Top 10 Korean Wedding Gifts.
Two things govern a Korean wedding gift and neither is what English guides emphasise. The notes must be new — crisp new bills are for weddings and used ones for funerals, and the distinction is not decorative. And the envelope must carry your name, because it goes into a ledger that will be read again at your own wedding.
What not to give
Read this before the list below. These are not preferences — several are genuine offences, and they are the part most gift guides leave out.
- Used notes Wedding money is crisp new bills, 신권, and guests go to a bank beforehand to get them. The rule matters because of its mirror image: new notes at a funeral imply you were looking forward to the death, and are taken as an insult to the bereaved. If you only have new notes at a funeral you fold them first to spoil them.
- An unnamed envelope Not a manners point, a bookkeeping one. The 방명록 records name, contact number, amount and date, and it is the instrument by which the gift gets reciprocated at your own wedding. An anonymous envelope cannot be repaid.
- The wrong reception desk The groom’s side and the bride’s side run physically separate 접수대. Handing your envelope to the wrong one misattributes the money and corrupts both families’ records.
- Turning up to the pyebaek It is direct family plus a few close elders. A friend or colleague appearing with a gift intrudes on a closed rite.
- Assuming yedan is owed Omitting it by agreement between the two families is now common. Treating it as obligatory can embarrass the bride’s side.
The ten
- 01
Chukuigeum (축의금) — cash
For anyone outside the immediate family this is the gift, effectively without exception. Korea is the culture in this list where cash has most completely displaced objects.
- 02
Mokgireogi — the wooden goose
A carved, black-lacquered pair. Geese were believed to mate for life and to follow a dead partner in death, which is the whole of the symbolism. Carved to resemble a duck rather than an actual goose.
- 03
Bangjja yugi — hand-hammered bronzeware
78 per cent copper to 22 per cent tin, forged by hammering the hot alloy rather than casting it. The craft is designated national intangible heritage.
- 04
Najeon chilgi — mother-of-pearl lacquerware
Inlaid boxes and chests. Also a designated intangible heritage craft, concentrated in Insa-dong and Tongyeong.
- 05
Eunsujeo — a silver spoon and chopstick set
Not generic cutlery. A fixed, expected line item in yedan.
- 06
Bansanggi
The full matched table setting for one person’s meal, in ceramic or brass. Another standard yedan item.
- 07
A department store gift card
Widely given and entirely acceptable if you would rather not hand over cash.
- 08
Ginseng or health sets
A standard Korean prestige gift, given to the parents as much as to the couple.
- 09
Hanbok fabric
For family members, as cloth rather than a finished garment. Note that the bride’s family buys the mother-in-law’s hanbok, as part of yedan.
- 10
A good soju or makgeolli set
Presented properly, with the glasses.
If you are giving money
An Incruit survey of 844 office workers fielded 20–22 May 2025 found 61.8 per cent naming ₩100,000 as the right amount for a work colleague, against 32.8 per cent for ₩50,000. In the 2023 edition of the same survey, ₩50,000 was the modal answer at 65.1 per cent. The floor moved in two years. The working rule is the meal: eat and give ₩100,000, skip the meal and ₩50,000 is normal and not stingy. By relationship — ₩50,000 for an acquaintance or a non-attender, ₩100,000 for a colleague or ordinary friend, ₩150,000 for a close friend or for any hotel wedding, where per-head catering runs ₩100,000–150,000, ₩200,000 for a long-standing friend or a cousin, and ₩300,000 and up for whoever helped plan it or is giving the toast. Write your name on the back of the envelope, vertically, below and left of centre.
Ham (함) — the box the groom’s side sends
- A close friend or relative of the groom is appointed 함진아비 and carries the box on his back.
- He wears a dried-squid mask, a mock horse’s face. Failing squid, his face is smeared with charcoal — explicitly to repel malevolent spirits.
- The party carries a 청사초롱, a blue-and-red silk lantern. The box may not be set down anywhere en route.
- Arriving, he shouts "함 사세요!" — buy the ham — traditionally three times.
- The bride’s family must buy it. They pay 함값 and lay on food and drink, and a deliberate haggling standoff is part of the fun: the party refuses to come in, the family escalates the offer.
- The box is finally set down on 봉치떡, a steamed red-bean rice cake prepared for the purpose.
Inside are blue and red silks, wrapped in complementary colours for agricultural abundance, flourishing offspring and lifelong conjugal harmony, and the 혼서지, the marriage document. That one is kept for life and placed in the coffin at death, as proof of a single lifelong marriage. Apartment living has largely killed the street-hawking, so treat 함들이 as declining rather than current default.
The reception desk, in order
The 접수대 is a procedure, not a table, and the couple staff it with people they trust absolutely — usually two per side, briefed two or three weeks in advance.
- Hand over the envelope
- To the correct side. Groom’s left, bride’s right, or as signed.
- Sign the 방명록
- Name, contact number, amount, date. Staff often write the amount on the emptied envelope to avoid transcription errors.
- Take your 식권
- The meal ticket, and usually parking validation. The buffet is gated by it — money and meal are procedurally linked.
- The 축의함
- A lockable box. Before it fills, a trusted elder does a 중간 정산 and moves the cash somewhere secure, by a route agreed beforehand.
- Afterwards
- Staff count in a separate room, reconcile against the ledger, and hand the total to the 혼주 — the host parents.
- Return gifts
- 답례품 for guests run ₩5,000–10,000 a head in 2026, and smaller or hotel weddings increasingly skip them.
What you will read that is wrong
- The odd-number rule now only applies below ₩100,000 The logic is real and old: odd numbers are 양, yang, and auspicious — the same reasoning that puts Korean festivals on doubled odd lunar dates and odd numbers of storeys on a pagoda. But 10 and 20 are treated as 꽉 찬 수, full numbers, and exempted. The Korean consensus phrasing is that above ₩100,000 the odd-even question stops applying. Since ₩100,000 is now what most guests give, the rule is dead for the majority of them.
- Dates are not sons and chestnuts are not daughters This split is everywhere online and it does not survive checking. The Academy of Korean Studies encyclopedia says the throw wishes for sons — 부귀다남, wealth, honour and many sons — with no sex distinction between the two fruits. The split appears only on blogs and Q&A sites, and reads like a modern rationalisation invented to make the rite sound gender-balanced.
- The money at your wedding may not legally be yours Korean court precedent holds that chukuigeum given by the parents’ guests belongs to the parents, the 혼주, and only the couple’s own guests’ money belongs to the couple. Parents’ chukuigeum spent on the couple’s home can be treated by the National Tax Service as a taxable gift. Worth confirming with an accountant rather than a wedding blog, but it is the reason the ledger is kept so carefully.
- Yedan, yemul, ham and honsu are four different things English writing collapses them into "the Korean dowry". Yedan goes from the bride’s family up to his. Ham comes back the other way. Yemul is exchanged sideways between the two of them. Honsu furnishes the new home. It is a triangle with a fourth budget attached, not one transfer.
Written as common practice. Regional and family variation is enormous — if you are close enough to the couple to ask, ask. Nobody has ever been offended by the question.