Snapshots from Seoul

What dog strollers reveal about AI adoption

I went back to Korea for a work trip and thought I'd share a few thematic observations and reflections.

Seoul's impossible coffee shop ecosystem

Each time I visit Korea, I am continually flabbergasted by the amount of coffee that is imbibed.

Part of it is because I'm not a big coffee drinker, and the other part is that Koreans have an exceedingly robust coffee culture. People start the day with a few ritual coffees. An iced americano after lunch is an expectation. The afternoon continues with more caffeine. When I walked back to my hotel at 9pm, many of the coffee shops I passed were still full of customers chatting and drinking lattes and various other coffee drinks.

Whenever I asked any of my Korean friends or colleagues, I think they were quite entertained by my bewilderment and subsequent questions.

As I walked through Seoul, I passed by countless coffee shops. On some streets, almost every other store was a coffee shop. Part of me was immediately thinking that there was no way this number of coffee shops could exist and survive in a city — surely the coffee shop carrying capacity of the Seoul ecosystem was lower?

Then every time I walked by a coffee shop, I would try to peek inside to see how many people there were. Again, it's not the most rigorous random sampling technique, but all of these coffee shops seemed to be thriving!

My scientific conclusion: Koreans drink a lot of coffee.

And the other fun fact was that I went to visit a social media-famous coffee shop in Seoul, and then I ran into none other than famed AI researcher Andrej Karpathy!

Perhaps there is something truly magical about the South Korean coffee scene.

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Olive Young: Korea's beauty trend-creation machine

Olive Young isn't just Korea's answer to Sephora — it's a cultural trendsetting machine that actively shapes what beauty means, not just where you buy it.

This became clear during my visit to their flagship Seongsu store, a five-story building which opened in January 2025. The store embodies what they call a "beauty playground" ethos, designed more for self-discovery than efficient shopping. While the number‑cruncher in me flinched at all the unmonetized square footage, the bewildered beauty-store-rookie enjoyed the freedom of not being hounded by salespeople as I walked through the wide aisles. Overall, the experience was far more enjoyable than any cosmetics store I'd visited in the US.

The flagship Olive Young Seongsu store. (Source link)

This experiential approach translates to impressive financial results. Olive Young operates around 1,400 stores across Korea, generating 3.9 trillion KRW ($2.8B) in revenue and 466 billion KRW ($340M) in profit during 2024, with approximately 30% year-over-year growth in both categories.

But the real differentiator lies in their positioning as a beauty brand incubator rather than just a retailer. Olive Young merchandisers work as strategists, not just buyers. While most brand merchandisers are simply responsible for product procurement, Olive Young merchandisers are expected to curate a diverse and appealing product assortment through market research. They collaborate with thousands of brands, often filling gaps in partner brands' R&D, product development, and marketing capabilities.

This deep involvement means Olive Young can credibly introduce concepts like 'slow-aging' and actively guide beauty trends rather than simply follow them. (The functional difference from traditional 'anti-aging' wasn't clear to me, but the marketing distinction was obvious.)

The result is that when customers see half the products in-store promoting a particular concept, they naturally accept it as a legitimate trend. Through this process, Olive Young is evolving from a beauty retailer into a broader health and wellness brand.

While Westerners recognize Korea's soft power through music, media, and beauty, seeing a single retailer generate $2.8B in revenue while actively shaping global beauty trends revealed just how substantial these cultural and economic forces have become.

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Demographic winter, technological spring

The contrast between dogs and children in Korea is stark. Walking around Seoul, I saw more dogs in strollers than babies.

Dogs in strollers from a pet expo in Seoul. (Source)

As of 2023, dog strollers actually outsell baby strollers now. Since 2021, pet food has outsold baby food. South Korea has a demographic issue, with the world's lowest fertility rate of 0.72. As Kurzgesagt illustrated in a recent video, it means that in four generations, 100 people become just 5 people.

This demographic challenge may drive innovation in unexpected ways. Aging societies with shrinking workforces create acute pressure for labor-saving technologies, particularly in eldercare, service industries, and workforce automation. History suggests such pinch points catalyze technological leaps — necessity is the mother of invention, after all. Japan's robotics boom in the 1990s emerged under similar aging-society pressures, and there's an argument that Korea appears positioned for a parallel pivot toward AI-driven solutions.

AI adoption is incredibly high in Korea. Korea is 2nd globally in the number of ChatGPT paid accounts (and it's a country of only 50M people!); furthermore, a third of Koreans used the ChatGPT mobile app in April 2025.

When I talked to various folks at AI labs, South Korea came up as a coveted international expansion point — above China (for obvious reasons), but also above other countries in Asia and Europe. OpenAI just set up an office in Seoul, and Anthropic has been hosting more events and collaborations in Korea. We can speculate as to why Koreans are such quick adopters of AI, and it's worth further study.

This convergence of demographic pressures and AI enthusiasm positions Korea as a crucial proving ground for AI adoption, with lessons that will matter globally.

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