Short version: if you attend a Korean wedding and eat the meal, put 100,000 won in the envelope. If you’re only sending your regards and not going, 50,000 won is fine. Keep the number odd, never give 40,000, and write your name on the back.
Last week a junior teammate dropped a mobile cheongcheopjang (모바일 청첩장, the KakaoTalk version of a wedding invitation) into our team chat, and my first instinct was to open a mental spreadsheet. I build internal systems at a Korean financial company for a living, so “how much do I put in the envelope?” isn’t a feeling for me — it’s a formula. Relationship weight, times whether I’m actually showing up, times the cost of the plate I’m about to eat. I started muttering the inputs at the kitchen table.
My wife — the ENFP to my ISTJ — looked at me like I’d proposed auditing a birthday card. “Just give what feels right,” she said.
She’s not wrong. But “what feels right” is exactly the thing a foreigner standing at a Korean reception desk does not have yet. So here’s the formula, the one number you must never give, and how the whole white-envelope system actually works — plus a short funeral section, because sooner or later you’ll need that one too.
What exactly is chukuigeum?
chukuigeum (축의금, congratulatory wedding cash — literally “congratulation money”) is the cash gift you hand over at a Korean wedding. There’s no gift registry, no boxed toaster. You bring money, in an envelope, and that is the gift. It belongs to a larger Korean category called gyeongjosa-bi (경조사비, the money you give for life’s happy and sad milestones) — weddings, funerals, first birthdays, and the rest.
Here’s the part that reframes everything for a newcomer: it isn’t really a present. It’s a ledger entry. At the venue a staffer writes down your name and the exact amount you gave, because Korean gift culture runs on tracked reciprocity. The couple — and their parents — now quietly owe you roughly the same amount when your own wedding, or your child’s, comes around.
Think of it less as a gift and more as a very long-term, interest-free social loan. That single mental shift explains almost every rule below.
So how much? (relationship × attendance × meal cost)
The honest baseline for a coworker or an ordinary acquaintance in 2026 is short:
- Not attending, just sending your regards: 50,000 won.
- Attending and eating the meal: 100,000 won.
- A close friend, or a relative: 100,000 to 200,000 won and up.
If 50,000 for showing up sounds low, that’s the old normal talking. As recently as 2023, a clear majority of office workers — roughly two-thirds, about 65% — named 50,000 won as the right amount for a colleague. In a 2025 Incruit survey, 61.8% said 100,000 won instead. Real transfer data tells the same story: the average congratulatory gift climbed to about 117,000 won in 2025, up from 110,000 in 2023 and 114,000 in 2024, as the 50,000-won share slipped and the 100,000-won share grew.
Why did 100,000 become the floor? Do the meal math. In April 2025 the Korea Consumer Agency (한국소비자원, the government consumer body) surveyed 370 wedding halls and 152 planners across 14 regions and found the median wedding-hall meal cost at 58,000 won per person — ranging from roughly 85,000 in Seoul’s Gangnam down to about 44,000 in the Gyeongsang region, nearly a twofold gap. Peak-season plates ran higher (around 60,000) than off-season ones (55,000), with March the priciest at 63,000.
So at a Seoul hall, a 50,000-won envelope literally no longer covers the food you’re eating. That is the entire logic behind “at least 100,000 if you’re staying for the meal.” You aren’t only congratulating the couple; you’re making sure you don’t leave them in the red on your own plate.
(For scale, the same survey put the average total wedding-service bill at around 21 million won. Nobody expects your envelope to dent that — it’s just why the numbers keep drifting up.)
| Your relationship | Attending? | Typical amount (2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Coworker / acquaintance | Just sending regards | 50,000 won |
| Coworker / acquaintance | Yes, eating the meal | 100,000 won |
| Close friend / relative | Yes | 100,000–200,000 won |
| Very close friend / family | Yes | 200,000 won and up |
The odd-number rule (and why never 40,000)
Now the superstition, because it’s real and it will trip you up. Korean gift amounts are traditionally odd: 30,000, 50,000, 70,000. Odd numbers carry yang (양, the bright, auspicious force); even numbers carry eum (음, its darker counterpart). An even number splits cleanly in two, and splitting things in half is exactly the wrong symbol to hand a couple.
The accepted exceptions are 100,000 and 200,000, which get a pass because they read as “full,” complete, round sums rather than divisible evens. So the usual ladder runs 30,000 → 50,000 → 70,000 → 100,000 → 150,000 → 200,000. You’ll notice 90,000 quietly disappears — people jump straight to a clean 100,000 because it simply feels better.
And the one number to never, ever put in a Korean envelope: 40,000 won. The word for four (四) is a homophone for death (死) — the same reason some Korean elevators skip the fourth floor or label it “F.” Forty thousand at a wedding isn’t just stingy; it reads as a small curse.
There’s even a folk mnemonic: 3, 5, and 7 are heard as “I truly congratulate you,” while 4, 6, and 8 get jokingly cast as the grudge amounts. Nobody takes the joke literally, yet everybody follows it. One last thing that matters more than you’d guess — use crisp, new bills. Pulling crumpled cash out of your back pocket reads as an afterthought.
The envelope, or your phone?
The classic version: you bring a plain white envelope, write your name on the back (this is how you get credited in the ledger — skip it and your gift becomes anonymous), and slip in the new bills. At the venue you’ll find a jeopsucheo (접수처, the reception desk) in the lobby — often two of them, one for the bride’s side and one for the groom’s. Go to the side of whoever invited you. The staffer logs your name and amount and hands you a meal ticket in return. That’s it. You’re in.
Increasingly, though, the envelope never appears at all. People simply send the money by KakaoPay or bank transfer, using the account number printed right there in the mobile invitation. I’ve written before about why I’ve barely touched physical cash in months, and the wedding envelope turns out to be one of the last holdouts falling to the same habit — KakaoPay’s congratulatory-money transfers have jumped roughly 360% over five years. Sending 100,000 won from your phone on the morning of the wedding is now completely normal: no envelope, no reception-desk line.
My honest advice for foreigners: if you’re attending in person, hand over a physical envelope — it’s warmer, and it guarantees you’re logged. If you genuinely can’t make it, a transfer with a short congratulatory message is perfectly gracious.
And if it’s a funeral?
The sadder envelope works almost the same way, which is oddly reassuring when you’re nervous. Condolence money is buuigeum or joeuigeum (부의금 / 조의금, funeral condolence money), and the odd-number convention still holds: 30,000, 50,000, 70,000, or 100,000 won. Figure roughly 50,000 for a colleague or acquaintance and around 100,000 for a close friend or a relative.
The envelope itself is different. Its front is printed or written with buui (賻儀) or geunjo (謹弔) — old Chinese-character phrases meaning, roughly, “condolence gift” and “humble mourning.” Your name and affiliation go on the lower left of the back. At the funeral hall you place the cash in the bujeoham (부의함, the condolence-money box) or hand it to the jeopsucheo, bow, and offer a few quiet words.
Visiting in person is the proper thing to do, but if you truly cannot, a bank transfer “to send your heart” has become common and accepted. And here my ENFP wife finally wins our argument: at a funeral the exact number matters far less than showing up sincerely. Wear plain dark clothing, keep everything low-key, and you’ll be fine.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to attend to give money? No. Sending 50,000 won without attending is a completely normal and respected option — especially if the wedding is far away or you barely know the person. Attending and giving are two separate courtesies; either one counts on its own.
Cash envelope or bank transfer? Both are fine in 2026. A physical white envelope handed to the reception desk is the traditional default, but transferring the money by KakaoPay or bank using the account number in the mobile invitation is now mainstream and carries no stigma at all.
What should I wear to a Korean wedding? Neat and semi-formal, with one hard rule: nothing white or too flashy, so you don’t compete with the bride. For a funeral, wear plain dark or black clothing. When in doubt, dress a notch more conservatively than you think you need to.
Is giving 50,000 won rude now? If you attend and eat at a Seoul wedding hall, 50,000 won now reads as a little light, because it no longer covers the meal. If you’re only sending your regards without attending, 50,000 won is still perfectly appropriate. Attendance is the deciding factor here, not stinginess.
For my junior teammate, I ran the model, landed on 100,000 won, and sent it by KakaoPay before I’d even tapped “attending.” Then I told my wife I’d optimized the inputs. She told me, again, to just give what felt right. This time the formula and the feeling happened to agree — and honestly, that quiet overlap is the whole target you’re aiming for.