If you’ve ever been to Japan, you probably know the drill: you walk into a LOFT store “just to look,” and two hours later you’re comparing planner refills like it’s a serious life decision. That’s me, every single trip.

Except this time I didn’t have to fly anywhere — LOFT came to Seoul.

Last week, 29CM and LOFT teamed up for a stationery pop-up called “Page to Pages” in Seongsu-dong, and the stationery people of Korea showed up.

Brands you could only get by international shipping

A lot of the brands there have no official retail channel in Korea, which until now meant paying for overseas shipping and waiting three weeks. Ashford, Hobonichi — if you’re into stationery, you know exactly which items I mean. The ones that sat in your cart until the shipping fee talked you out of it.

Some booths even had Japanese staff who had flown over to explain the products themselves. Sending your own team abroad for a pop-up isn’t a marketing checkbox — that’s genuine enthusiasm.

Not just shopping — making things

Pop-ups in Korea have moved way past “here’s a table, please buy something.” This one leaned all the way into hands-on.

Even making a simple souvenir bookmark meant picking your own paper and running it through the laminator yourself. It was clearly designed for people who enjoy the process of making something small with their hands.

Spend over 50,000 KRW and you got a mini notebook from Hanju Diary — but not a plain freebie. They engraved it for you, and you got to choose both the notebook color and the foil color of the lettering. That’s a level of detail worth respecting.

Korea is genuinely in a stationery boom right now

If your reaction is “wait, do people still buy paper stationery?” — the numbers might surprise you. On 29CM alone, cumulative stationery purchases are up 48% year over year, and diary and planner sales jumped 63%.

In an age where everything can be an app, people are choosing to write, sticker, and collect things on actual paper again. Rolling a pen across paper after a full day of screens really does hit differently.

Why the best part is what comes next

What’s most encouraging is that 29CM said this isn’t a one-off. They’re planning to keep bringing in global brands — stationery and beyond.

The demand has clearly been there all along; there just weren’t enough places to enjoy it. So if you’re a stationery person living in Korea (or visiting), keep an eye out. There’s a lot more to look forward to — and a lot more damage to your wallet.

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Source: Careet Trend Letter vol.318 (Sep 8, 2026), “Editor’s PICK” section — careet.net