Starting in October 2025, we resumed using K-Packet as a shipping option.
The last time we used K-Packet was in October 2022, making this its return after nearly three years.
Before COVID, a large portion of our international orders were shipped via K-Packet. However, during the pandemic, service disruptions and restrictions made it difficult to use consistently, and we stopped offering it for an extended period.
K-Packet is likely familiar to K-pop fans with experience ordering from Korea. It can be viewed as a middle ground between registered air mail and EMS in terms of cost and speed.
While it is unlikely to return to the same conditions as before, K-Packet’s greatest advantage was its 2 kg weight limit combined with no volumetric weight charges.
This made it possible to ship items with a large volume relative to their weight—such as NewJeans – Get Up (Bunny Beach Bag Version) or BTS – Map of the Soul 7 —without having to consider volumetric weight at all.
In K-pop communities such as Reddit, many posts note that shipping costs from Korea have increased significantly since COVID, and one frequently mentioned reason is the introduction of volumetric pricing for K-Packet.
The application of volumetric pricing not only raised overall shipping costs but also made shipping cost calculations considerably more complex for sellers.
In the past, if an item weighed 200 g, estimating a shipping weight of around 300 g—including packaging—was usually sufficient to calculate shipping costs accurately.
After volumetric pricing was introduced, however, accurate cost estimation became much more difficult. When items with different sizes are shipped together, volumetric weight must be calculated as a whole, making it harder to predict the final shipping cost in advance.
As a result, sellers are often forced to estimate product weight more conservatively. If the volumetric weight unexpectedly exceeds the 2 kg limit, K-Packet shipping becomes impossible altogether.
Foreign K-pop fans who have been using K-Packet for a long time may feel that shipping has become slower compared to the past.
This perception is partly true. However, it is due to changes in the shipping environment, not a change in the nature of the service itself.
K-Packet has always operated on a ‘space-available’ basis, meaning it is loaded after higher-priority mail.
In the past, when global demand for Korean goods was much lower, this structural limitation was less noticeable.
Today, demand for Korean products has increased significantly. At the same time, the number of international flights has not fully recovered since the pandemic. As a result, the queue for lower-priority K-Packet shipments has naturally become longer.
Despite these limitations, we still believe that K-Packet remains one of the most reasonable shipping methods under certain conditions.
While it no longer offers the same level of flexibility as before, we carefully consider order composition and packaging to ship orders as efficiently and safely as possible. When K-Packet is not suitable, we choose more stable shipping options rather than forcing a shipment under unfavorable conditions.
*For a detailed explanation of why K-Packet is not offered to the majority of the newly added destinations, please refer to the following article:
👉 https://www.catchopcd.net/korea-posts-k-packet-expansion-a-case-study-in-administrative-irresponsibility/
