god-saeng

Before, self-development was focused on things to boost your 'value' in the job and marriage markets, whereas ‘god-saeng’ is an approach where you're focusing on your own life.

2021 August 23, Lee Woo-yun, “How S. Korean zoomers are coping with COVID blues with "god-saeng" lifestyle”, in The Hankyoreh

This suggests that individuals with lower friendship-contingent self-esteem are more inclined to form their values and behavioral standards through contact with 'God-saeng' influencers, subsequently strengthening their perceived control over realizing 'God-saeng'.

2024, Kim Ji-hwa, The influence of interactions with Instagram 'God-saeng' influencers on everyday life: Focusing on the moderating effect of friendship-contingent self-esteem, Ewha Womans University, page 93

For Yoo, this god-saeng trend is exactly what led her to start filming her hon-nolog while preparing for a national exam.

2025 December 4, Joo Hyun-jeong, “Why do Gen Zers flaunt their solo moments on social media?”, in The Korea Herald, archived from the original on 17 Dec 2025

While often associated with disciplined routines such as waking up early, exercising, or studying, God-Saeng encompasses more than personal habit management.

2026 April 13, Song et al., “Constructing Everyday Well-Being: Insights from God-Saeng (God生) for Personal Informatics”, in Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery, →DOI, pages 1–17