The 6pm Rule: How to Buy the Same Korean Food for Half Price

Korean department store basements sell sushi, marinated crab, banchan by the tub and bakery counters of genuine quality, at prices that make most visitors close the lid and walk away. Then at six in the evening a staff member walks the aisles with a sticker gun, and the same food becomes one of the better-value meals in Seoul.

This is not a secret. It is just a schedule nobody publishes.

What exactly happens at 6pm?

Fresh food that cannot be sold tomorrow gets discounted so it sells today. Korean stores call it 마감할인 (magam halin), closing-time discount, or 마감세일 (magam sale). In a traditional market the same idea is shouted rather than stickered, as 떨이 (tteori), “the last of it”.

🕕 Reported markdown timing by store type

Does it actually shift the crowd?

Dramatically, and the retailers publish the proof in their own marketing.

At Lotte Mart, the share of customers arriving after 6pm reached 35% across 2025, up fifteen percentage points on the year before. At Hyundai’s food halls, sales after 6pm rose 27.5%, with the deli counter up 35.7% and banchan up 31.1%. Shinsegae reported post-6pm deli sales up 19.2% against 10% for the deli counter overall, and discount-voucher downloads averaging 60,000 per round, up 50% year on year. During one Shinsegae clearance event, 15.4 tonnes of prepared stock sold through at about 90% within a week.

Lotte’s own first-quarter 2024 figures put deli sales up 25%, banchan up 15% and fruit up 10%.

In other words the 6pm markdown is no longer a way of disposing of leftovers. It is a demand-shaping tool that pulls a measurable share of the evening into a two-hour window, and the retailers know precisely how many people it moves.

Which counters are worth targeting?

The deli counter, every time. Sushi, gimbap rolls, fried chicken, salads and prepared side dishes are the items with a same-day shelf life and the highest markdown, and they are also the items that clear fastest. Lotte’s deli sell-through is reported at over 90%, with California rolls and salads often gone completely.

That produces the core tension of closing-time shopping: arrive at 5:50 and pay full price, arrive at 6:40 and choose from what nobody wanted.

E-Mart has experimented with going earlier still. Some branches, including Hanam and Geomdan, have trialled a 3 to 4:30pm “early discount” at 30 to 40% on salads, fish and ready meals. This is branch-level trial rather than a national rule.

Why is the supermarket closed on a Sunday?

Because of a 2012 law, and the rules are broader than most visitors realise.

Under the Distribution Industry Development Act, large supermarkets may not trade between midnight and 10am, must close two days a month, and cannot open a new store within 1km of a designated traditional commercial preservation zone. Those 의무휴업일 (uimu hyueobil), mandatory closing days, have traditionally fallen on Sundays, though the specific dates vary by district.

Since 2023 local governments have been permitted to shift the closure to a weekday. Daegu led in February 2023. The central government announced in April 2024 that 76 local authorities, about 44% of the total and including Seoul’s Seocho and Dongdaemun districts, were moving.

Implementation has been slower than the announcement. A KDI analysis published in May 2026 found that as of February 2025 only 30 districts nationwide, roughly 13%, had actually completed the switch, covering 67 large supermarkets and 245 quasi-large stores.

For a visitor, the practical consequence is simpler: your specific branch may be closed on a Sunday, or on a Wednesday, and the only reliable way to know is to check that branch before you go.

What about convenience stores and apps?

Every major chain now runs a near-expiry markdown, and the category has grown fast.

Last Order, operated by the startup Myro, launched in February 2020 and by August 2021 had partnered with about 16,000 GS25 stores, roughly 10,000 Seven-Elevens and around 2,000 CU outlets. Seven-Eleven sold 1.39 million discounted items in eighteen months and cut disposal costs by about 3.6 billion won, with waste down 9%. CU’s Green Save saw transaction volume rise 66.7% and sales 120.6% year on year in July 2021. GS25 launched its own in-house version in November 2023 at up to 45% off, listing items from roughly three hours to 45 minutes before the use-by time; an earlier Karrot-linked version had gone as deep as 60%.

Growth since has been steep. Across January to November 2025, GS25’s closing-discount sales rose 133.7% year on year. The 5 to 7pm window accounts for 55.8% of those sales, users split fairly evenly between people in their twenties, thirties and forties, and 64.5% of the volume comes from stores in residential districts rather than commercial ones.

The catch for visitors is access. These run through Korean apps that generally expect a Korean phone number and local payment method, and we could not confirm whether any of them work on a foreign account.

The workaround is to ignore the apps and read the shelf. Discounted items carry a physical sticker, usually near the till in the chilled section, and buying one requires nothing but cash or a card.

What is the difference between 유통기한 and 소비기한?

Worth knowing, because both appear on Korean packaging and they mean different things.

유통기한 (yutong gihan) is a sell-by date: the last day a retailer should have the item on the shelf. 소비기한 (sobi gihan) is a use-by date: the last day the food is safe to eat. Korea legislated the switch in August 2021, applied it to processed food labelling from 1 January 2023, ran 2023 as a transition year with both permitted, and moved fully to use-by dates from 2024. Milk is the exception, deferred to 1 January 2031 while producers adapt their processes.

The practical effect is that a Korean discount sticker in 2026 is generally attached to a date that means “still safe”, not “already past its best”. That is also why closing-discount programmes could scale: the dates they are working against are more honest than they used to be.

Is this worth building an evening around?

If you are eating well on a budget in Seoul, yes. A department store sushi set at half price is a better dinner than most things at the same price, and the food halls at Lotte, Shinsegae and Hyundai flagships are genuinely excellent.

There is also a reasonable argument that buying the marked-down box is the right thing to do as well as the cheap one. Korea’s per-person food waste figure was 95kg in 2022, against a world average of 79kg. The retailers did not build these programmes for environmental reasons alone, but the effect is real: one chain cut 3.6 billion won of disposal cost and 9% of its waste by putting a sticker on things three hours early.

Just get there at six.

Related reading

• Seoul department stores, as locals use them
• Korean supermarket chains compared
• What eating out in Seoul actually costs
• Traditional markets locals actually shop at
• Korean convenience store chains compared