Mostly True
Pre-orders for Apple's iPhone 18, a device carrying a price tag of roughly 2 million won, began in South Korea amid an immediate scramble by the country's three mobile carriers to win over buyers with competing discount packages. The launch matched a widely circulated announcement that reservations would start "today," though the ordering window in fact opened only at 9 p.m. that evening โ a compression of the timeline that is the claim's one notable imprecision.
The central assertion โ that iPhone 18 reservations would open on the day of the announcement โ holds up against the record. What the claim glosses over is the hour: the pre-order system went live at 21:00, not at the start of the day. A review of seven primary sources flagged this simplification as the key discrepancy, distinguishing "starting today" from the reality of a late-evening opening.
As with previous iPhone launches, all three carriers โ SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus โ moved at once to court early subscribers, turning the opening of reservations into a head-to-head battle over subsidies and signing incentives. The claim's framing of an active, three-way discount competition is consistent with what the verified record shows: the carriers treated the pre-order day as a battleground for new contracts rather than a routine sales opening.
The 2-million-won price figure cited in the announcement was also confirmed as an accurate reflection of the device's cost, giving the claim its most concrete โ and fully verified โ element. Together with the same-day opening and the confirmed carrier-wide discount race, the substantive core of the announcement survives scrutiny intact; the sole blemish remains the rounding of a 9 p.m. start into "today." On that basis, the claim is rated Mostly True.