South Korea

Country Overview

As Western philanthropic culture has pervaded South Korean philanthropy in recent decades, the country has experienced a growth and evolution of philanthropic activity, including the ways of donation. Some giving vehicles—such as face-to-face (F2F) donation pledges, charity item purchases, major gifts, and charitable bequests—are common in the United States and Western European countries but have only been adopted or become more popular in South Korea since the early 2000s due to the increasing rate of globalization. Others—such as giving by automated response service (ARS), general interbank recurring order (GIRO), and crowdfunding reward tokens—are unique in South Korea but rarely used in other countries.

This study looks at 10 giving vehicles categorized in two main groups: traditional and new. Traditional giving vehicles include giving via ARS, GIRO, and street cash donations. New giving vehicles include F2F donation pledges, peer-to-peer (P2P) donations, crowdfunding, charity item purchases 2.0, fandom donations, major gifts, and charitable bequests.

Overall, between 2016 and 2020, the amount donated through traditional giving vehicles decreased while the amount donated through new giving vehicles increased. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many aspects of daily life, giving by ARS and GIRO actually increased due to their contactless nature. For similar reasons, P2P giving also saw a dramatic increase during the pandemic.

View full South Korea country report

View full South Korea country report (Korean)

Over the last decades, South Korea has experienced a growth in philanthropic activities; some rooted in traditional giving vehicles, and others realized by new or emerging ways of giving. In 2019, a total of KRW 14.4 trillion (equivalent to USD 12.6 billion in 2020, adjusted for inflation) were donated to charity in South Korea, 36 percent from corporations and 64 percent from individuals (National Tax Statistics, 2020).

Analyzing the total amount of giving between 2016 and 2020 by each of the 10 giving vehicles included in this report, the top three giving vehicles were the following: F2F donation pledges, reaching an estimated KRW 487 billion (equivalent to USD 438.7 million in 2020, adjusted for inflation); charitable bequests, reaching KRW 435.7 billion (equivalent to USD 404.5 million in 2020, adjusted for inflation); and major gifts, reaching KRW 295.5 billion (equivalent to USD 265.1 million in 2020, adjusted for inflation).

The giving vehicles presented below—ARS, GIRO, and crowdfunding with reward tokens—are unique in South Korea. For more information about each of the 10 giving vehicles included in this study, please see the South Korea country report.

Giving by Automatic Response Services (ARS)

Giving by ARS means donors make a donation by a phone call. In the 2000s, giving by ARS was very popular among Koreans, as its motto captures this giving vehicle’s strength: "Donation with KRW 2,000 (approximately USD 1.6) by just one phone call." While giving by ARS rapidly decreased in recent years, this giving vehicle witnessed a huge spike during the COVID-19 pandemic. This increase can be attributed to this giving vehicle’s contactless nature. Due to limited in-person interactions with others, it seems that donors have increased their participation in charitable giving through ARS in 2020.

Giving by General Interbank Recurring Order (GIRO)

GIRO is an automated electronic payment service that allows donors to make a monthly payment to the nonprofit organization that they want to donate from their bank account directly. While the biggest nonprofit organization that uses GIRO is the Korean Red Cross, other South Korean nonprofits have also engaged in charitable fundraising with GIRO, such as Compassion Korea, Korea Food for the Hungry International, Miral Welfare Foundation, Habitat for Humanity Korea, and SungGa. Giving by GIRO to the Korean Red Cross decreased between 2016 and 2019; however, it increased modestly in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is the concept of raising charitable funds from a large pool of donors using online platforms. In South Korea, crowdfunding was introduced as a charitable giving vehicle in the early 2000s and it has been used to support publicly well-recognized causes, such as projects focusing on animal protection and rights, sanitary pad provision, and personal protection equipment provision for COVID-19.

Uniquely, the concept of rewards was introduced to crowdfunding in South Korea. On Happy Bean, a national crowdfunding platform, people can earn “Beans” from their participation in online activities on the Happy Bean site (e.g., using an online club, posting, or blogging) and then donate their “Beans” to a fundraising campaign on the platform. NAVER further provides matching gifts in cash through the Happy Bean Foundation to crowdfunding campaigns when donors give “Beans” to campaigns.

In South Korea, there are two nationally well-known charitable crowdfunding platforms, which are "해피빈" (Happy Bean) and "카카오같이가치" (Kakaogachigachi).  Charitable donations on these two crowdfunding platforms gradually increased during the 2016–2020 period in South Korea. During the COVID-19 pandemic, donations via crowdfunding platforms rose from KRW 21.4 billion in 2019 (equivalent to USD 18.8 million in 2020, adjusted for inflation) to KRW 34.7 billion in 2020 (equivalent to USD 30.8 million in 2020, adjusted for inflation), a growth of 71 percent (or a growth of 64 percent in inflation-adjusted 2020 USD values).

In South Korea, legal complications related to charitable giving often delay the introduction of new giving vehicles, such as charitable endowments and donor-advised funds. However, the researchers anticipate that new forms of giving—such as giving by non-fungible tokens, virtual money, or PIN technology—will be introduced in South Korea as the philanthropic culture and technology advance.