‘Weren’t you people meditating while coming out of the wombs??’
That was my lovely American friend’s joke about Korean and Asian people, the origin and root of mindfulness, meditation, and Zen culture while we were discussing “meditation”. In reality, I might have to disappoint many fellow Western people who had similar expectations about us, it is a clear illusion and unachievable image that history might have created. With the growing global meditation population, 275 to 500 million, western society might have raised far more attention than the Asian market in the past 10 years. One of the key statistics shows that the number of people meditating in the States had already tripled in 2012-2017 (NCHS) and the meditation apps market was valued at $ 1.1 billion in 2021 (Business Apps).
When I relocated to South Korea to focus on my start-up business, one of the leading mindfulness content platforms in Korea, the pandemic was at its peak and mental health issue was dramatically increasing at both local and international levels. In late 2019, our business was one of the pioneers in the industry and the Korean mindfulness community was less commercialized and developed as a business concept although the potential market we examined was unofficially big enough to enter with uncaptured numbers of the population of mindfulness and meditation practitioners.

(image from Mindful Series workshop 2021 Spring)
I remember in the early days, I had to have a minimum 2-hour-meeting whenever we introduce our service and meet potential users and clients just to explain and convince them why the platform is useful and how it works within the ecosystem, every time I met meditation & mindfulness teachers in Korea. Almost every single of them was very reluctant to use it as they were so much used to being the independent and individual brand by operating their sales & marketing funnels mainly via their websites or social media pages – thanks to other class & content platforms, with their dramatic growth and success, meditation & mindfulness professionals also started accepting the concept and formula of using and working with 3rd party platforms. Then it started being considered useful and casual sales funnels in the mental health wellness and wellbeing market too.
Our team witnessed a fast-growing mindfulness industry with interesting transitions in the last two years. Here are some of my brief insights about the Korean market of mindfulness and meditation that I earned from working with 100 plus independent teachers and influencers, and other significant players and corporate stakeholders.

Comments