South Korea
Korea is the birthplace of eSports as spectator sport. StarCraft filled television schedules and stadiums here two decades before the rest of the world settled on the word esports, and the PC bang, the neighbourhood gaming café, made play a public activity rather than a bedroom one. That social-first format went global when battle royales reached the world through Krafton's PUBG: Battlegrounds. Korea is a tiny nation, and so builds for export above all, sending 8.5 billion dollars of games abroad in 2024 against 246 million imported. The government says Korea owns 7.2 percent of the world's gaming econonmy, on domestic revenue of 23.85 trillion won. Unexpectedly, that's shrinking. Game usage fell to 50.2 percent in 2025, down 9.7 points in a single year.
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
Market size
~23.9 trillion won2024
Domestic games industry revenue is 23.8515 trillion won in 2024, up 3.9 percent year on year, per the 2025 White Paper on Korean Games.
Source 2025 대한민국 게임백서, reported by Digital Today, named tech outlet
Each market states its size in its own currency, for its own year, and on its own definition of what counts, which is consumer spending in some and industry revenue in others. These ten figures cannot be compared with one another.
Player population
About 20 million2025
- Not recorded
Each figure comes from a different source, a different year, and a different definition of a player. The bars show rough scale only. No free source measures every market on one method.
Trends here
Trends tagged to this market come first. Most trends in games are global, and those apply here too.
- Regulation, safety & agePlaytime caps and age gates for minorsNo longer just a contrast case for the West. The US House-passed KIDS Act mandates default-on parental time controls, and the strongest evidence says caps do not actually reduce heavy play.Perennial
- TechnologyThe rise of AI companions & co-playable NPCsThe first mass-market test of conversational AI inside play spaces heavily used by minors, landing in a community that now punishes undisclosed AI harder than AI itself. Safety, labor, and trust collide.Emerging
- Platform & distributionStreaming fragmentation & the multi-homed creatorFragmentation is the end state, not a transition. Korea settled into a SOOP/Chzzk duopoly two years after Twitch left. And Kick's growth is IRL and combat sports, not the gaming audience Twitch lost, so share charts mislead. Single-platform reads of "streaming culture" break.Dominant
Research yourself
11 of 11 sources
These rows
| Name | What it lets you find out | Type | Cost | Markets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile Index (IGAWorks) | Korea-specific mobile rankings and usage estimates behind a Korean-language interface. Covers One Store (KR third-party store), which global vendors often miss. Methodology differs from Sensor Tower, so don't mix numbers across vendors | Analytics platform | Freemium | KR |
| Playboard | YouTube channel rankings with strong Korea coverage and Super Chat leaderboards. Provides estimates, not platform-reported data | Analytics platform | Freemium | KR, Global |
| 소프트콘 뷰어십 SOFTC.ONE Viewership (Sopeuteukon Vieoship) | Rankings and viewership metrics across Chzzk, SOOP, YouTube Live, and Twitch: who's big in Korea right now. Independent project, KO interface only | Creator tracking | Free | KR |
| vling (블링) | Korean YouTube channel analytics and influencer-value data built for advertisers. YouTube only, no Chzzk/SOOP, ad-sales orientation | Creator tracking | Freemium | KR, Asia |
| SANDBOX Network (샌드박스네트워크, Saendeubakseu Neteuwokeu) | Roster of ~265 creator teams across gaming/kids/entertainment who are professionally managed in KR. Private company that ranks its own talent | Creator tracking | Free | KR |
| DIA TV (CJ ENM) (다이아티비, Daia Tibi) | Korea's other flagship MCN. CJ ENM is listed (KOSDAQ 035760), so the parent's disclosures give partial primary data. The roster is its own talent | Creator tracking | Free | KR |
| University Tomorrow 20s Lab | Quantitative youth/Gen Z research. Strong for child/young-adult segmentation. | Adjacent research body | Free | KR |
| Nexon IR | Founded in Korea but listed in Tokyo, offers per-title and per-region detail and the economics of live-ops | Corporate IR | Not recorded | KR, JP |
| Krafton IR | PUBG economics and India exposure | Corporate IR | Not recorded | KR, Global |
| NCSoft IR | Lineage economics, which is important for the ongoing MMO monetization story (i.e., people getting tired of being bilked by games show up in the numbers first here) | Corporate IR | Not recorded | KR |
| Netmarble / Kakao Games IR | KR mobile publishing economics | Corporate IR | Not recorded | KR |