Why Are Koreans Obsessed with MBTI Test for the Past 2 Years?

Koreans love MBTI. They love asking people what their MBTI is. It’s a good conversation starter. MBTI memes are everywhere and some people even overindulge themselves with personality types of MBTI.

But! It wasn’t like this 3 or 4 years ago. People didn’t care about MBTI, or didn’t even know what MBTI is!

How come Koreans suddenly fall in love with MBTI? Why do Koreans love MBTI?
Let’s find out together ????

Look at the chart above. Google Trends, a search tool that allows users to see how often specific keywords have been searched, shows that in the past 12 months, South Korea has looked up MBTI more than any other countries in the world. South Korea has a score of 100! It’s a proven fact that Koreans, compared to other citizens around the world, have more interest in MBTI.

Values are calculated from 0 to 100.
– 100 : the most popular place
– 50 : the half popular place
– 0 : lack of data

Wait… what exactly is MBTI?

Myers Briggs Type Indicator

Main factors of MBTI

✔️ With 93 questions, the questionnaire identifies a person with one of 16 personality types, combining the main factors of MBTI.
✔️ It helps to identify a person’s personality type, strengths, weaknesses, and preferences.
✔️ It is based on Carl Jung’s theory of personality types.
✔️ It was developed by a daughter (Isabel Myers) and her mom (Katherine Briggs) in the 1940s.

* You can take MBTI test in www.16personalities.com

MBTI rankings in Korea

Here is our assumption on why Koreans suddenly fell in love MBTI :

Koreans have had a strong desire to understand themselves, but didn’t know how to, mainly because of the standards set by the society.

Korea is known for its competitive and stressful education/work systems, and people often have to follow what the society has defined as “standards”, such as entering a prestigious university or getting a decent, high-paying job. It’s a hard society to find one’s inner self. Following these societal processes, people can easily forget their true interests and true self (like what they really like and how they want to live their life).

And then, they found MBTI: a convenient, easy way of defining and evaluating oneself. Just by reading the descriptions, people start to understand themselves, like why they acted in certain ways or why they had difficulties in some things. It’s bringing comfort and also feel a sense of sympathy.

These days, MBTI has taken root in daily lives of Korea.

Many people use MBTI to briefly evaluate others as well, since it’s easier than having deep conversations.

⚠️ Side Effect : Judging people with stereotypes

Sometimes, people exaggerate and put too much meaning in each factor. Instead of using the test as a little support to understand oneself and others, some people have a blind faith on the descriptions of each type. They even wrongly label the factors as if some types are “bad” and some are “good.” The world simply cannot be divided into 16 personalities.

People need to know that these personality tests do not hold definite answers of who you are. The leading subject that tells who you are should be yourself, not the personality test.

???? Discussion for Today’s Topic :

Do you think you know yourself well? Who do you think you are?

Please feel free to share your thoughts with us!