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Searches for the collaboration bread CU released on September 17 were still pointing up on the Korean side through September 25. On the two days when three of the four other words in the same request fell, this one rose 51.5%. The product name gets searched; the photocard gets written about.
The Korean word 홈카페 moved up a level on July 20, 2026, and 68 days later it has not come back down. Across that same date, not one machine, capsule or bean rose with it. What moved was the word.
Nails went past cosmetics on the Daiso shelf this summer for the first time. A 2,000-won bottle of gel and a 5,000-won ceiling put the home kit within reach. Searches for salons, though, did not fall. It looks like recession spending, and it is not only that.
Every Korean search word this site follows was set against the same month a year earlier. Whatever the field, it was down. Of the 12 words that rose, 10 were the name of a shop or an app. In Korea, the names of things are being searched less.
Korean trends are supposed to reach Japan after a delay. Tested against the data, the gap in finding out was next to nothing; what lagged was the date the product reached the shelf. By the time it did, Korean search volume was at 1.4% of its peak.
Coverage abroad started calling Korean Daiso's cosmetics remarkable. Two years of Korean search data put the high at February 2025, with today at a quarter of that. It does not mean people got bored.
A thick chocolate shell you break apart with your hands. In Korea it is called 왁뿌 (wakppu). Checked against Korean search volume, the peak was three months ago. By the time the trend is written up abroad, the country has moved on.
Matte is next, velvet is coming — the line has been repeated for years. Measured over two years, velvet returned a figure on 4 days out of 730. What actually halved was pores, tone-up and skin texture: the words for fixing skin.
Two Korean dessert trends followed end to end, from first sign to gone. Both took six months from lift-off to peak, and four months from the peak back to where they started. Almost the same speed. The stage for both was the convenience store.
August was still in the heat, and the word that rose most was “autumn outfit.” More than eight times its July level. In the same month 왁뿌, which had peaked only in June, had halved. Clothes move ahead of the season. Snacks finish ahead of the talk.
Where Koreans buy cosmetics is changing places. Five retailers were followed for two years on one measuring stick: the only one that rose was Daiso, and the only one that clearly fell was Olive Young. It is not the ranking that moved. It is the direction.
Dress, cardigan, knit — every garment word is down by roughly a third over two years. Across the same two years 무신사, 29CM, 지그재그 and 퀸잇 all rose together. In Korea, the place where clothes get chosen has moved out of the search box and into the apps.
The Seoul neighbourhoods that get named as the place to be right now, measured on one scale over two years. 성수동 (Seongsu-dong) leads the second place by nearly four times, unchanged. Its own search volume, though, is down 45% in two years.