# Seoul Beauty Salon Survival Rates

> Survival is a site calculation on coherent permit cohorts, with unobserved horizons and missing denominators kept unavailable.

Read source definitions with the selected period, district and type. Administrative records describe permits and recorded events without establishing business quality or a personal outcome.

Written by the Gyeonggi Beauty Network editorial team on October 26, 2026. Canonical address: https://seoulsalonfacts.org/statistics/survival-rate.

## What is a Seoul beauty salon survival cohort?

A cohort groups eligible permit rows by opening year, district and source type before an anniversary is evaluated.

A current active share uses all retained history as its denominator and cannot replace a survival cohort. The cohort begins with a defined opening population. It then asks how many of those administrative records had not closed at a specified anniversary. This is not a survey of profits, owners’ intentions or the continuity of a brand.

**Cohort horizon conditions**

| Condition | Displayed state | Interpretation |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Complete year-end horizon observed | Calculated survival share | An administrative-record measure |
| Only some anniversaries observed | Not enough observation time | No short cohort is compared as a full horizon |
| No eligible records | No comparable denominator | Not a zero-percent outcome |
| Closure exactly on the anniversary | Not surviving that horizon | Boundary rule is explicit |

(The supplementary view for this section is available on the canonical HTML page.)

## When is a Seoul salon survival horizon fully observed?

The annual cohort is calculated only when the entire opening year can reach the requested year-end horizon.

Some early-year openings may reach an anniversary before later openings in the same year. Combining the observed subset as though it represented the complete opening year would change the cohort’s composition. The annual table takes the conservative full-year boundary and leaves a longer horizon unavailable until the whole period can be observed.

A permit-year cohort contains businesses opening on different days. The year-end observation rule ensures that even the latest opening in that year can reach the selected anniversary. This conservative rule can leave a recent cohort unavailable even when some earlier openings already have sufficient follow-up.

**Date integrity and treatment**

| Source condition | Treatment | Reason |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Opening before the published history range | Outside the displayed flow/cohort series | No inferred early historical trend |
| Closure earlier than opening | Excluded from coherent cohort calculation | The ordering cannot support a lifespan |
| Closed state with no valid closure date | Excluded from survival denominator | An unknown end date must not become a survivor |
| Active state with a closure date | Excluded from coherent cohort calculation | The two status signals conflict |

## How is the Seoul salon survival share calculated?

The numerator is eligible records surviving the specified anniversary and the denominator is the corresponding coherent cohort.

Surviving counts are divided by the eligible cohort size only when that size is non-zero and the horizon is observed. Multiple opening years or districts can be pooled by adding numerators and denominators. A simple average of district percentages would give a tiny cohort the same weight as a much larger cohort and answers another question.

## Which Seoul permit records are excluded from survival calculations?

Conflicting dates and closed records without a valid closure date stay outside the coherent cohort denominator.

Treating a missing closure date as indefinite survival would overstate the result when the source already says the permit is closed. The calculation also excludes an active status paired with a closure date and a closure earlier than opening. The integrity audit counts those conditions separately so a user can see why the derived cohort differs from all permits issued in a year.

## How is closure on a Seoul salon anniversary handled?

A closure on the anniversary is excluded from surviving that horizon, and the rule is applied consistently.

The comparison is strict: a recorded closure must occur after the anniversary for that row to survive the horizon. Calendar-year addition also needs a defined leap-day treatment. A different boundary convention could alter marginal records, which is why the downloadable method describes the operator rather than leaving the reader to infer it from a rounded percentage.

A large denominator does not remove every source limitation. Administrative closure can be reported after the real-world event, and continued registration does not measure revenue. The rate should be described as permit persistence under the documented rule, with a later snapshot allowed to revise it.

## Does Seoul salon survival measure business success?

It measures the continuity of selected administrative records and does not establish profitability or an individual’s future outcome.

A permit can close for reasons not stated in the file, including changes of operator or reporting arrangements. The data does not observe household income, debt, customer retention or whether the owner met a personal objective. The survival percentage should therefore retain its administrative definition instead of being marketed as a promise of success.

## How can a Seoul salon survival result be checked again?

Reproduction requires the same snapshot, coherent-date exclusions, cohort filter and observed-horizon rule.

A result should be accompanied by its numerator and denominator, not only a percentage. Query date, opening-year range, district and type must also be retained. A later correction to an opening or closure date can change a historical cohort, so the method distinguishes source revisions from a change in arithmetic. Business identifiers are not needed in the published aggregate to make those conditions visible.

The method is tied to its dates and eligible-record rules. Repeating the calculation means repeating those conditions, not only reproducing a percentage. A later source correction can legitimately change the result.

Read each result with its reference date, source scope and unresolved-field notes.

## What basis are these numbers on?

| Data | Reference date | Site calculation |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seoul permit cohorts and yearly flows | October 26, 2026 | Eligible anniversary survivors / cohort size |

## What else do people ask about Seoul Beauty Salon Survival Rates?

### Where can I find Seoul beauty-salon statistics?

Use the Seoul Open Data Plaza beauty-business permit dataset. Permit status describes administrative records and does not establish live opening hours or service quality.

### Is active share a survival rate?

Its denominator differs from a defined opening cohort.

### Is an unobserved horizon zero?

No; it remains unavailable until enough time has elapsed.

### How are multiple cohorts pooled?

Add survivor counts and eligible cohort sizes before division.

### Are missing closure dates assumed active?

A closed-status row without a valid date is excluded from the coherent cohort.

## What should you read next?

- [How can Seoul salon opening seasonality be checked?](https://seoulsalonfacts.org/articles/opening-seasonality)
- [How should Seoul salon survival rates be read?](https://seoulsalonfacts.org/articles/reading-survival)
- [Seoul Beauty Salons by District](https://seoulsalonfacts.org/statistics/by-district)
- [Seoul Beauty Salons by Business Type](https://seoulsalonfacts.org/statistics/by-type)

## Where do these numbers come from?

- [Seoul beauty business permit data](https://data.seoul.go.kr/dataList/OA-16063/S/1/datasetView.do) - Seoul Metropolitan Government
- [Seoul beauty permit metadata and reuse terms](https://www.data.go.kr/data/15094774/fileData.do) - Seoul Metropolitan Government / Public Data Portal
- [Beauty licence eligibility](https://www.easylaw.go.kr/CSP/CnpClsMainBtr.laf?ccfNo=1&cciNo=2&cnpClsNo=1&csmSeq=1009&menuType=cnpcls&popMenu=ov) - Ministry of Government Legislation