According to a report from the Chinese edition of the JoongAng Daily, a website that disguises stock trading interfaces as Excel spreadsheets or Outlook email has quietly become popular among office workers in South Korea. The site updates real-time prices and related news for individual stocks such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. In the Outlook version, the sender fields even display realistic names like „Lee Jae-yong (Electronics Business Division)“ or „Deputy Manager Choi Ji-boo (Hynix Team)“, and clicking on them reveals the corresponding stock prices. At 9:30 a.m. on the 28th, about 1,800 people were online simultaneously, and the built-in real-time chat room was filled with self-deprecating comments such as „day trading on company time.“
The current bull market in South Korea has driven stock investment to spread as a nationwide and entertainment-oriented activity, with some users saying it is „more thrilling than scrolling through short videos.“ Seok Byung-hoon, a professor of economics at Sogang University, analyzed that tighter real estate regulations have narrowed ordinary investors‘ options, and the dopamine feedback from steep stock price increases has intensified the fear of missing out (FOMO). A recent report from the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) warned that features such as real-time push notifications, return badges, and community interactions in stock trading apps are leading to the „gamification of investing,“ which may induce unconscious high-risk investment behavior.s