Seoul steals

Check out these cost-saving tips and shopping hacks before embarking on your trip to the South Korean capital

- Jessica Novia

In a gleaming three-storey building devoted to K-beauty are shelves lined with sunscreens, serums for every imaginable skin concern and a corner stocked with kombucha powders and probiotics that promise to bolster gut health.

Tourists form snaking queues that lead to half a dozen efficient cashiers who process instant tax refunds with assembly-line speed. Shoppers stream out carrying oversized paper bags stuffed with their haul.

That is just one Olive Young outlet in Hongdae, a cosmetics and beauty store in one of the South Korean capital's busiest shopping districts. There are five more in the neighbourhood alone, and hundreds more dotted across the city.

Over the years, Seoul has become one of Asia’s most competitive shopping haunts.

In 2024, foreign visitors spent a record 9.26 trillion won (S$8.1 billion), and shopping accounted for nearly four in 10 tourist dollars.

Propelled by rising tourist arrivals and higher per-visitor spending, tourism expenditure not only surpassed pre-pandemic levels, but also rose 33.8 per cent year on year from 2023.

For Singaporeans, the draw is even stronger. In December, the won slid past 1,100 to the Singapore dollar, its weakest in at least six years.

In 2019, one Singapore dollar was worth around 850 won. This means travellers today get roughly 30 per cent more won for the same amount of Singapore dollar.

Six airlines, including low-cost carriers T’way Air and Jeju Air, fly nonstop from Changi Airport to Incheon Airport up to 10 times a day, making flight prices competitive.

A round-trip flight in March 2026, for instance, costs $357, based on checks by The Straits Times - on a par with the cost of flying to other regional destinations such as Hong Kong.

The result? A city where it is dangerously easy to overspend. The Straits Times rounds up a set of tried-and-tested hacks to help you stretch every dollar on your next shopping spree in Seoul.