K-culture woven into daily life for Vietnam's Generation Z as Hanoi hallyu fair posts record results

"Among Vietnamese Generation Z, K-pop, drama series and cosmetics have become a natural part of culture," said Tran Phuong Anh, a visitor at the fair. "Using Korean cosmetics and sharing good products with each other is just everyday life."

The hallyu fair, held Friday at the Hanoi National Convention Center in Vietnam, drew large crowds of K-pop, K-food and K-beauty enthusiasts. Most attendees were Vietnamese in their twenties, waving light sticks for their favorite idols, snapping photos and singing along to Korean lyrics. "Korean cosmetics and food have become part of daily life in Vietnam, and they will only grow more popular," visitors said.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Korea Agro-Fisheries and Food Trade Corporation jointly organized the three-day fair, which opened Thursday. It combined hallyu content with Korean consumer goods, pairing a business-to-business export consultation session on Thursday and Friday with a business-to-consumer exhibition and promotional hall open to the general public on Friday and Saturday.

K-pop groups Winner and Fifty Fifty, the fair's official promotional ambassadors, headlined the opening performance and drew large fan turnouts. In the B2C exhibition hall, Musinsa, Shinsegae and Saenghwal Gongjakso — all preparing to enter the Vietnamese market — as well as E-mart, which already operates three stores in the country, ran booths introducing Korean consumer goods to fans. Vietnamese retail chains Sammi Shop and K-Market also operated showcase booths, offering hands-on product experiences and events featuring Korean goods.

Tran, who came to the fair to see Fifty Fifty, said her love of K-pop had led her to study Korean. "Korean idols have a strong influence on Vietnamese Generation Z," she said. "Collecting albums and photo cards of Korean idols and sharing them with friends has become completely normal everyday life."

She added that tteokbokki — the Korean spicy rice cake dish — is now so widely known that any Vietnamese person would recognize the word. "The instant products sold locally taste almost exactly like what you eat in Korea," she said. "They really capture the authentic flavor."

A representative of Sammi Shop, Vietnam's largest integrated cosmetics importer and distributor, said Korean cosmetics are gaining popularity particularly among younger consumers. Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, northern regional head of TDIC, which operates Sammi Shop, said Korean brands account for the largest share of the labels TDIC distributes in the country. "Students born after 2000 are very interested in K-pop, and Korean cosmetics brands are actively using K-pop idols as promotional models, so I think the popularity will only keep growing," she said.

Korean cultural influence is also expanding in the K-food sector. A representative of K-Market, Vietnam's largest Korean supermarket chain, said Vietnamese consumers now make up 60 percent of its customer base, up from a clientele that was once predominantly Korean expatriates. "Products that appear in Korean drama series see an immediate jump in sales — the effect is very real," the representative said.

At the B2B export consultation sessions, 107 Korean consumer goods companies held 1,512 consultations with more than 280 buyers from Vietnam and neighboring countries, signing contracts and MOUs worth more than $33.26 million — the best result in the fair's history.

A KOTRA official at the Hanoi trade office said growing consumer demand for safe, premium products in Vietnam — fueled by a series of food fraud scandals last year — is also driving interest in Korean consumer goods. "The hallyu fair has become an efficient opportunity for consumer goods companies to expand into the market at low cost by partnering with public institutions, hallyu promotional ambassadors and retail networks," the official said.