Arya News - The iPhone has always been premium, but wasn`t `Korean` enough.
SEOUL – For more than a decade, a certain group of South Korean iPhone users passed around the same dry joke online: features like Apple Pay, call recording and transit card support would “only come to iPhone after unification with North Korea.”
The comparison wasn’t literal. It was a way of saying these features felt so delayed that they belonged to the realm of the near impossible.
But as of now, that punchline has expired.
On July 22, Apple and T-money officially launched support for Korea’s nationwide transit card system on iPhones and Apple Watches. It was the last major item on a long list of missing functions that had, for many, made the iPhone feel “half-baked.”
While there has been no official survey or data on how many iPhone users in Korea viewed the device as incomplete, the frustration was very real, and very specific for some.
For years, Galaxy users could pay at almost any store using Samsung Pay’s MST technology, swipe into buses and subways with built-in postpaid transit cards, and record phone calls natively. iPhone users, by contrast, had to make tradeoffs.
“I stayed with Galaxy because I had to,” said Kim Min-seok, a 38-year-old sales team manager at a mid-sized electronics firm in Seoul. “Some might say, at least Samsung Pay is just a convenience. But call recording? That isn’t optional in my job. We handle client contracts over the phone all the time. If I missed something and had no record, I was the one to blame.”
In Korea, unlike in many other countries, it’s legal to record phone calls without the other party’s consent, and such recordings are admissible as legal evidence. That stands in direct contrast to Apple’s global privacy policy. While iOS 18.1 finally added native call recording to the iPhone’s Phone app, it automatically notifies the other party.
As a result, the feature is effectively useless in Korea, where silent recording is both legal and expected in many professional settings.
He recently switched to an iPhone 15 after his company approved the use of SK Telecom’s “A.” app, which enables unnotified call recording through a separate VoIP system. But the transition, he said, still feels like a compromise. “It works, but it’s not the same. On Galaxy, it’s just there. You press a button and it’s done.”
This isn’t a niche concern. In Korean business culture, verbal instructions and agreements often carry weight. As a result, call recording is not seen as invasive, but practical. Until recently, iPhones had no way to support it.
“I had friends who loved Apple, but they couldn’t use it because of that one feature,” Kim said. “It wasn’t about price or loyalty. It was about function.”
Other features were equally consequential.
Samsung Pay, launched in 2015, quickly became the de facto standard for mobile payments in Korea. It supported virtually all credit and debit cards and worked on nearly every terminal, including those without NFC support.
Apple Pay, which depends entirely on NFC, arrived in Korea only in March 2023 through Hyundai Card, nine years after its global debut.
Even then, it launched with limited card compatibility and worked at only a fraction of merchants. According to Hyundai Card’s PR director, Shim Hyun-jung, the rollout was “technically successful but commercially narrow.”
“We knew Korean users had waited a long time,” she said. “But the infrastructure wasn’t ready, and the local financial ecosystem had to adjust to Apple’s model.”
Apple Pay’s arrival spurred a surge in Hyundai Card signups, especially among younger users. But expansion stalled as other card issuers hesitated over Apple’s transaction fee demands. The service remains exclusive to Hyundai Card to this day.
Apple team members welcome excited customers on opening day at Apple Hongdae, the company’s 100th retail store in the Asia-Pacific region. PHOTO: APPLE/THE KOREA HERALD
Not all iPhone users saw these delays as a problem.
“I didn’t think of my iPhone as lacking anything,” said J.Y., a 24-year-old university student in Seoul who asked to be identified by her initials only. “I have not really considered Apple Pay as a basic smartphone feature. I already carry a wallet in my bag.”
She has used iPhones since high school and says she prefers them for the design and the way they work with her iPad and MacBook. “I don’t feel like I’m missing out. I just like how it all fits together.”
Her view reflects a different kind of user, perhaps more common, shaped more by Apple’s ecosystem than by Korea’s mobile-first infrastructure. Among Koreans in their 20s, especially women, iPhone usage is dominant. A 2024 Gallup Korea survey found that 75 percent of women in this age group used iPhones, compared to just 55 percent of men in their 20s.
“I think the idea of a ‘half-baked iPhone’ is mostly a guy thing,” J.Y. added, laughing. “My female friends and I hardly consider features like Apple Pay or Samsung Pay as basic functions of a smartphone.”
Still, at least for a subset of Apple fans in Korea, the missing features were deeply felt. Nowhere was this more visible than in Asamo (short for “iPhone User Group” in Korean), a massive online community hosted on Naver Cafe. With more than 2.3 million members, Asamo has long served as a hub for Apple users seeking workarounds, complaining about limitations and sharing news.
“We weren’t trying to be negative. We just wanted our phones to function like they should in Korea,” said Jang Soo-min, a 31-year-old marketing professional and longtime Asamo moderator. “Galaxy users could pay, ride the bus and record a call with no effort for such a long time. iPhone users couldn’t. It felt like we were using the same device with half the functionality.”
Jang points out that iPhone users often had to carry physical cards, memorize instructions during calls and explain to others why their phones couldn’t do what was expected. “It was embarrassing sometimes,” he said.
With Apple Pay T-money now available, users can ride public transportation across Korea simply by tapping their iPhone or Apple Watch without unlocking the device. PHOTO: APPLE/THE KOREA HERALD
Jang was one of the first to test Apple Pay on day one, and he set up T-money transit support the morning it launched on both his iPhone and Apple Watch. “This is the Korean Apple ecosystem I’ve been waiting for,” he said. “Not new. Just finally complete.”
Still, even with the feature list filled out, Apple’s market share in Korea remains limited. As of July 2025, Gallup Korea estimates Apple holds 24 percent of the domestic market, with Samsung commanding 72 percent.
“This isn’t going to cause a mass switch from Galaxy to iPhone,” said Hwang Ah-yeon from the Korea Consumer Agency. “The people who wanted iPhones already had them. This just makes their lives easier.”
And for those who switched years ago, the arrival of long-promised features isn’t cause for celebration. It’s more like quiet vindication.
“We made do for years,” said Jang. “Now it does work, though not perfectly. That might not sound exciting for every iPhone user in Korea, but for those of us waiting for it, it means everything.”