WTF – Korean Ear Picks

Filed as: Korea FTW! // Responses: 79

Use Korean Ear Picks in your friends’ ears and pick out all of their ear gunk. It’s the Wonderful Treasure Find of the week!

Seriously, this is something that’s really peculiar for us. We might have come off a bit strong in the video as totally weirded out by it, and hopefully Korean people won’t be offended by it. Sorry if you do! We’re still newbies at living in Korea, and even though we’re taken aback by some of the stuff we find here we’re still quite amazed…in a good way :D

Anyhow, we grew up in a Q-Tip culture. Are your ears feeling a bit tingly? When you scratch em, are you getting a sticky sound in there? Q-Tips to the rescue! Swivel one around in there and problem solved! Problem is, we can’t really find Q-Tips in Korea. They’ve got generic q-tips in the supermarkets, yes, but they’re really quite bad: mostly used for makeup removal and…whatever. But there’s not a lot of cotton on the ends of them, so using them to clean our your ears isn’t really useful. We found Q-Tips at the Korean Costco, though, and we rejoiced and bought something like a lifetime supply’s worth. Ha!

Back to the Korean Ear Picks: what’s odd about these as well is the light at the end of them. Supposedly, the lights are for your friends to be able to clean out your ears for you. Oh boy. That’s…not something I’d ever have a friend do for me. Like, I can’t imagine any situation in which I’d be like “hey Chris, can you clean out my ear for me?” We think it might be for mothers cleaning out their babies ears, which would make more sense. Yes, that would make sense. But Martina’s students told her that it’s for friends to clean each others ears. So…yeah. Go figure!

So that’s it for this week’s Wonderful Treasure Find in Korea. And, yes, this will be part of our monthly care package that we’ll be giving out to one lucky winner. You, too, can clean out your friends’ ears with Korean Ear Picks! Oh boy! Thanks to JB and Annie from [ë‹‰ì‘¤] Enjoy Your Happy Life~* for the Korean subtitles as well. They also just got a Facebook page for their site as well, so check that out too!

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http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1530466 Lori McGuire

I thought of you guys when I was talking to my mom recently about her ears. (We do that sometimes, it’s a thing we do.) Anyway, she was having trouble hearing and she went in to have her hearing aids adjusted but the audiologist said she had some wax buildup and went to remove it…with a light-up ear pick!! Mom was amazed that the whole thing lit up. So, they have those things in America too!
april in uk

Found this randomly because I am googling ear curettes for myself. I am from the midwest USA origially and have suffered from dry itchy ear wax my whole life. When I was a kid the only way I could find some temporary relief was actually to stick the metal end of my hair barrette in there to scrape some of that dry crap off the sides. I also had to make a six monthly trip to the ENT for him to use metal instruments to clean them. My new doctor recently told me my earwax type was “unusual” for someone who is not asian or native american (the two groups who normally have this dry type genetically) which then made me vaguely remember being told this as a kid, leading me to read more into it (and also to wonder if we have some native american or asian roots far back in our family that we do not know about).

Personally, I would love one of those things. I am going to get something similar off amazon and hope to get my husband to sort my ears regularly for me and you have no idea how much relief that will be for me! Q-tips do nothing for dry wax.

In fact, I might drag the kids to a local asian supermarket tomorrow just on the off chance they may have some of these in their store!

http://mistresskitty.tumblr.com Ia Faye

All Asian markets have this. But it’s best to go to a Filipino type Asian market. Good luck! ;3

http://mistresskitty.tumblr.com Ia Faye

Ohh, Asians use this thing all the time. This one is cool because it has a light. When I was younger, my parents would clean the ears of my brothers and I. They would always take the cover off of a lamp and hold it over our heads as they were cleaning. Then my dad got a head lamp and started using that instead. Most often, though, the ear picks are made from metal or wood. [the wooden one scared me, even though it was cuter] ;3
http://www.facebook.com/people/Soojin-Chung/100001857620208 Soojin Chung

I’m not sure if someone already told you guys the secret of asian earwax.lol
The thing is most Asians have dry ear wax stuck inside the ear. That’s why Asians use earpicks to scrape earwax out. And I guess it would need more delicate movement of the earpicks and somebody helped to scrape it accurately. I’m just guessing because mine it the wet waxy…..earwax.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_DRNNW72LSQZ5RGE36UOMEEVZXU CING

god, u guys make white people sounds like tarzan lol which is good also the ear picks are usually useÂ by mothers to clean their children’s ears also ear picks cleaning helps to relax and reduce stress. Qtips only push theÂ wax and not actually cleaning the ear. go to japanese ear-cleaning parlor and feel the sensation of eargasm. its addictive
http://twitter.com/Yiyithaa Yiyi Cao

My mom have one! XD
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000198514321 PokÃ©monMaster Keli

I want one!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Eunji-Choi/717322889 Eunji Choi

not every Korean uses ear picks~ I personally use Q-tips too and many other people I know do to!
but Q-tips are new product, like its been around us (in Korea) since like 50 years ago, isn’t it?
and I don’t think there were Q-tips like 200 years ago in west too.. but I’m not sure tho
anyway in those days we didn’t have Q-tips we used this to pick our ears and not for the nose ^^
And now we have Q-tips too, so somebody use Q-tips somebody use ear pick!

and when I was in Japan I was amazed like you guys, when I saw ear picking salons..
its around 2,000yen (about 23,000won) for 30 mins
I know, it won’t take 30 mins to pick someone’s ear and 2,000yen is expensive
apparently, getting their ear picked by pretty women is japanese men’s dream/fantasy
so pretty young girls in their yukata outfits pick mens ears and spend time mostly chatting (only chatting), while men are lying down on girls knees
My boyfriend is Japanese too and he always asks for it too
I am kinda scared of hurting his ears if I do wrong but he often begs for it so I do it sometimes too
http://www.facebook.com/mandom19 Mandi Dominguez

I love that Martina didn’t acknowledge that Simon said “Okay, take off your pants and bend over” haha what he said and her reaction or lack there of…was hilarious. These two are just too funny!
Aqua Fina

Vietnamese people use this, also! I’ve never seen plastic or lighted ones, just the metal scoop attached to a wooden stick. Whatever you grow up with, you will be stuck in that mindset. Even though Q-tips are much safer & feels softer, I liked this earwax scooper. It feels very ticklish & good at the same time. Just be real careful when you use it, and warn the person not to move or else you can puncture the ear drums and will make that person deaf. X_X Usually used by mothers on children, or intermediate family members on each other; friends don’t do this to each other, unless they’re best, best, best friends.
japlady

I’m of European decent, live in the US and I’ve been using the curved end of a cuticle pusher for years to clean my ears — looks similar but is bigger.

There’s actually some genetic evidence that the same gene that causes Koreans to not be as stinky as us Europeans also results in drier earwax. Now the thing is, I’ve also heard that if they don’t clean it out, because of its drier nature the wax can get stuck in there and can result in a sort of easily reversible deafness.

Ear doctors however actually don’t approve of ear picks, but they ain’t all that keen on Q-tips either (an ENT doc once told me not to put anything smaller than my elbow in my ear); with either tool its too easy to push the wax further in or to accidentally touch the ear drum and damage it. The best way according to the ear doc was to just use a warm water flush.
http://twitter.com/rheadsouza89 Rhea DSouza

I suppose the one good thing about those plastic ones is there is no chance they will get stuck in your ear. I have to admit that I am a Q-tip cotton victim as I was using a generic brand and while I was swiveling in the ear, the cotton just fell off the q-tip and was lodged in my ear.

Painful: not quite.
Embarrassing: very…

Going to the ER to get the cotton removed was the most embarrassing I’ve had to do in a while. My family still hasn’t let my forget…
http://profile.yahoo.com/ODHCUSDC2O2NWPVPZ6XEPLHYYE Angelus

Q-Tips are NOT meant to go INSIDE your ear hole guys….Speaking as a medical professional, I promise you if you read the Q-tip Packaging, it will SPECIFICALLY tell you NOT to insert inside ears. Q-tips are meant to clean the outer layer area of your ears. Q-Tips will only impact your cerumen, causing you to be likely to get ear infection, long term and permanent hearing loss as well as ear canal lining damage…THat is why the ear pick is preferable to the Q-tip….Hope this helps someone out there.
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