The Jade-Core Trend: Grandma Rings Are Gen Z's New Obsession

The detail fans kept zooming in on at "BTS Comeback Live: Arirang" was quieter than the performance itself. When BTS returned for the group's first show in nearly four years at Gwanghwamun Square, millions of viewers studied every accessory, and the simple green bands stacked on V's fingers kept catching the light each time he gripped the microphone, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily. The rings came from Yeijak, a jade specialty store in Seoul's Jongno District run by Lee Jin-wook and his father, after a mystery email from someone claiming to be a stylist arrived less than forty-eight hours before the concert. Lee sent about thirty rings in different styles and sizes without knowing which ones would make it onstage, and seven of them did, including a triple-lining silver jade ring and an ash-white ring cut from "Goblin Jade."

"At first, the rings V wore sold so quickly that it was honestly frightening," Lee Jin-wook said. Sales of the designs V wore have more than doubled since the performance, with fans visiting the store for weeks and online orders pouring in from overseas. The look has a name now: folding traditional jade jewelry into modern outfits is being called the jade-core trend, KbizoOm reported, with the signature move being a stack of several jade rings, sometimes mixed with silver bands, rather than a single thick ring worn alone.

From grandma's jewelry box to the ring stack

For decades, young Koreans dismissed chunky jade rings and heavy jade bracelets as grandmother jewelry. That read has flipped. Oksibang, another jade specialty store in Jongno that has gone viral, now draws crowds of university students who browse the display cases alongside their mothers, and the store's longtime owner said the surge is recent: far more people have been walking in over the past month simply because wearing jade turned into the thing to do. "Many young women in their twenties and thirties now come with their mothers," Lee Jin-wook said. "Some buy jade jewelry as gifts, while others buy matching rings to wear together." The appeal crosses genders too: Lee said male customers also come in alone to buy jade jewelry for themselves.

The jade-core trend is not staying local, either. Shoppers from the United States, Mongolia, Canada and the Philippines have been arriving in Jongno after spotting the stone online, and Lee told the Korea JoongAng Daily that visitors often buy more than they planned once they see the rings in person, finding them prettier than expected and easier to wear. Foreign tourists were early to the revival: Lee said overseas interest in Korean jade started building back in October of 2024, and a peak in demand this summer pushed Yeijak from a small arcade shop into its own street-facing storefront.

The numbers behind the obsession

The sales data backs up the jade-core trend's hype. Fashion platform Zigzag found that transaction value for jade rings among shoppers in their twenties rose three hundred ninety-one percent between January and July, according to KbizoOm. Social listening platform Sometrend measured mentions of "jade rings" climbing one hundred twenty-six percent and mentions of "jade bracelets" climbing three hundred six percent from March to August. On Naver, the search index for "jade ring" hit the highest possible score on June seventeenth after sitting in the single digits in April, the Korea JoongAng Daily reported.

Tourism data tells the same story from another angle. Purchases of accessories in Korea by foreign tourists rose eighty-seven percent on the year in May, according to credit card spending data from the Korea Tourism Data Lab cited by the Korea JoongAng Daily. Reservations for workshops where visitors make traditional Korean accessories such as norigae pendants climbed about twenty-three percent in the first five months of this year compared with the same stretch last year, according to booking data from inbound travel platform Creatrip reported by the same outlet.

Why every stone is different

Jade has one edge no mass-produced accessory can copy: no two pieces are exactly alike. Every ring carries its own color, clouding and streaks, running from deep emerald to milky white, gray, lavender, yellow and even reddish tones, with some stones showing veins or mottled patterns. That built-in uniqueness explains why the jade-core trend took hold: shoppers tired of identical accessories get a stone nobody else has. One office worker told the Korea JoongAng Daily she took half a day off to buy a green jade ring at Oksibang after the jade-core trend filled her social feeds, adding that trying rings on in person matters because the color shifts against different skin tones and the sizes are fixed. Yang Hyeong-yae, who has run Oksibang for around five decades, put the appeal down to that variety, saying every piece of jade is different and no two stones are exactly alike.

The stone also carries centuries of Korean meaning. Jade was worn by royalty and aristocrats, decorating everything from Silla gold crowns to belts and earrings, and in ancient Korea it was believed to ward off misfortune and symbolize purity. Some of those old beliefs still steer buyers: Yang told the Korea JoongAng Daily that customers arrive because a saju fortune reading said jade would complement their fortune, while others return with stories of good luck that followed a broken ring. The revival even reaches music videos: Blackpink's Jennie wore jade pendant earrings in the video for "Less than a Lover," Grazia reported.

Wearing the trend without looking costumed

The jade-core trend does not ask for a big budget. Rings at Seoul's specialty stores start near twenty-six dollars, and because each ring's color, pattern and transparency differ, picking one feels closer to treasure hunting than shopping. The styling formula the trendsetters use is straightforward: stack several rings across the fingers, mix green jade with plain silver bands, and let the stones clash a little. Actress Go Youn-jung has shared a look built on a pale jade ring paired with silver rings and a bracelet, KbizoOm reported, while actor Lim Ji-yeon wore a jade ring carved with a floral motif in the SBS drama "My Royal Nemesis." Both looks follow the jade-core trend's core rule: traditional stone, modern stack.

The mood fits where Gen Z style is already heading: personal over performative. The jade-core trend rhymes with the maximalist whimsymaxxing moment, where rhinestones and charms cover everything from nails to water bottles, and it shares a root with the adversarial clothing wave: young shoppers dressing for themselves instead of the feed.

The jade-core trend is even reaching the wedding aisle. Yeijak has seen customers commission matching couple's rings and even custom jade wedding bands set in silver or gold, including one recent order from a Swiss customer who wanted small diamonds flanking a center stone of Korean-mined jade, Lee Jin-wook told the Korea JoongAng Daily.