“I feel uncomfortable meeting friends who want to eat somewhere expensive every single time,” he said. “I also don’t like taking turns paying for meals. Splitting the bill is just easier.”
HJ Kim, 32, has reached much the same conclusion. What bothers her is not merely the price of dinner, but the invisible accounting that can begin once the plates are cleared.
“Splitting the bill feels like the norm these days, but some people act as if even bringing it up is wrong,” Kim said.
For people she is not particularly close to, Kim would rather leave the table owing nothing — and being owed nothing.
“Even having someone pay for me feels burdensome now because I know I’ll have to return the favor,” she said.
Dinner, in other words, can come with a second bill: obligation.
For some young Koreans, that is becoming reason enough to decline the invitation altogether. Kim said she increasingly makes excuses to avoid company dinners and other gatherings she feels little need to attend.
South Korea already has a rich vocabulary for doing things alone. There is hon-bap, eating alone; hon-sul, drinking alone; and hon-haeng, traveling alone. Collectively, those who embrace such habits are sometimes called the hon-jok, or “solo tribe.”
Now rising prices and increasingly divergent lifestyles are giving solo life another selling point: it can be cheaper.
ES Kim, 29, said expensive invitations have begun to make her reconsider which relationships are worth the time and money.
“If I’m not close enough to someone to justify spending this much time and money, being asked to meet at an expensive place has started to feel like a burden,” she said.
For JB Lee, 25, the friendship arithmetic eventually added up to a car. Tired of calculating who paid for what and the bad aftertaste that sometimes followed, Lee increasingly embraced an introvert’s life and spent more of his money on himself.
The phenomenon has acquired its own vocabulary. “Friendflation” combines friendship and inflation to describe the rising cost of maintaining a social life. Another expression circulating on social media, “solo-maxxing,” gives the response a more upbeat spin: getting as much as possible out of being alone.
Recent Korean data suggest the financial pressure is far from anecdotal.
A July survey by part-time job platform Alba Heaven of 601 Gen Z respondents found that 93 percent had felt burdened by the rising cost of meeting friends or attending social gatherings. Nearly half, 49.1 percent, said they felt that pressure frequently.
Their most common solution was straightforward: meet less.
Some 71.2 percent said they had reduced spending on socializing with friends over the previous year. Of those, 83.9 percent had cut the number of gatherings.
Food topped the list of financial strains, cited by 78.4 percent, followed by coffee and desserts at 40.1 percent, alcohol at 29.7 percent and birthdays and anniversaries at 25.8 percent. Travel, concerts and exhibitions also made the list.
Cost is beginning to influence not only how often young people socialize, but with whom.
Among those who reduced social spending, 88.8 percent said they had cut meetings with friends, former classmates or peers. Asked which friends were the most financially burdensome, 56.4 percent pointed to those who favor expensive restaurants.
Even a respectable paycheck does not necessarily solve the problem.
JS Nam, a medical resident in his 30s, earns a relatively high income but still sometimes questions what a weekend of socializing bought him.
“After spending money going out over the weekend, I sometimes wonder where it all went,” he said. “Then I find myself having a sandwich for lunch.”
The friendship gap
Economists and sociologists caution, however, that splitting the check itself is not necessarily driving people apart.
“Among people of a similar age, splitting the bill has already become the norm, so I don’t think that alone is much of a factor in distancing friends,” said Yang Jun-sok, professor of economics at the Catholic University of Korea.
The more consequential divide may be what different friends consider an ordinary amount to spend.
Kim Yun-tae, a professor of sociology at Korea University, points to what he calls “visual capitalism” — a social media-driven culture in which restaurants, holidays and experiences are continuously displayed and consumed as images.
“Consumer culture has expanded across society, whether among the wealthy, the middle class or those with less,” Kim said. “At the same time, it has created enormous polarization. People are also increasingly divided by their tastes and spending habits.”
Those differences matter because friendships that start on relatively equal footing often do not stay that way.
College friends may once have shared cheap meals and similar budgets. A decade later, one may own a home while another pays a large deposit and rent. One considers a 100,000-won dinner an occasional treat; another barely notices the charge.
Friendship suddenly has another compatibility test: not just whether two people enjoy the same things, but whether they can afford to enjoy them in the same way.
Research suggests social networks already tend to reflect such economic similarities. A 2024 study published in Social Networks found friendships occur more frequently among people with similar socioeconomic backgrounds, although the researchers cautioned that this does not necessarily mean people consciously choose friends from the same social class. Where people live, study and work also determines whom they have an opportunity to meet.
Kim said highly visible differences in consumption can nevertheless sharpen the divide.
“People with greater financial means can end up excluding those who have less,” he said.
“That can lead to feelings of deprivation and isolation and deepen social, economic and cultural polarization, which can ultimately create conflict.”
Friendship now has a cover charge
Friendflation is hardly unique to South Korea.
In the United States, the cost of club memberships, lessons, event tickets, dining out and drinking away from home rose nearly 11 percent in the two years through April 2024, compared with a 7.5 percent rise in overall consumer prices, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
At the same time, many places where friendships once developed without requiring much spending — workplaces, schools and neighborhood networks — have become less central to social life.
More socializing has consequently migrated to restaurants, gyms, hobby classes, concerts and other spaces where participation carries a price tag.
Friendship was never free to begin with. It requires another scarce resource: time.
Research by University of Kansas communication professor Jeffrey Hall found that people can require roughly 40 to 60 hours together to move from acquaintance to casual friend, and substantially longer to become close friends.
Increasingly, those hours arrive with receipts attached.
Not broke — selective
There is an important wrinkle in the friendflation story.
Young Koreans have not simply stopped spending.
Long-term household data instead suggest they are becoming choosier about what deserves their money.
Average monthly consumption among Korean households in their 20s and 30s declined from 2.57 million won in 2014 to 2.48 million won in 2024, according to a June 2025 Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry report based on government household data.
But the composition changed.
Among households headed by people aged 30 or younger, the share spent on groceries and non-alcoholic beverages fell 3.9 percentage points over the decade. The shares devoted to restaurants and accommodation and to recreation and culture each rose 3.1 percentage points.
The chamber attributed the shift partly to the growing importance of travel, dining experiences and digital content.
More recent banking data tell a similar story.
According to NH NongHyup Bank’s October 2025 NH Trend+ report, people in their 20s and 30s increased savings while cutting some expenses and continuing to spend on experiences they considered worthwhile.
Their savings rose 15 percent in the first half of 2025 from a year earlier, more than twice the growth among older age groups.
Spending at bars and karaoke venues fell 8.8 percent, while transactions at golf courses and driving ranges declined 9.6 percent.
Yet spending at sports stadiums surged 65 percent, and purchases through major online ticketing platforms increased 11 percent.
The bank dubbed the behavior “treatonomics”: economizing on expenditures regarded as dispensable while continuing to pay for hobbies, health and experiences that deliver greater personal satisfaction.
That complicates any easy conclusion that younger Koreans have become antisocial.
Yang said tighter budgets may simply force harder choices.
“People may prefer splitting the bill because their budgets are already tight, whether from everyday living costs or from trying to save for major purchases such as a home or a car,” he said.
Kim of Korea University said the pressure extends beyond consumption. Spending on education and self-development increasingly reflects competition in a difficult labor market.
“Young people are facing difficulties finding jobs, and there is also a growing divide in the quality of jobs available to them,” he said. “In that environment, self-development is not simply about personal satisfaction. It has become a strategy for survival.”
A language course, professional certificate or gym membership can therefore look less like indulgence than investment. Against those competing demands, another expensive dinner with an acquaintance becomes easier to cut.
Friendflation may therefore be exposing differences that were already there — in income, priorities, ambition and taste — rather than creating them.
And higher prices do not inevitably mean fewer friends.
Dinner can become a walk. An expensive restaurant can become a neighborhood noodle shop. Friends can cook at home. Splitting the check can be less a sign of emotional distance than an agreement that the relationship should remain financially sustainable.
Being able to say “I can’t afford that” without embarrassment may even be its own form of intimacy.
Not every friendship adjusts so gracefully.
HJ Kim frequently travels for work with a colleague who insists on paying for her. The generosity, she said, can sometimes make her more uncomfortable rather than less.
“He keeps trying to pay for me,” Kim said. “I know he means well, but it makes me feel like I have to do something in return.”
So she would rather remove the debt before it enters the relationship.
“Sometimes, I’d rather just pay for my own meal,” she said. “Then nobody owes anyone anything.”
AJP Takeaways
• “Friendflation” describes the rising cost of maintaining friendships as higher prices make meals, coffee, entertainment and other social activities more expensive.
• A July 2026 survey by South Korean part-time job platform Alba Heaven found that 93 percent of 601 Gen Z respondents felt burdened by the cost of meeting friends or attending social gatherings.
• Among respondents who reduced social spending, 83.9 percent cut the number of gatherings, while 56.4 percent identified friends who favor expensive restaurants as the most financially burdensome.
• Young Koreans are not simply spending less: data from the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry and NH NongHyup Bank suggest people in their 20s and 30s are becoming more selective, cutting some expenses while continuing to spend on travel, hobbies and experiences they value.
• Friendflation does not necessarily mean the end of friendships. Lower-cost activities, splitting bills and openly discussing budgets can help people maintain relationships without taking on unwanted financial obligations.
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