What does 무지출 챌린지 (mujichul challenge) mean? Korea's zero-won summer of 2022

Yesterday our editor tried going no-spend: packed lunch, coffee from the office pantry, straight home after work. Then the banking app showed three subscriptions had auto-renewed. A zero-won day is harder than it looks.

This challenge made the news in summer 2022. You don't see it as often now, but Google autocomplete still attaches “meaning,” “in English” and the names of finance apps. Here's why it caught on then, and what's left of it.

It usually starts with food. In July 2022, YTN described the routine: skip breakfast, eat lunch at a cheap cafeteria, make dinner from what's in the fridge, drink the office coffee, and bike to work. It's a struggle to escape the 텅장 (“empty account”), and a way of shopping that gives up on 가심비 (value measured by satisfaction) altogether.

• 오늘 무지출 챌린지 성공! 편의점 앞을 세 번 지나쳤다No-spend challenge: success! Walked past a convenience store three times.An Instagram proof post
• 미안, 이번 주는 무지출 챌린지라 커피는 못 마셔Sorry, I'm doing the no-spend challenge this week, so no coffee.Turning down a friend
• 무지출 챌린지 3일 차인데 택배 온 건 어제 결제한 거니까 괜찮아Day three of no-spend, and this delivery was paid for yesterday, so it's fine.Someone reading the rules generously
• 한 달에 무지출 데이 15일이 목표야My goal is 15 no-spend days a month.A worker opening a budgeting app
• 무지출 챌린지 끝난 날 치킨 시켰더니 말짱 도루묵이네Ordered chicken the day the challenge ended, so that was all for nothing.Right after a reward splurge

The first big wave on record came in July 2022. YTN ran a piece on July 26 declaring flexing a thing of the past, and The Economist Korea reported on July 31 that the Instagram hashtag had passed 2,000 posts. Kuki News wrote in August that a no-spend vlog had passed 660,000 views. Several reports describe 짠테크 (frugal money-saving) taking the place of “YOLO” and “flex” among people in their 20s and 30s.

One: inflation. Consumer price inflation passed 6% in June 2022 and hit 6.3% in July (The Economist Korea, Kuki News). The generation that heard 벼락거지 (“suddenly poor”) during COVID now felt it at the grocery store.

Two: it's a game. Saving alone looks stingy, but with proof it becomes a challenge. Dankook University psychology professor Lim Myung-ho told Kuki News that no-spending, once seen as miserly, had become a cultural phenomenon that gives MZ people a sense of achievement. It runs in the opposite direction from 소확행 (small but certain happiness), though both find satisfaction close to home.

Three: apps helped. Budgeting and finance apps made spending visible and easy to track. The Economist Korea cited a worker in their 30s whose spending nearly halved after seven months with a budgeting app, and a user who set 15 no-spend days a month. These are individual cases, not averages.

The numbers show the backdrop clearly. Consumer price inflation, which reached the 3% range in October 2021, hit the 6% range nine months later. According to Kuki News, July's 6.3% was the highest since November 1998 (6.8%), during the Asian financial crisis.

Willingness has been surveyed too. In an Embrain Trend Monitor survey of 1,000 workers aged 19 to 59, cited by Newsis and Smart Today, 89.9% said rising prices had made living costs a burden, and 54.2% said they'd be willing to try the challenge. Note that this measures willingness, not how many actually did it.

The biggest pushback came from an unexpected place. According to Segye Ilbo, the Ministry of Economy and Finance posted about the challenge on Twitter and elsewhere on August 19, 2022, then deleted it after criticism that it was promoting extreme cuts to spending. A ministry that needs consumers to keep the economy turning had ended up advertising not spending. The ministry said it wasn't an official position and that it had only meant to introduce a new form of consumption. Staying power is in question too: Business Watch in 2024 called it a trend that “briefly caught on and disappeared.” Whether it's worth skipping meals for is your call, but a few thousand won for lunch can't cost more than your health.

So: 무지출 챌린지 was a game and a saving method born from inflation. The trend has passed, but trying a zero-won day is still a decent wallet check-up. Our editor has decided to start by canceling those three subscriptions. If you have a sharper definition, add it to the 무지출 챌린지 entry in the dictionary.