South Korea will soon require companies that slim down products to show the old and new sizes on packaging
3 min
SEOUL—Food prices have risen so much that Kim Soo-yeon has developed a suspicious new habit at the grocery store. She has taken to shaking bags of her favourite brands of potato chips to see if they feel lighter.
“If companies are reducing the amount of food by unnoticeable amounts, it feels deceptive,” said the 32-year-old office worker in Seoul.
South Korean authorities will soon be backing her up in the supermarket aisles.
Seeking to temper the effects of inflation, many countries have sought to use political pressure to dissuade food makers from gouging consumers—with higher prices or lower volumes. South Korea is taking things a step further.
Starting next year, the country will require companies to disclose on their packages and websites when grocery items drop in volume, but not price. To ensure firms comply, South Korea is establishing a dedicated price-investigation team to monitor any fluctuations. Officials are considering levying fines, too.
South Korea’s muscular response to “shrinkflation” reflects how a sluggish economy—its projected full-year growth of 1.4% is roughly half that of other wealthy countries—has become a major problem for President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose approval ratings remain stuck in the mid-30s. Those unhappy with Yoon most commonly cite economic issues.
The new proposals to fight shrinkflation came as the government unveiled an initial list of violators. Following a monthlong investigation, authorities said the offerings of everything from beer to Vienna sausages to dumplings had quietly gotten smaller. Some 16 variants of flavored almonds had shrunk, too.
Choi Si-yeon, a 28-year-old office worker, said she was angry when she found out about what had happened with her favourite wasabi-flavoured almonds. Each bag contained 20 grams less, a seemingly undetectable amount.
“If they had raised the price, at least some consumers would notice,” Choi said.
The maker of the snack, a South Korean firm called HBAF, for Healthy But Awesome Flavors, said it had disclosed the product-size changes on its website. The firm pointed to the pandemic, a rise in labor costs and almond prices as factors.
Other companies also claimed to have made online disclosures or argued the slimmed-down offerings were part of flavour revamps.
Shrinkflation backlash has emerged elsewhere, too. France’s second-largest supermarket chain, Carrefour, has put up bright orange signs to highlight products it deems subject to shrinkflation since September. In the U.S., Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) recently issued a report on shrinkflation, citing facial tissues and Oreos as examples.
With costs rising, what is often lacking is transparency over potential changes, creating room for a sense of injustice when shrinkflation occurs, said Rajiv Biswas, chief economist for the Asia-Pacific region at S&P Global Market Intelligence. “Consumers can’t check the website of hundreds of products,” he said.
Headline inflation in South Korea topped out at 6.3% in July 2022 from the prior year, below the recent peaks of 9.1% in the U.S. and 11.1% in the U.K. But food prices in the East Asian country had remained relatively low for decades, so the recent upticks have triggered outsize anger. Wages haven’t kept pace with rising prices. The country’s housing market—the main source of wealth for many South Koreans—has stagnated.
A majority of South Koreans plan to spend less money next year, according to a recent poll, with nearly half of respondents citing inflation as the chief reason.
Low inflation had been a particular policy priority for South Korea over the decades, helping the country’s export-heavy economy maintain a good environment for private investment, said Randall Jones, a former senior official at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development who led the group’s economic reports on South Korea.
“People aren’t used to inflation in South Korea,” said Jones, who is now a distinguished fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.
South Korea is conducting daily price checks for more than two dozen staple items such as milk and ramen noodles. The country’s antitrust regulator will list any shrinkflation examples on a newly created website and will handle enforcement of the new measures. The government wants to ink agreements with large South Korean retailers to build a joint monitoring system for some 10,000 everyday items.
That sliced cheese and other inexpensive items were among the first named shrinkflation violators irks people like Lee Hyun-woo, a 23-year-old university student. “If even processed food is shrinking, I feel betrayed,” Lee said.
In recent weeks, the country’s shrinkflation suspicions have touched everything from the cubed white radish accompanying Korean fried chicken to the cream density of a slice of strawberry cake.
Kim Young-hee, a 42-year-old homemaker, is glad about more government transparency. But the extra knowledge likely won’t change her habits, such as her occasional purchase of honey-butter almonds for her children.
“I’ll still buy the almonds,” Kim said, “but I don’t want to be tricked.”
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The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.
4 min
It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.
On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.
The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.
Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.
“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.
“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”
Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
What are the goals for Artemis II?
The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.
The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.
Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.
SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .
How is the mission expected to unfold?
Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.
The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.
After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.
Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.
Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?
Yes.
For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.
Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?
The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.
Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.
Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.
Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.
What will the astronauts do during the flight?
The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.
Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.
On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.
There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.
Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.
The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.
What happens after Artemis II?
Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.
NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.
