Korea Discount Calculator: What the Sale Price Actually Is

Korean price tags are their own language. A jacket marked down with a big red “50%” sticker slapped over the original number, a rack that just says “1+1,” a sign screaming “폭탄세일” in a font that means business, none of it tells you what you’re actually paying until you do the math. And when the original price is already in the tens of thousands of won, that math gets annoying fast.

Here’s a calculator for it, laid out as a simple table: punch in the price on the tag and the discount percentage from the sign, and it’ll show you the before and after in both won and your own currency, side by side, using live rates.

Sale signs you’ll actually see in Korean stores

1+1 (원플러스원) means buy one, get one free, not 50% off two items. It’s everywhere at convenience stores and drugstores like Olive Young, and it resets constantly, so the item on 1+1 this week might be full price next week. 2+1 shows up too: buy two, get a third free.

정가 / 세일가 is just “regular price / sale price,” usually printed one above the other on the tag, with 정가 crossed out. If you only see one number with a percentage sticker over it, that’s the discount off 정가, which is exactly what the calculator above is for.

반값세일 means half-price sale, literally “half price.” 균일가 means “flat price,” everything on that rack or table is the same price regardless of the original tag, common at outlet racks and street markets. 땡처리 and 재고정리 both mean clearance, end-of-stock, get-it-out-the-door pricing, usually the deepest discounts you’ll find. 폭탄세일 translates to “bomb sale,” it’s slang for a blowout sale with unusually steep markdowns.

One thing worth knowing: the percentage on the sticker is almost always off the original tag price, not stackable with other discounts unless a sign explicitly says so. And at markets and small independent shops, especially in places like Dongdaemun or Namdaemun, the sticker price is sometimes just a starting point, politely asking “할인 되나요?” (can I get a discount?) doesn’t hurt.

Reading a Korean price tag

Korean shops advertise discounts differently from most of the English-speaking world, and the difference is exactly the kind that costs you money while you stand there doing mental arithmetic.

The most common signs, and what they actually mean:

• 30% 할인 — 30% off. Straightforward.
• 정가 / 세일가 — list price / sale price. Both are usually printed, with the list price struck through.
• 1+1 — buy one, get one free. Not “two for the price of two”.
• 2+1 — buy two, get a third free. Effectively about 33% off if you want three.
• 균일가 — everything on this rack is one flat price, regardless of the tag.
• 최대 50% — up to 50%. The headline applies to a few items, rarely the one you’re holding.

1+1 is the one that trips people up

It’s everywhere in convenience stores and cosmetics shops, and it isn’t a percentage discount at all — it’s a quantity deal. Three points worth knowing:

• You have to take both items. There’s no half-price single.
• The free item is usually the same product, not any product at that price. 2+1 sometimes lets you mix within a marked group.
• The per-unit saving is 50% on a 1+1 and roughly 33% on a 2+1 — but only if you’d have bought that many anyway. Two of something you wanted one of is not a saving.

Convenience store chains run these on rotation and the deals differ between CU, GS25 and 7-Eleven in the same week. If you’re stocking up for a hotel room, it’s worth a glance at the shelf label rather than the product.

Discounts that stack on top

The shelf price often isn’t the final price. Two layers commonly sit underneath it:

Card discounts (카드 할인). Korean shops run promotions tied to specific domestic credit cards — a further percentage off, or a fixed amount above a spending threshold. These are advertised on signs at the till and almost never apply to a foreign card. Don’t count on them.

Membership points. Chains have their own schemes and staff will ask if you have one. As a visitor the honest answer is no, and it costs you nothing to say so.

So the number you should plan around is the shelf price minus the advertised discount — which is what the calculator above gives you.

Evening discounts at supermarkets

Large supermarkets mark down fresh food as closing approaches — prepared meals, sushi packs, bakery items, cut fruit. Stickers go on in the last hour or two and get deeper as the evening runs out.

If you’re self-catering or feeding a family, a late-evening supermarket run is the single largest food saving available to a visitor, and nobody writes about it because it isn’t glamorous.

Tax is already in the price

This surprises visitors from countries where tax is added at the till. The number on the tag in Korea is the number you pay. There is no sales tax bolted on at the end.

VAT is inside that figure, which is why the tourist tax refund gives back less than 10% of what you paid rather than exactly 10% — the tax is a tenth of the pre-tax price, not a tenth of the tag.

Haggling

Not a thing in shops, department stores, chains or anywhere with a printed price. Trying it reads as odd rather than shrewd.

Traditional markets are the exception, and even there it’s mild — buying several of something and being offered a round-number total, rather than a negotiation. A friendly “좀 깎아주세요” at a market stall is fine. The same sentence in Olive Young is not.

Before you buy clothes

A discount on something that doesn’t fit isn’t a discount. Korean sizing runs differently from European and North American sizing in ways that catch nearly everyone — this is the article, and the size converter does the arithmetic.

Read next

• Korean won converter — what the final figure comes to in your currency.
• Myeongdong — where most of these signs are.
• Convenience store food — home of the 1+1.