Apartment spike leads to toilet paper for the masses

Popee

Launched in 1974, Popee was the first mass-produced roll-style toilet paper in Korea.

The company behind the product was Yuhan-Kimberly, a joint venture between U.S.-based Kimberly-Clark and local firm Yuhan Corp.

Yuhan-Kimberly introduced Popee during Korea’s apartment boom, when Western-style toilets became more prominent than the traditional Korean ones where you have to squat. Even so, only a select group of locals - including the wealthy and U.S. Army soldiers - used toilet paper frequently. Many Koreans, especially in rural areas, continued to use materials like newspapers instead of actual toilet paper.

To popularize the product and ensure it fit the Korean dynamic, Yuhan-Kimberly invested in research and development. The company found that while Americans rolled up their toilet paper in a ball, Koreans folded it. That soon led to another discovery: toilet paper in folded form wasn’t as strong as it was balled up. So the company made the product 20 percent denser than toilet paper sold in the United States. Additionally, the company used sturdier pulp to attract less dust and reduced the width to 98 millimeters (3.9 inches) instead of 114 millimeters to fit the average hand size of Koreans.

The name Popee was created by the marketing team at Yuhan, which was searching for a name that would be both familiar and accessible. To further this image, they added an illustration of a puppy on the product. By the 1980s, Popee became one of the most popular puppy names used in Korea.

At first, the company didn’t have the technology to make Popee products out of regenerated pulp, so it used 100 percent natural wood pulp. The lack of technology bumped up Popee’s price as well. “At the time, it was kind of a symbol of wealth if you had a roll of Popee in the backseat of your car,” recalled Ma Im-lak, an executive at Yuhan-Kimberly.

After the company built its factory in Gimcheon, it started using new technology that allowed it to use regenerated pulp. Now, 35 years after its launch, Popee has the largest share of the market for toilet paper in the country.

By Choi Ji-young [jainnie@joongang.co.kr]