3 reasons why the MBTI is so popular in South Korea
Hint: Heard of BTS?
Widely adopted by organizations all over the world, The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, also known as the MBTI® assessment, has also had increased interest outside the workplace as people discover the many uses personality insights have in their personal lives.
The MBTI is a powerful tool to raise self-awareness and help people improve in areas like relationships, decision-making, stress management and more.
While the MBTI is the world’s most popular personality assessment, it’s popularity has spiked in South Korea in the last couple of years.
Asking someone “what’s your MBTI?” is now a common question in South Korea among friends and coworkers.
Even celebrities are revealing their four-letter type publicly on TV shows and all over the internet.
It’s hard to pinpoint only one reason why the MBTI assessment has suddenly become trendy in South Korea. However, here are 3 possible answers:
1) The pandemic: According to Ronan McAlister, Assistant Professor of Politics at Sungshin Women’s University, one of the reasons for the MBTI assessment’s popularity is the pandemic and how it’s limited our connections to other people. Due to social distancing and curfews in restaurants and other social gathering places, it became more difficult to make connections. And the MBTI assessment started trending to fill that vacuum.
Professor McAlister mentioned that, after completing a quick questionnaire, you can instantly have a bond with someone. “It’s been around for a while, but it’s only really spiked over the last year or so. And I think it’s no coincidence it happened in the middle of a pandemic,” he said in an interview with the Korean TV channel Arirang.
2) K-pop stars: The international superstars of BTS took the MBTI and revealed their four-letter types in a video that has been watched over 7 million times. Out of the seven members of the group, five had a preference for Introversion. Some viewers wrote in and said they found it weird that artists constantly on the stage performing in front of thousands would have a preference for Introversion. However, remember that preferring Introversion doesn’t mean people are shy — it relates to how people receive and direct energy, from the inner world (Introversion) or the outside world (Extraversion).
According to a study by The Myers-Briggs Company, 56.8 percent of the world population prefer Introversion. Other K-pop bands also publicly told their personality preferences, helping MBTI personality type become a hot topic in the region.
3) Popularity around the world: Used by some of the largest companies in the world, the MBTI assessment has been around since the 1960s. Its popularity in corporate settings probably helped push the current trend. The official and only MBTI assessment, published by The Myers-Briggs Company, has been distributed in Asia and translated to Korean for over two decades.
In addition, the MBTI assessment is based on decades of solid research and is continually updated. It meets validity and reliability standards set by both the American Psychological Association (APA) and the British Psychological Society (BPS) for psychometric assessments.
Want to learn your MBTI personality type and get access to personal development courses on stress, relationships and more? Visit www.mbtionline.com today.
