainly to a Korean financial daily. A few months ago t...

A shopper in Pasadena picks up a green tube of Beauty of Joseon sunscreen. She found the brand on TikTok. She probably knows the price by heart, too. However, she almost certainly cannot name the company that owns it. That gap between a famous brand and its invisible parent defines the story of Korea beauty startups 2026.

Korean cosmetics exports reached $11.4 billion ...

Drive east along the Han River at dusk and the skyline starts talking to you. Not in Korean, exactly. In a strange hybrid alphabet spelled out in backlit letters ten feet tall across the top of residential towers: RAEMIAN. XI. THE H. ACRO. PRUGIO. To a visitor, these look like the output of a branding agency having a nervous breakdown. To a Korea...

Just after four in the morning, the parking lot at an Incheon pier is already full. Men in waders drag rod tubes across wet asphalt. A woman in her thirties checks a boat reservation on her phone, the app glowing blue in the dark. This scene is the Korea fishing industry at ground level, and it repeats at every coastal port in the country before sunrise.

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North Korean defector startups are multiplying in Seoul, and the reason is stranger than most outsiders expect. Ask someone who resettled here what they want to do for a living. It is not a stable government post. It is not a job at Samsung. Instead, more than a third say they want to run their own business.

The Korea Hana Foundation runs an annual settlement survey. I...