Walk into a Korean apartment and the water purifier in the kitchen may be on a rental contract. The same can be true of the bidet in the bathroom, the air purifier in the living room or even the mattress in the bedroom.
This is easy to misread as a simple preference for renting instead of owning. The more useful explanation is commercial. In a large part of Korea's appliance market, rental means a long-term product-and-care relationship: the household pays a monthly fee, uses the appliance and, depending on the plan, receives filter replacement, cleaning, inspection or scheduled servicing. Whether the apartment itself is rented has little to do with it.
The model became especially effective with products that continue to need attention after installation. Coway dates the introduction of its rental business and CODY service to 1998. Once monthly billing and recurring care worked for water purifiers, the same logic could move into bathrooms, bedrooms and other parts of the home.
Water purifiers made the model work
Water purifiers were a good fit for this system because the appliance does not stop needing attention once it reaches the kitchen. Filters have replacement cycles. Internal parts need cleaning or checking. Some models require installation, relocation or service calls. A household buying the machine outright must still deal with those tasks later.
Coway's answer in 1998 was to combine access to the appliance with a service network. Its corporate history records the launch of both the rental business and the CODY service that year. The company's English newsroom describes the early model as a way to lower the initial barrier to getting a water purifier while pairing the product with regular cleaning and care.
The monthly payment did two jobs at once. It spread a relatively large purchase cost over time, and it kept the customer connected to the company after installation. For a product with filters and recurring maintenance, that second function was valuable.
Appliance in the home + recurring monthly payment + continuing care during the contract. The exact mix of filter replacement, home visits, self-maintenance and repair coverage depends on the company and plan.
Related video: Coway's official Codi-Matching video shows how the service representative can remain part of the relationship after a purifier enters the home.
The service moved beyond the kitchen
Once the system existed, the appliance itself did not have to be a water purifier.
Coway's current Korean business description says its rental operations have expanded from kitchens into living rooms, bathrooms and bedrooms. Its categories now include water care, air care, body care and sleep care. Bidets fit the model because hygiene and servicing can continue after installation. Air purifiers have filters. Mattresses created another opportunity for scheduled cleaning and care.
The mattress case shows how far the idea could travel. Coway introduced a mattress rental-and-care business in 2011. Instead of treating a mattress only as a large object bought once and replaced years later, the company attached recurring professional care to it. The physical product and the after-care became parts of the same contract.
That does not mean every Korean mattress, bidet or air purifier is rented. People still buy appliances outright, and brands offer different purchase, rental and subscription options. What spread was a business structure that works particularly well when a company can provide something useful after delivery.
Rental and installment purchase are not the same thing
The monthly bill can make Korean appliance rental look like an installment plan. They can feel similar from the household budget, but the contracts are built around different ideas.
| Typical installment purchase | Rental / care contract |
|---|---|
| The monthly payment mainly finances the purchase price. | The monthly fee is tied to use of the product and may also include continuing care. |
| Maintenance is normally a separate issue unless a warranty or service package covers it. | Filter changes, inspections, cleaning or scheduled service may be built into the plan. |
| Once the purchase is fully paid, ownership is straightforward. | What happens at the end — return, continued use, transfer of ownership or renewal — depends on the contract. |
This distinction also explains why the Korean market now uses several overlapping words. A company may call a plan rental, subscription or a care program. The label matters less than the contract underneath it: contract length, service schedule, maintenance method, cancellation terms and what happens to the appliance at the end can all differ.
There has also been a shift toward self-management. Some customers replace filters or perform routine care themselves, while companies reduce the number of home visits or combine self-care with occasional professional service. The original visiting-manager model has not disappeared, but it is no longer the only version.
Why the advertised monthly price can look unusually low
Korean rental advertising often adds another layer: an affiliated credit-card discount.
A current English-language rental catalogue in Korea, for example, lists base monthly prices alongside partner-card discounts and explicitly notes that the lower price applies only when the card's spending condition is met. That distinction matters. The discounted figure is not automatically the rental fee for every customer or every month.
Rental companies, card partners, spending thresholds and promotions change. A very low figure in an advertisement should not be treated as the normal monthly fee unless the stated card conditions are actually met.
This is one reason rental pricing can look more complicated than the simple price tag on an appliance. The customer may be comparing a base fee, a promotional fee, a self-care plan, a home-visit plan and a card-linked effective price at the same time.
Why this model became so visible in Korea
The explanation does not require a theory that Koreans dislike ownership or naturally prefer sharing. The industry spent decades building the infrastructure that makes recurring appliance care convenient: service personnel, scheduled visits, filter logistics, recurring billing and product lines designed around that relationship.
That infrastructure changes the purchase decision. A customer is no longer choosing only between one purifier and another purifier. The choice can include how often the product is serviced, whether maintenance is done at home, whether the customer handles filters personally and how much of the cost is spread across the contract period.
It also helps explain why the model could migrate from a water purifier to a bidet and then to a mattress. The products are different, but the commercial question is similar: can continuing care be valuable enough that customers will pay for the product and the service together?
In Korea, enough companies answered yes to turn appliance rental into a familiar household category. The enduring formula is less about borrowing an object than about bundling the product, regular care and a monthly payment.
Sources & verification
Source check: September 2026. Product plans, prices and service conditions can change.
- Coway — Company History — rental business and CODY service introduced in 1998.
- Coway — Business Area — Korean rental and regular-management services across water, air, bathroom and sleep categories.
- Coway — Smarter Sleep: How Coway Became a Mattress Market Disruptor — background on the mattress rental-and-care model introduced in 2011.
- Coway — 2026 National Customer Satisfaction Index — current examples covering water purifiers, mattresses and rental care services.
- SETKORA — How to Rent a Water Purifier in Korea — current English-language examples of monthly rental pricing, maintenance and conditional partner-card discounts.
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