Socks with the faces of the singers of the Korean band BTS, handmade fans and masks from the series squid game. These are some of the products that can be purchased in the alleys of Insadong, a colorful neighborhood in downtown Seoul where the most traditional shops mix with the most modern. At one of these places, a few girls giggled while trying on their tiny eared glasses and headbands. They were getting ready to take a photo at one of the unstaffed photo booths that are popular among young people in South Korea and have gone viral on networks like Instagram and TikTok.

One of the most famous photo booth brands is Life4Cuts. It has 315 stores in South Korea and, within them, about 10,000 rooms to take photos. The company estimates that 22 million people visit its stores each year. On Instagram there is over 1.1 million posts with the hashtag Life4Cuts in Korean and even There is an account dedicated to teaching poses for photos. on TikTok videos about how does this photo booth work collect thousands of visits. The company has started to expand to other countries such as United States of America, United States of America, Japan or United Kingdom.

In the Insadong photo booth there was also Jimin, a 30 year old girl who was visiting the Korean capital to see the exhibition. She looked in the mirror and smoothed her hair with her hands as she waited impatiently for her friend. “When I come to see my friends in Seoul, we like to take the opportunity to take pictures so we can reminisce about the moment later,” he explained.

Behind him, there is a wall with dozens of photos hanging. While some people posed alone, in some pictures up to 10 young people appeared. They wear all kinds of accessories: from sunglasses to Minnie Mouse ribbons, flower crowns, wigs, police hats, headbands with birthday cakes or stuffed animals or giant dinosaur hat And animals. All of these add-ons are displayed on the property and are free to use.

This place has three booths separated by curtains to take photos inside. Inside, there’s a pink engine that lets you choose how the photo will look like. What Jimin likes the most is that he can adjust the frame. In addition to colors, you can choose whether you want to display Disney characters —such as Lilo & Stitch, Dumbo or Beauty and the Beast—or other images or animations designed for special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas or New Years .

The next step is to choose how many photos will appear in the frame: one, two, three, four, six or eight. The most common, according to Jimin, is to take four photos. After paying 5,000 Korean won —about 3.6 euros—, you have to sit on a bench directed by two powerful spotlights. Up front, the camera snaps every 10 seconds. Young people pose and can see at any moment how they will be photographed on the screen in front of them.

Two copies of the photo were then printed. “So every girlfriend can take one,” explains Elena, a 27-year-old Korean who works as an interpreter and visits the photo booth every two weeks. Soon after, he proudly displayed on his cell phone several photos he had taken of himself with his partner. These images, apart from being printed, can be downloaded in digital format by scanning a QR code. Elena explained that someone had left one of her printed copies hanging somewhere or kept it in a photo album at home.

Like hundreds of other users, Jimin often shares photos he takes on Instagram, with hashtags like #happybirthday. But there are also those who just want to have physical memory. This is the case for Jinyoung, a young woman who lives in Seoul and visits this photo booth twice a month to take pictures alone or with her friends. In this case, his friends are his cousins, two people in their twenties visiting Seoul. “What we love most about taking photos is that we get together. It’s the most precious thing,” Jinyoung said with a smile and shyly covered his mouth with his hand.

The photos she took with her cousins ​​show that they have some experience in posing. In some places, they wear hats and other cool accessories—like beanies that turn their faces into beer mugs. They pout, smile, put their hand to their chin and make a heart with their finger. You can also learn to pose and Life4Cuts suggests postures on its website for taking photos only, with a partner one of with friends.

“Collect them in order of height. Recommended group poses”, suggest in a video. There are many poses in which the protagonist of the photo forms a heart with their arm or hand. In some, they pose bringing the tips of the thumb and forefinger together. The intention with this move, which has popularized several k-pop starsis to recreate the shape of the heart. Some BTS artists often do this gesture, who had crossed the border. In fact, when they visited the President of the United States, Joe Biden, at the White House in 2022, they took a picture with him making this heart with his fingers.

Photo booth that prints photos in the digital age

It is enough to walk the streets of various neighborhoods in Seoul to find this type of photo booth. Most are unstaffed and there are some that are more sophisticated that even have hair straighteners for young people to style their hair before taking photos. In the midst of the digital era, what is the secret to the success of this photo printing shop in South Korea?

Samy Lee, a 35-year-old interpreter who was born in Barcelona and has lived in Seoul for nearly a decade, explains that photos in Korea have always been in vogue. “Koreans love selfies. If you go to tourist sites, you will see that they always have an area for photos,” he said. Around the Namsan Tower, better known as the N Seoul Tower, thousands of colored padlocks with messages in Korean fill the gates and gardens. Next to it, there is a pink booth that some tourists enter. “Take a photo”, can be read at the entrance.

Although these places are now going viral on networks like TikTok and Instagram, they are nothing new, as Junho Jeong explains. The 43-year-old Korean man admitted that he had gone to a photo booth with his friends about 15 years ago. Remember that the main difference is that, back then, the machines printed small stickers that were distributed and exchanged among themselves.

When Jeong visited one of these new photo booths with his 13-year-old daughter a few weeks ago, he felt a bit nostalgic. It is not clear to him “whether success has to do with social networking or rather to the fact that going back in time is a fad”. And he makes this reflection: “My generation grew up with physical photos and then got used to smartphones. We never printed photos again, not even our family. My daughter, on the other hand, has always lived on her smartphone and having these photos is one way to have physical memories with her friends and family.”

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