How Daiso Became Korea's National Store — A Peek Inside Every Generation's Shopping Cart

You know a store has hit true cult status when it shows up in every single Seoul travel vlog — sandwiched right between Gyeongbokgung Palace and the mandatory Myeongdong street food montage. That store is Daiso. With exactly six price points (₩500 to ₩5,000) and roughly 1,600 locations across the country, this flat-price wonderland has quietly conquered both Korean daily life and the tourist shopping circuit. Walk into any branch on a Tuesday afternoon and you’ll see it yourself: teenagers swarming the sticker aisle, office workers loading up on cleaning wipes, and at least three tourists balancing armfuls of sheet masks.

Just How Big Is Daiso?

Let’s start with the numbers, because they genuinely surprised me when I first dug into them. Asung Daiso, the company behind the yellow signs, reported ₩4.54 trillion in 2025 revenue — that’s a 14.3% jump from the previous year — with operating profit of ₩442.4 billion (+19.2%). Back at the end of 2022, revenue sat at ₩2.95 trillion. In three years, it shot up 54%.

Here’s the part that tells you something real is going on: while revenue soared, the store count only crept up about 11% over the same period (from 1,442 to roughly 1,600). Daiso didn’t get big by opening more doors. It got big because each store started selling way more stuff.

Two forces are driving this. One is inflation — when prices climb everywhere else, a store where nothing costs more than ₩5,000 starts looking pretty irresistible. The other is the product evolution. Daiso used to be a household goods store. Now its aisles overflow with skincare, casual clothing, and snack foods. It’s morphed from “the place you go when you need something” into “the place you go to see what’s new this week.” I’ve walked in for packing tape and walked out with a centella toner, cat-shaped sticky notes, and enough honey butter almonds to share with a tour bus. It happens.

How the Sellout Frenzy Started

The turning point came in late 2023 with a tiny product called Reedle Shot. VT Cosmetics was already selling this ampoule at department stores for north of ₩30,000. Then Daiso dropped a ₩3,000 travel-sized version — and chaos ensued. Stores would sell out within minutes of opening. The company imposed a two-per-person purchase limit, and beauty sales at Daiso promptly shot up 165% compared to the previous year. I remember standing in the Myeongdong Station branch watching a shelf get stripped clean in the time it took me to read the back of the box. It was genuinely impressive.

In 2024, Son & Park’s Art Spread Color Balm picked up the baton. Social media lit up with side-by-side swatch comparisons against a certain Chanel lip balm, and the nickname Daiso Chanel Balm was born. The initial run of 2.2 million units vanished in three weeks. Three weeks.

These days, Daiso beauty shelves stock over 60 brands and around 500 products. Not a single one exceeds ₩5,000. Walk through the aisle and you’ll find serums, sunscreens, lip tints, cushion foundations, eye creams — the kind of stuff that would cost you ₩15,000–30,000 at Olive Young, all priced like a convenience store snack run.

What Each Generation Throws in Their Cart

Here’s what I find endlessly fascinating about Daiso: every generation shops there, but they’re buying completely different things. I’ve spent way too many afternoons people-watching in Daiso aisles (journalism, I swear), and the patterns track closely with what the purchase data shows.

Gen Z & 20s — The Beauty Lab and Da-Kku Zone

For the jalpa generation (Gen Z + young millennials in Korean slang), Daiso is a beauty playground. This is where you test-drive the latest viral product — a Reedle Shot, a Color Balm — without burning your entire allowance. TikTok and YouTube are flooded with daiso-kkang (haul) videos where creators empty shopping bags full of ₩3,000 serums and react in real time. The 20-something demographic is Daiso’s single biggest beauty-spending group, period.

Beyond skincare, the stationery section is their second home. Stickers, washi tape, decorative journaling supplies — da-kku (diary decorating) culture is huge here, and the after-school hours turn those aisles into a standing-room-only social scene. If you’re a traveler looking for unique, lightweight souvenirs, this section is low-key brilliant — Korean character stickers and mini stationery packs take up zero luggage space and cost less than a subway ride.

30s & 40s — The Kingdom of Refills and Practical Magic

For office workers and single-person households, Daiso isn’t a destination — it’s infrastructure. The keyword for this age bracket is pocket-sized functionality: mini hair straighteners that fit in a carry-on, compact razors for your desk drawer, travel bottles and organizers that actually make sense. This is also the backbone of Daiso’s kitchen and cleaning aisle revenue. Daiso Mall’s top three “national steals” for the first half of 2026 — beauty tissues, glass mirror cleaning wipes, and induction cooktop grease tissues — are basically the 30-to-40-something shopping cart in three products. Even within beauty, one survey found that 40-somethings make up roughly 30% of Daiso beauty purchases, the largest single slice.

50s & 60s — The Fastest-Growing Crowd

This is where things get genuinely interesting. Daiso beauty purchases by shoppers in their 60s grew 114.3% year-over-year — the fastest growth rate of any age group (Embrain, March 2026). The behavior here is what analysts call litmus spending: before committing to a ₩50,000 department store cream, you test the active ingredient at Daiso for ₩5,000. It’s cautious, practical, and deeply rational.

Male shoppers in this age group are surging too — purchases up 112.9% in a year — but they’re not just browsing the skincare aisle. The 50-and-older men’s cart tends to include ₩5,000 golf gloves alongside gardening supplies and hiking gear. Daiso has quietly become the pre-round pit stop for Korea’s golf-obsessed retirees.

🛒 What each generation buys at Daiso

Why Foreign Tourists Flock to Daiso

The Daiso in the middle of Myeongdong is already called a “shopping mecca” in tourist circles, and the numbers back it up. Foreign card payments at Daiso jumped 70% in Q1 2026 compared to the same period a year earlier, concentrated almost entirely on beauty and food. The logic is refreshingly simple: core K-beauty items — sheet masks, ampoules, lip products — that you’d find at Olive Young are available here for ₩1,000 to ₩5,000, and the K-snack souvenirs are all stacked on one floor, ready to toss into your carry-on.

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