Connect With Authors
*Your message will be sent straight to the team/individual responsible for the article.
Menu
South Korea boasts one of the highest internet penetration rates in the world, with 98% of its population having access to the internet. This is higher than that of other highly connected countries such as Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan. Being the first country to commercially roll out 5G, it also has some of the fastest internet speeds in the world, which allows for many innovations across a variety of industries. One recent example of this is Naver’s launch of Dolby Vision-capable live commerce.
Combining such a matured infrastructure across the country, with the local innovation and tech community fostered by both government and large corporations. South Korea also has one of the most vibrant and versatile social media ecosystem in the world. With their local companies, such as Kakao, having the most active users in the country, which is different from other countries where Meta-owned social platform generally top the rank.
Given the latest survey available, in South Korea there are about 47.2 million active social media users (Log in at least once in a month) in 2022. This is about 91.2 % of the addressable demographics. Also, Throughout 2021 to 2022, the number of users has grown 2.2 %.
The social media scene in South Korea is distinct in several ways. One of these is that the most widely used platform, KakaoTalk, is not really used out side of the country. Despite this, South Koreans rely heavily on it, with over 87% of the population using it. That is four times that of Messenger, which is the second most popular chat app in South Korea and is used by only around 20% of the population.
Last year there was an incident where a 10-hour service disruption caused by a fire in their data centers led to a series of unfortunate events. Users’ messaging, payments, banking, ride-hailing, maps, and games were all affected. The President even publicly urge for a quicker response action to get the service back online.
With the latest data published in January 2023, we can see that at the growth rate of 1.01%, there is now around 25.6 million Facebook users in South Korea . With male users account for around 48.35% and female users account for around 51.65%.
With the latest data published in January 2023, we can see that at the growth rate of 1.13%, there is now around 21.18 million Instagram users in South Korea . With male users account for around 45.18% and female users account for around 54.82%.
With the latest data published in January 2023, we can see that at the growth rate of 2.16%, there is now around 6 million TikTok users in South Korea . With male users account for around 0.418 and female users account for around 0.582.
With the latest data published in January 2023, we can see that at the growth rate of 1.09x, there is now around 3.45 million LinkedIn users in South Korea.
Our consumer research practice tracks what customers spend and how they make decisions across major economies in the world.
