5 Key Facts about the Media Landscape in Korea

[Tweet “5 Key Facts about Korea Media Landscape”]

What do you know about the media landscape in Korea? Regardless of your advanced concepts, it’s changing tremendously. As South Korea is a world leader in Internet connectivity, it boasts one of the fastest average connection speeds. To put this into perspective, digital media and mobile devices are the major factors of change for the media environment. The influence of web portals for the news environment is growing tremendously. Social media is becoming a critical pathway for finding, sharing and reading news.

Here are the latest key aspects of the media landscape in Korea. This blog post would be useful and helpful for you to grasp the media environment in Korea.

1) Koreans tend to read more news articles, mostly on smart phones

In 2015, 40.1% of Koreans read news articles when they wanted to access information. This figure increased by 15.4% from 2013. The number of Koreans reading news articles on their smart phones is rapidly growing, and is now four times more than the number four years ago.

2) In Korea, seven out of ten people access news through a web portal

Web portal sites such as ‘Naver’ and ‘Daum’ are the most popular digital news platforms. 70% of Korean people access news from news portals on smart phone news applications and the Internet. According to the ‘Korea Press Foundation’, the most popular news destination in Korea is ‘Naver’. Most Koreans access news through its main page, a web portal site, rather than stand-alone news websites. As the portal site’s news service becomes the most influential for the masses, a new ecosystem of media economy has emerged for news companies in Korea. Alliance with the major portal site is considered as the most practical and effective way to increase traffic and generate revenue.

3) The most viewed news through ‘Naver’ is ‘Yonhap News’

‘Naver’ is the most popular and influential digital news platform for Koreans. It means the clicks, traffic and views of news articles of online news companies are mostly from ‘Naver’. Which media company has the most -viewed news articles on ‘Naver’? The answer is ‘Yonhap News’. Yonhap News Agency is South Korea’s largest news agency. It is a publicly funded company and a partner of PR Newswire. PR Newswire distributes press releases to Korea through ‘Yonhap’. According to the ‘Korea Press Foundation’, news by ‘Yonhap’ has been the most-viewed news on ‘Naver’. It means PR Newswire has the strongest partnership with the No. 1 news agency and news portal in Korea. 

4) News consumption through social media is steadily increasing

Korean people use social media tools as a source of news. ‘KakaoTalk’, ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’ are the important networks for finding, reading/watching and sharing news in Korea. According to the ‘Korea Press Foundation’, in 2014, 67% of Facebook users and 51% of Twitter users read news through their social media playground, and their rates are increasing steadily. One of the most particular eye-catching media in Korea is ‘KakaoTalk’. It is a free mobile instant messaging application for smartphones with free text and free call features. It was launched on 18 March 2010. It conveys news from people to people every day. It is more frequently used as a source of news than Facebook or Twitter.

5) How Korean journalists collect stories

How do Korean journalists collect stories? Email is the most common way of receiving a press release for them. They normally start their daily routine with opening their email in the morning and taking a look and finding any interesting press releases to turn into an article. The process isn’t vastly different from other countries but there is something we must know here. There is a certain common time for Korean journalists to check their email inbox in a day. It’s around 8:30am to 9:30am.

It means if you send out your press release after 10am, there is a lower possibility that journalists will pick up your news. If you want your press release to become a news article, you should send it before 9:30am.

In addition to email, some journalists find stories through social media.

By Hwajin Choi, the Audience Development Executive in China at PR Newswire. If you would like to be featured, please get in touch (hwajin.choi@prnasia.com)