Danggeun (당근, short for 당신 근처 dangsin geuncheo, “near you” — and also the Korean word for “carrot,” which is why the global version is branded “Karrot”) is Korea’s hyperlocal neighborhood app: a GPS-verified network where you buy, sell, and give away used goods, find part-time gigs, and meet the people who live a few blocks from you. Roughly 19 to 21 million Koreans open it every month, which makes it the default way to furnish or empty out an apartment here — not Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, which barely register in Korea.
I know this because I have a number I check more often than I’d like to admit. It’s called 매너온도 (manner temperature, maneo-ondo — a reputation score displayed as a body-temperature reading), and mine sits a little above 37°C. Everyone starts at exactly 36.5°C, normal human body temperature, and it drifts up or down based on how you behave in trades. I build internal systems at a Korean financial company, so of course I treat a public trust score like a dashboard KPI. When we sold our kid’s outgrown baby gear — the stroller, a bin of clothes from the doljanchi (first-birthday) stretch — to a family a few blocks over, I spent longer wording the listing than my ENFP wife thought was sane. She’d have just handed the whole lot to a neighbor for free. I wanted the review.
That gap between us is the whole app in miniature. So here’s what Danggeun actually is, and how you’d use it if you’ve just landed here with an empty apartment.
What is Danggeun, at a glance?
At its core, Danggeun is two things stacked on top of each other: a used-goods marketplace and a neighborhood social layer. The marketplace is what most people arrive for — you list a rice cooker, someone two subway stops away messages you, you meet, you hand it over. The social layer is what keeps them: a local feed, part-time job posts, real-estate and small-business listings, and neighbor meetups. It all runs on the same rule, which is that everything is scoped to where you physically live.
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| App name | Danggeun (당근) in Korea; “Karrot” abroad |
| Launched | 2015, as a market for a Pangyo tech park (판교장터); rebranded from 당근마켓 to 당근 in 2023 |
| Monthly users | Roughly 19–21 million in Korea (about 19M as of April 2024; around 21M cited in June 2026) |
| What it’s for | Buying/selling used goods, free giveaways, local jobs, real estate, local businesses, neighbor meetups |
| Trust system | 매너온도 (manner temperature), starts at 36.5°C; a 1,000-point “Karrot Score” overseas |
| How you pay | 직거래 (in-person, cash or QR) for local deals; 당근페이 안심결제 (in-app escrow) for shipped items |
By most accounts it’s the largest peer-to-peer used-goods platform in the country — one estimate puts it at something like 85% of Korea’s person-to-person secondhand trades, though I’d hold any single figure loosely. What isn’t loose is the scale: this is an app in the pocket of a huge slice of the adult population, and it turned its first-ever operating profit in 2023 (about ₩17.3 billion) after eight years of losses, then posted ₩189.1 billion in revenue and ₩37.6 billion operating profit in 2024, and ₩270.7 billion in revenue in 2025, up 43% year on year. In June 2026 it even collected a Presidential Citation on Environment Day, on the logic that reusing stuff instead of buying new is a carbon-neutrality contribution.
What does “Danggeun” even mean?
The name is a pun, and Koreans love it a little too much. 당근 is a contraction of 당신 근처 (dangsin geuncheo), “near you,” and it happens to spell the everyday word for carrot. So the mascot is a carrot, and when the company went abroad it just romanized the vegetable: Karrot.
The origin story fits the name. It started in 2015 as a small trading board for employees at a Pangyo tech park — Pangyo being Korea’s Silicon Valley, south of Seoul — under the name 판교장터, “Pangyo market.” The premise was simply that you’d rather buy a used monitor from someone in your own building than mail it across the country. That “someone nearby” instinct scaled into a national app, which dropped the “마켓” (market) from its name in 2023 to signal it was more than a flea market. The overseas Karrot has since launched in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan, and passed 2 million users in Canada.
Why can I only trade with my neighborhood?
The first time you open the app, it asks for your location and runs 동네인증 (neighborhood verification, dongne-injeung, a GPS-based check that you actually live in the area). From then on, most of what you see — listings, the local feed, jobs — is filtered to a small radius around you, commonly described as around 4 to 6 kilometers. You can’t browse the whole country. That feels restrictive until you realize it’s the entire point.
Anonymity is what makes online secondhand markets miserable. When the buyer could be anyone anywhere, you get no-shows, scams, and lowball haggling from strangers you’ll never see again. Danggeun’s bet is the opposite: pin everyone to a real place, make the other person a literal neighbor, and behavior improves on its own. You’re less likely to flake on someone who shops at the same convenience store you do. In practice it means I’ve handed over items in apartment lobbies, at subway exits, and once in a café, always within a ten-minute walk. That proximity is also why it’s so useful the week you move in — the fastest source of a used desk isn’t a shipping warehouse, it’s the person moving out two buildings over.
What is 매너온도, the “manner temperature”?
This is the part the systems-builder in me genuinely admires. 매너온도 is a reputation score dressed up as a body-temperature reading. Everyone starts at 36.5°C, and the number climbs or cools within a 0–99°C range based on your transaction reviews, “manner compliments” from people you’ve traded with, and how quickly and politely you respond in chat. Show up on time, describe items honestly, reply like a human — the temperature rises. No-show, ghost people, get bad reviews — it drops, and it’s visible on your profile for the next buyer to see.
What I like is that it’s not a five-star average you can game. It’s slow-moving, cumulative, and social — closer to a credit score than a rating. Mine is a hair above 37°C, and I will admit, without much dignity, that nudging it upward is a small private game I play. Outside Korea, the same trust idea ships as a 1,000-point “Karrot Score” instead of a temperature, presumably because a stranger in Toronto reading “your seller is 36.5 degrees” would be alarmed rather than reassured. Same engineering, different dial.
So is Danggeun just a secondhand app?
No — and this is where it stopped being a marketplace and became infrastructure. Sitting alongside the buy-and-sell listings is 동네생활 (neighborhood life feed, dongne-saenghwal, local Q&A, news, and community posts), where people ask which pediatric clinic near the intersection is open late or whether anyone else heard that noise last night. There’s 당근알바 (local part-time jobs, arba from the German Arbeit), where a nearby café posts a weekend shift. There are real-estate and local-business listings. And there are 모임 (meetups, moim) — neighborhood groups for running, board games, parenting — which crossed 10 million monthly users in July 2026.
That last number is the tell. A used-goods app doesn’t need a meetup feature; a neighborhood does. I’ve written before about how KakaoTalk quietly runs Korea’s messaging and money — if KakaoTalk is the country’s nervous system, Danggeun is its neighborhood, the layer that actually knows who lives near you. The business has grown into that identity: it raised $162 million at a $2.7 billion valuation in a 2021 Series D (with SoftBank Ventures Asia among the backers), and by late 2025 its secondary-market valuation was assessed at around ₩2.5 trillion.
How does a foreigner actually use Danggeun?
Honestly, well — with one caveat. The in-Korea app is Korean-first, so the interface will lean on your phone’s translation until you learn a handful of words. But you don’t need an Alien Registration Card for basic use; you need a Korean phone number, because sign-up and neighborhood verification run on an SMS code. That’s the same bar as most Korean apps.
Once you’re in, the two ways to close a deal are worth knowing. The default is 직거래 (in-person trade, jikgeorae, meeting to hand the item over, usually cash or a QR transfer). For anything shipped or non-face-to-face, use 당근페이 안심결제 (Danggeun Pay safe payment, an in-app escrow that holds the buyer’s money and only releases it to the seller after the buyer confirms the item arrived). Escrow is your protection when you can’t meet; for a local handoff, cash or a quick bank QR is normal.
A few practical notes from doing this a lot:
- When you arrive at the meeting spot, the standard opener is “당근이세요?” (Danggeun-iseyo?, roughly “Are you the Danggeun person?”). It sounds absurd translated and it’s completely normal in practice — it’s become national slang for “are you my stranger?”
- Meet in a public, lit place: an apartment lobby, a subway exit, a convenience store. Nobody thinks this is rude; it’s just how it’s done.
- Watch for 무료나눔 (free giveaway, muryo-nanum, listing items for neighbors to take for free). This is where my wife lives — she’ll post something as a giveaway the second we’re done with it, no listing agony, no price math. Furnishing a first apartment on giveaways alone is very possible.
- Filter by distance and sort by newest. The good stuff near you goes fast, especially on moving weekends.
FAQ: Danggeun for foreigners
Do I need an ARC to use Danggeun?
Not for basic buying, selling, and browsing. What you need is a Korean phone number, because sign-up and 동네인증 rely on an SMS verification code. Some payment or identity-heavy features may ask for more, but you can trade day one with a local SIM.
Is Danggeun safe for a foreigner?
Reasonably, if you use its guardrails. The 매너온도 score lets you read a stranger before you commit — a very low temperature is a real signal. For local deals, meet in public and inspect before you pay; for shipped ones, use the 당근페이 안심결제 escrow rather than transferring cash upfront. Most trouble comes from skipping those two habits, not from the app itself.
Is there an English version?
The Korean app is Korean-first, so expect to lean on translation, though it’s very navigable once you know a few terms. The overseas “Karrot” app is properly localized in English and uses the 1,000-point Karrot Score instead of a temperature. If you’re in Korea, you’re using the Korean one.
How do I keep my manner temperature from dropping?
Show up on time, describe items accurately, and reply promptly and politely in chat. Don’t cancel last-minute or ghost after agreeing to meet — no-shows are what actually cool your number. Good reviews and “manner compliments” warm it back up over time. Give things away as 무료나눔 now and then; generosity reads well.
One last thing
If you’re moving to Korea, install this before you install a furniture-store app. The stroller we sold went to a family whose kid is exactly the age ours was a year ago, they were genuinely glad to get it, and my manner temperature ticked up a notch — which, yes, I noticed. My wife noticed that I noticed. Every household has its own way of clearing out the past; ours just happens to run on a reputation score and a carrot.