Korea, Lately

Walk around Gongju, a city in central Korea, and you can see tourists wearing T-shirts with giant chestnuts on them.

Launched in May 2026, the shirts were selling more than 1,000 a day on weekends by late September.

Gongju is famous for its chestnuts, so a chestnut T-shirt might not seem all that strange.

But one seller at a market in Gongju says some residents have even asked tourists wearing the shirts where they bought them, then gone to the shop for one of their own.

So why chestnuts—and why oysters?

You Notice the Chestnuts and Oysters Before the City Names

Tourist T-shirts often follow a familiar formula: put NEW YORK, PARIS, or SEOUL across the front so you can tell at a glance where someone has been.

On the Gongju shirt, what catches your eye first isn’t GONGJU.

It’s the chestnut.

In Tongyeong, on Korea’s southern coast, it’s oysters. Elsewhere, it’s potatoes, or even an ancient Buddhist grotto.

If Gongju is new to you, the name on the shirt may not mean much. A giant chestnut is harder to forget.

That’s how a T-shirt can become your way into a place you’d never heard of.

Instead of Just Drawing Oysters, They Play With Them

On Tongyeong’s oyster T-shirts, an oyster isn’t just an oyster.

Two oysters form the heart in I ♥ TY (TY for Tongyeong), turning the familiar I ♥ NY design into a local joke.

Some of the shirts even come packaged like seafood.

The brand behind them didn’t want to explain Tongyeong the obvious way. It took the city’s seafood and added a little imagination.

The Gongju chestnut shirt is playful even in its name.

In Korean, bam means “chestnut,” and ti is short for T-shirt, so bamti sounds like “chestnut tee.” But online, the exact same word is slang for something ugly or tacky.

The joke is part of the appeal.

It’s a Souvenir—but You Wear It Before the Trip Is Over

A refrigerator magnet usually waits until you get home.

A T-shirt doesn’t have to. You can wear it the day you buy it.

In reviews, buyers mention picking up oyster shirts before visiting Tongyeong, or wearing matching ones there as a couple.

Buy the shirt.
Put it on.
Keep exploring.
Take a photo.

Wear a bamti in Gongju or an oyster T-shirt in Tongyeong, and the souvenir is already in your travel photos.

You’re wearing it before the trip is even a memory.

On your next trip to Korea, someone’s T-shirt may tell you about the place before a souvenir shop ever does.