KakaoTalk Etiquette: How to Text a Korean Friend

You’ve made a Korean friend. As you’re about to say goodbye, they hold out their phone: “Kakao allyeo juseyo!” — give me your Kakao. Not your number, not your Instagram. KakaoTalk. In Korea, exchanging contacts essentially means exchanging KakaoTalk, and most of a friendship plays out inside those yellow speech bubbles.

The catch is that KakaoTalk comes with unwritten rules. Your friend can see exactly when you’ve read their message. The gap before your reply, the way you laugh in text, even a single sticker — all of it carries nuance. Here’s the etiquette, written for travelers and anyone texting a Korean friend for the first time.

Why does everyone in Korea use KakaoTalk?

Because it’s the country’s default way to stay in touch. According to Kakao’s Q1 2025 earnings materials, KakaoTalk had 49.1 million monthly active users in Korea (49,099 thousand). Plans with friends, office announcements, parents’ groups, neighborhood clubs — almost all of it happens on KakaoTalk.

It’s also more than a messenger. Payments, money transfers, birthday gifts and all kinds of notifications live in the same app, so when a Korean asks for your Kakao, what they really mean is “let’s keep in touch.” The payment side is covered in our guide to Korea’s cashless payment apps.

What does the number 1 mean on KakaoTalk?

It’s the number of people who haven’t read your message yet. In a one-on-one chat, when the 1 next to your bubble disappears, your friend has read it. In a group chat, the number starts at however many members haven’t read it and ticks down.

That tiny number has given Korean a whole set of texting words. Learn a few and you’ll understand a lot more of your friends’ jokes and complaints.

KakaoTalk words you'll hear from Korean friends

How fast should you reply to a Korean friend?

There’s no fixed rule, but between friends a short reply the same day is the norm. Koreans tend to text in quick, frequent bursts rather than long letters, so hours of silence can leave the other person wondering.

That doesn’t mean you have to answer instantly. If you can’t reply properly, send one line to buy time — Koreans do exactly the same.

Be a little careful late at night. Many Koreans sleep with their phone by the pillow, so after about 11pm, anything that isn’t urgent can wait until morning — or add something like “jamyeon naeil bwa!” (if you’re asleep, talk tomorrow!) to take the pressure off. Replying with nothing but a sticker is completely normal, too. Kakao emoticons are such an everyday part of conversation that people actually pay for sticker packs.

How should you write your first message?

Start in polite speech — sentences ending in -yo — and you’ll never go wrong. If you’re the same age or you’ve already agreed to “speak comfortably,” you can switch to casual banmal. When and how that switch happens, along with what to call people, is explained in our oppa, hyeong, eonni, nuna guide.

First messages for different situations

How you laugh is part of your tone, too. ㅋㅋ is laughter; ㅎㅎ is closer to a smile. Friends usually stack several ㅋㅋㅋ, and a lone ㅋ can come across as half-hearted. For the slang Koreans are using on social media right now, see our 2026 Korean MZ slang guide.

Do group chats and Kakao gifts have etiquette too?

Yes. In group chats, don’t slip out silently; with gifts, keep the amount casual. When you leave a group chat, everyone sees a notice that you’ve left, so even in a chat made for a one-week trip, drop a “deokbune jeulgeowosseoyo!” (thanks, I had a great time!) before you go. If the notifications are too much, just mute the chat instead of leaving.

KakaoTalk also reminds you of friends’ birthdays and lets you send mobile gifts — a coffee voucher, for instance — right from the chat. Sending a coffee-sized gift over KakaoTalk for a birthday or a favor is one of the most common gestures in Korea. What Korean twenty- and thirty-somethings actually give each other is in our gift guide for friends and couples.

Want to practice before you text a real Korean friend?

The hard part of KakaoTalk isn’t vocabulary. It’s the back-and-forth. What do you say after your friend replies with ㅋㅋ? How do you react when they say their day was rough? When do you ask a question, and when do you just say “aww, really?” Textbook dialogues don’t teach that.

Hi Jisoo is an app where you can get a feel for exactly that. You text in Korean, and a Korean female friend texts back the way she would on KakaoTalk. General-purpose AI chatbots tend to answer with explanations and bullet points, but Hi Jisoo was additionally trained on real conversations between Korean people, and each friend has her own personality and way of speaking. So the replies don’t arrive like an information desk — they’re short, they react, they joke back, and they remember what you told her last time, the way a friend’s texts do.

• Five friends with different personalities — from a calm one who speaks politely to a candid one who talks in casual banmal. You can rename each of them.
• An "easy Korean" option — beginners can ask their friend to use simpler expressions. The conversation stays in Korean; the app itself works in English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) and Korean.
• See and edit what she remembers — and your chats are stored encrypted on your own phone.
• No subscription, no ads — you get 10 free stars when you sign up, and each reply uses one star.

The friends are fictional adult AI characters, and they’ll tell you so if you ask. Still, for getting used to the rhythm of Korean texting before you message a real Korean friend for the first time, it does the job. Download it on the App Store for iPhone or Google Play for Android (18+).

Keep reading

• Yeosachin: Can Men and Women Be Just Friends in Korea?
• Why Koreans Ask Your Age (and 7 Other First Questions)
• Do People in Seoul Speak English? (2026 Reality Check)