Home
Apps
Apps News
"Catch of the day" for Korea's hungry singles with popular app

"Catch of the day" for Korea's hungry singles with popular app

By Reuters | Updated: 23 April 2013 17:03 IST

Click Here to Add Gadgets360 As A Trusted Source

South Koreans, who lunch religiously between midday and 1 p.m., can now get an extra treat through a smartphone app that promises to help singles find their one true love.

In a country with the longest working hours among rich industrialised nations, and where 8 million of its 50 million people are thought to be single, the i-um app, which means "to connect", offers detailed profiles and photographs to help match up busy singles.

Subscribers register and submit photographs and personal information.

Apps Discussion

Explore More...

Then at exactly 12:30 p.m. each day they receive a message through a stylised "lunchbox" showing the match of the day - and if both parties click "okay", they receive the other's name and phone number.

"At 12:30 p.m., the hour and the minute hand make a straight line. That means that both the man and the woman we connect can become one," said Park Hee-eun, who founded the company that developed the app in 2011.

"We (also) chose 12:30 p.m. because it is when people are most relaxed so they can just open the lunch box we deliver in a laid-back manner."

The app now has 800,000 subscribers and Park says that so far, 56 people have successfully found mates.

"App dating was my last-ditch effort, (I was) grabbing at straws," said Lee Ji-sun, a 33-year-old businesswoman who last month married the man she met through the app.

Comments

Get your daily dose of tech news, reviews, and insights, in under 80 characters on Gadgets 360 Turbo. Connect with fellow tech lovers on our Forum. Follow us on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News for instant updates. Catch all the action on our YouTube channel.