A banner displays explanations in Japanese for foreign visitors at an optical store in Myeong-dong, Seoul, Monday. Korea Times photo by Lee Hae-rin
Move over, K-pop and K-beauty. There’s a new craze sweeping the streets of Seoul and it’s all about getting your eyesight sorted and your style updated.
Foreign tourists are ditching the typical itinerary to hit up local optical shops, turning the “K-glasses tour” into the newest must-do experience alongside their beauty and medical tourism stops. They’re lining up for trendy frames and quick, convenient eye exams, making designer eyewear the ultimate travel souvenir.
On a Monday afternoon in central Seoul’s Myeong-dong shopping district, a three-story optical shop displayed signs in multiple languages, while staff members guided international visitors in English, Chinese and Japanese from frame displays to vision-testing rooms.
The store also featured a snack bar and seating areas, giving it a feel more like an airport lounge than a clinic. Around 200 pairs of glasses are sold daily, and staff say roughly 70 percent of sales come from international visitors.
Katherine Wu, visiting from Taiwan, discovered the store on social media and stopped by to buy contact lenses.
“This is a great stop for tourists, along with cosmetic and K-pop merchandise shopping. Staff are super cool, and the eye exams are systematic and trustworthy,” she said.
Alice, a tourist from Australia, said that ChatGPT had recommended she visit an optical shop during her stay in Seoul.
“It’s super easy, quick and affordable,” she said. “I still can’t believe I got prescription glasses ready in about an hour.”
As of Monday, the store had more than 2,000 online reviews, with an average score of 4.9 out of 5. Visitors from countries including the United States, Canada and Singapore described the experience as “English friendly,” “incredibly friendly, professional and efficient” and “highly recommended for tourists.”
Foreign visitors try on glasses at an optical store in Myeong-dong, Seoul, Monday. Korea Times photo by Lee Hae-rin
For many travelers, speed is the main attraction. In their home countries, eye exams, lens grinding and fitting can take a week or two, but in Seoul, the entire process is often completed within 30 minutes to an hour for standard prescriptions.
That efficiency is partly built into the process.
Korean opticians can perform exams and issue prescriptions in a single location, compressing what would require multiple appointments in other countries into one visit. For travelers on tight schedules, same-day pickup transforms a medical necessity into a convenient souvenir.
Price is another key attraction.
Tourists often find that high-quality lenses and fashionable frames come at reasonable rates — sometimes more than half of what they would pay in their home countries.
According to travel platform Creatrip, transaction volume for travel packages that include optical shops from June to October this year increased by about 1,608 percent compared with the previous five months, even though it has been less than a year since the company began offering such programs, reflecting surging interest in Korean eyewear.
Customers booking optical shop programs through Creatrip come from countries across Asia, North America and Europe, with Americans accounting for about 49 percent of all reservations, followed by Taiwanese at 26 percent and Germans at 9 percent.
Korean eyewear brands like Gentle Monster, which features BLACKPINK’s Jennie and actress Tilda Swinton as advertising models, have turned showrooms into gallery-like spaces, blending art installations with eyewear displays and leveraging celebrity collaborations to fuel global buzz. The brand expects annual revenue to surpass 1 trillion won this year, with overseas markets accounting for about 40 percent of total sales.
Blue Elephant, an emerging eyewear brand, is also posting remarkable growth, with its sales reaching around 30 billion won last year — more than five times the previous year.
Meanwhile, Korean tourism authorities are reframing K-beauty as a holistic lifestyle experience that goes beyond narrow, traditional ideas of beauty, promoting vision correction and other health and wellness services as key pillars of Korea’s global travel brand.
At events like the Korea Beauty Festival, the Korea Tourism Organization highlights health and wellness procedures such as vision correction or dental work alongside spa stays, temple meditation and skin care, positioning clearer eyesight as both a functional upgrade and a confidence-boosting beauty enhancement.
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