Thursday, March 28, 2024
LANGUAGE&CULTURE

5 Cute Korean Christmas Gift Ideas

updated 2019

‘Korean’ gifts are not always easy to find. So here are a few ideas.

1 SOMETHING FROM A BOOKSHOP

A walk around a bookshop can get you in the mood for Christmas. Here’s a Christmas tree made of books to start us off…

Christmas tree made of books

If you’re looking for a book on a Korean-related topic, here are some of my reviews on books about Korean Art, Calligraphy, Buddhism, history, and a selection of novels.

But if you’re interested in something with less reading and more chilling, how about a colouring book?

Colouring books for adults have been a thing for a while, haven’t they? (I’ve bought some myself) And  I see this BTS colouring book for stress relief is currently the number 1 bestseller on Amazon in the comics and manga colouring books for grown-ups section!

Meant to be good for stress, so let me know if it works…

bookshops in Seoul selling diaries 2020

2 SOMETHING FROM A COFFEE SHOP

From cute diaries to mugs to festive coffee and cake, a coffee shop is a great place to get into the Christmas mood!

Every other shop in Seoul is a coffee shop (with Starbucks perched at the top like a star on a Christmas tree). So we don’t have to walk far down the high street to find cute Christmas gift ideas at this time of year.

Coffee shops often collaborate with international artists to come up with attractive designs. K-pop group BTS are involved too! Here’s a selection of the 2020 diaries from chain stores in Korea (some are even FREE!)

The 2018 Christmas collection from Starbucks featured reindeer…

starbucks

3 SOMETHING FROM A COSMETICS SHOP

When it comes to Korean cosmetic shops, we are spoilt for choice. But since THE fruit to eat in the winter in Korea is the STRAWBERRY how about a strawberry and black sugar face scrub from Skin Food?

I love their black sugar face scrub. I haven’t tried the sugar and strawberry one, but maybe I should. After all, it is Christmas. And at around 10,000 won it won’t break the bank either.

Skinfood often have special holiday gift sets out around now too. You could get a Strawberry Christmas Cake to go with it. Eat the cake. Don’t eat the face mask…

skinfood

4 SOMETHING FROM EMOTICON FRIENDS

LINE FRIENDS AI SPEAKERS are portable AI voice assisted speakers from Naver in the shape of Line characters – Brown, a brown bear, and Sally, a yellow chick.

I haven’t tried them, so I don’t know how well they work. But they are cute to look at!  Also available on Amazon.

line friends

Well, if we are going to talk about Line Friends, we should mention the Kakao Friends too.

There’s something about the Kakao characters and the packaging which is just adorable. No wonder their stores are always packed! All the characters have their own personality and backstory which I didn’t know until I wrote about the Kakao characters here.

I’ve picked up a few gifts in the Kakao Friends stores in the past. But there’s more stuff on the Kakao Friends website.

5 SOME FESTIVE CAKE

Finally, it’s not Christmas without cake, is it?

Korean Christmas cakes usually involve sponge with strawberries and cream. But they can be pricey. Here are some Christmas cakes on Instagram #크리스마스케이크

Still, you can get into the festive mood at a fraction of the price with a Santa Bear muffin from Manoffin.

Every year there are Christmas muffins with some of the usual suspects: Christmas tree, gingerbread man, snowman, and reindeer (with pretzel antlers!). But there are some quirky characters too, like marshmallow man and Santa Bear. See pics at the Manoffin website.

manoffin

Manoffin do a halloween range too.

Happy Shopping! 

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