3 Steps for Entering the Korean Market, Based on Baemin’s Playbook
Baemin’s success offers a clear pattern for any brand looking to win in Korea.
Step 1: Create Cultural Assets
What Baemin did: Free distribution of Baemin Font
Launched in 2015, Baemin Font has accumulated millions of downloads. A single typeface embedded the brand’s personality — warm, witty, distinctly Korean — into the visual fabric of everyday life.
Why it works: Cultural assets are not just branding tools. They are living assets that people use, share, and spread organically. That’s how a brand grows without ad spend.
How to apply it:
- Develop creative outputs rooted in local culture (typefaces, characters, language)
- Remove barriers to adoption through free distribution
- Design elements that connect naturally to the brand identity
Step 2: Build an Ecosystem People Don’t Want to Leave
What Baemin did:
- Baemin Riders: Proprietary delivery driver network (launched 2019)
- B-Mart: Expansion into grocery and daily essentials. In 2024: order volume up 369% YoY, GMV up 309% YoY, first-ever annual commerce GMV exceeding 1 trillion KRW (~$730M USD)
- Baemin Club: Paid membership for delivery fee discounts (launched November 2024)
Why it works: A single service can always be replaced. But when delivery drivers, restaurants, and customers are all connected in one network — and when that network also handles your groceries and membership perks — switching becomes genuinely inconvenient.
How to apply it:
- Design an integrated experience that goes beyond a single use case
- Create structures that connect both supply-side and demand-side users
- Use memberships and loyalty points to make staying the path of least resistance
Step 3: Anchor to Local Identity
What Baemin did: The brand name “Baedal Minjok” is a play on the Korean cultural phrase meaning “our people,” repurposing it to mean “the people of delivery.” Every campaign Baemin ran — from its typeface to its ad copy — was built on top of this cultural foundation.
Why it works: Global brands offer universality. Local brands offer belonging. In platform businesses especially, that sense of “this is mine” translates directly into loyalty and retention.
How to apply it:
- Reflect local identity from the brand naming stage
- Express marketing messages in the everyday language of local consumers
- Build the perception of “our brand” rather than “a brand”
By the Numbers
The results of this three-step approach:
- Monthly active users: ~23.75 million (December 2024)
- Annual revenue: 4.3226 trillion KRW (~$3.2B USD) (2024)
- Operating margin: 20%+ — among the highest in Korea’s retail and e-commerce sector
Baemin is no longer just a delivery app. It is the most profitable platform in Korean retail.
4 Principles for Entering the Korean Market
Baemin’s story offers concrete guidance for global brands looking to enter Korea.
1. Understand local culture through data.
Global playbooks don’t always translate. The habits that define Korean delivery culture — diverse food categories, 30-minute delivery as the baseline expectation, preference for neighborhood restaurants — are what Baemin understood and Uber Eats didn’t. Map cultural behavior patterns quantitatively before you enter.
2. Turn your brand identity into a cultural asset.
“Efficiency” can be a commodity. Culture is not. Baemin Font, the characters, the witty copy — Baemin made its brand something people used in their daily lives, not just something they interacted with on a screen.
3. Design an ecosystem, not just a service.
Single services get replaced. Ecosystems don’t. Baemin connected restaurants, delivery riders, and customers into a network — then expanded into groceries, shopping, and membership. The more deeply embedded a platform becomes in daily life, the harder it is to leave.
4. Global brands can speak local.
Baemin’s success wasn’t possible “because it was a Korean brand.” It was possible because it understood what Korean consumers wanted and built that understanding into every layer of the product and brand. Any global brand willing to do the same — to genuinely internalize local culture rather than simply translating its existing identity — can compete on the same terms in Korea.
Baemin’s story is not about local beating global. It’s about deeper understanding beating surface-level execution.
What decided the outcome wasn’t where the brand came from. It was how well it understood where its users were coming from.
HY Marketing designs go-to-market strategies that turn local culture into brand equity for service brands in Korea, Japan, and beyond.
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Soeun Kim, Korean Marketing Coordinator
