Pop Mart Korea Halts Labubu Store Sales Over Safety Fears
Labubu — Pop Mart’s wide-eyed mischief-maker at the center of the new South-Korea sales pause.
⏰ SAT Jun 14, 2025 @ 4 PM PST
🐟 Published from Seattle, WA
🔨 Built by Chase Burns Broderick
Predawn queues that snaked around Seoul’s flagship stores—and resale prices rocketing to 20–30× retail—have pushed Pop Mart to suspend all in‑store Labubu launches across Korea, mirroring a crowd‑control freeze imposed in the UK three weeks earlier. Online sales continue, but the pause at brick‑and‑mortars (from COEX to Hongdae) underscores how surging collector demand is outpacing the brand’s safety playbook and amplifies calls for a coordinated global rollout strategy.
What happened
Pop Mart Korea posted a trilingual notice (Korean / English / Chinese) on 14 June saying it has “temporarily suspend[ed] the offline sales of all LABUBU plush dolls and LABUBU plush keyring series” “due to concerns raised over potential safety incidents.” See screenshot below.
Pop Mart Korea’s trilingual Instagram notice announcing the temporary suspension of all in-store Labubu plush and keyring sales.
Scope
Suspension applies only to physical stores (flagships plus outlets at COEX, Yongsan I’Park, Hongdae, etc.). The official web‑shop still lists Labubu SKUs and is fulfilling orders.
Context
Korea is the second market in three weeks where Pop Mart has paused in‑store Labubu sales. Its UK arm imposed the same measure on 20 May after queue scuffles in Stratford and Birmingham.
Why it matters
Korean media have chronicled exploding demand—JoongAng Ilbo notes some limited editions trade at 20–30× retail and lines form before dawn. With physical launches now on hold in both the UK and Korea, Pop Mart faces mounting pressure to craft a global crowd‑control playbook.
ONE STEP DEEPER
According to a report from ChosunBiz in late May, about 100 Chinese resellers formed a line outside Pop Mart Myeong‑dong from 05:00 KST on 22 May, cleared Labubu Macaron sets in <30 minutes, and walked out with bags of stock destined for China. A translated quote:
On the morning of the 22nd, about 100 Chinese people lined up in front of a figure store in Myeongdong, Jung-gu, Seoul. They are ‘resellers’ who buy figures and take them to China to sell them at high prices.
This store opens at 11 AM, but some Chinese resellers are said to be lining up as early as 5 AM. They are trying to do an ‘open run’ where they go into the store as soon as business starts and choose the products they want first. On this day, the popular item ‘The Monsters Labubu Tasty Macaron Series Random Box (6 Pieces)’ sold out in less than 30 minutes after the store opened.
Chinese reseller A said, “You can buy two limited edition figures per person, but since they can be sold in China at a premium of 1 million won per figure, I can sometimes make 2 million won at a time.” — ChosunBiz
Enforcement backdrop: Chinese customs has already seized hundreds of undeclared Pop Mart figures this spring; see our earlier deep‑dive “How to accidentally smuggle a Labubu.”
Take‑away: Korea’s in‑store pause isn’t just crowd control—it cuts a vital supply route feeding China’s grey‑market Labubu boom.
