When YouTube replaces TV, news and politics: what South Korea learned the hard way in 20 years
When YouTube launched its Korean-language service on Jan. 23, 2008, it entered a nation ready to embrace it — and be transformed.
Seventeen years later, South Korea has become one of the most YouTube-centric societies in the world, using the platform not just for entertainment, but to wage political battles, reshape pop culture, and redefine the public square.
Now, as YouTube marks its 20th anniversary globally, the scale of its influence in South Korea is almost unmatched. According to a 2024 government report surveying more than 5,000 South Koreans, a staggering 84.9 percent of people who use streaming platforms access YouTube — higher than any other service, paid or free. By comparison, Netflix's usage rate stands at just 44.4 percent.
But this is about more than entertainment. YouTube has become the dominant stage for news, activism, disinformation and cultural exports, reshaping Korea's digital life more profoundly than perhaps any other platform.
In South Korea, YouTube isn't merely another app — it's almost the whole platform. By February of this year, Koreans spent more time on YouTube than on any other smartphone application, clocking 139 minutes a day on average, nearly 10 percent of their waking hours, according to local mobile market research platform Mobile Index.
Popular domestic apps like Naver and KakaoTalk trail far behind, with users spending about 30 minutes and 25 minutes daily on them, respectively.
For news consumption, YouTube's role is even more striking. According to the Digital News Report 2024 by the Korea Press Foundation, in a joint international effort with Oxford's Reuters Institute, 51 percent of South Koreans said they use YouTube as a news source — the highest percentage among 47 countries surveyed, and far above the global average of 31 percent.
According to the report, YouTube's personalized algorithms allow users to stay in ideological bubbles, reinforcing political biases and accelerating polarization.
This dynamic exploded into full view during South Korea's unprecedented constitutional crisis in late 2024, when former president Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached for illegally declaring martial law. As mass protests swept the country, YouTube channels — both conservative and progressive — became primary sources of real-time updates, rallying cries, and, in many cases, extreme rhetoric.
At the height of the unrest, during the Jan. 19 riot at Seoul Western District Court, YouTubers were seen livestreaming violent clashes with police as Yoon's supporters stormed the courthouse. Former president Yoon himself openly acknowledged his supporters' efforts, telling a crowd gathered outside his residence, 'I have been watching your actions live through YouTube broadcasts.'
Beyond 'Gangnam Style'
If politics showed YouTube's power to divide, pop culture had already been showing its power to unite — and export. The turning point came in 2012, when Psy's "Gangnam Style" became the first YouTube video to reach one billion views. Today, the video has surpassed 5.5 billion views — equivalent to two-thirds of the world's population having seen it at least once.
Psy himself recently said, 'YouTube changed the landscape of the Korean Wave. 'Gangnam Style' was the first proof that Korean music could explode globally overnight.'
The impact was immediate and lasting. K-pop groups like BTS and Blackpink mastered YouTube as a global marketing tool. BTS, debuting a year after "Gangnam Style," leveraged YouTube's reach to cultivate an international fanbase long before they dominated the Billboard charts.
By 2020, BTS made history with "Dynamite," becoming the first Korean act to top the Billboard Hot 100.
Meanwhile, Blackpink became YouTube's most-subscribed artist, now with 96.4 million subscribers and over 38.3 billion total video views. Their 2022 album Born Pink topped both the US Billboard 200 and the UK Official Albums Chart, achievements unimaginable without YouTube's global reach.
Entertainment agencies quickly adapted. Companies like YG Entertainment and Starship Entertainment began premiering debut documentaries and survival shows directly on YouTube, bypassing traditional television networks.
'YouTube has become the most important channel for reaching global music fans,' a YG executive said, calling it a "global portal for K-pop."
Can Korea break YouTube's local dominance — or is it too late?
YouTube's runaway success, however, has drawn scrutiny at home and abroad. In South Korea, the Fair Trade Commission launched an antitrust investigation in 2024, targeting Google's practice of bundling YouTube Music with YouTube Premium subscriptions. Regulators argued this strategy unfairly extended Google's dominance across adjacent markets.
The backlash mirrors broader global concerns. Earlier this month, a US court ruled that Google had engaged in illegal monopolistic practices in parts of the online advertising market, fueling speculation that regulatory pressure could eventually force YouTube to split from its parent company.
Even as YouTube faces legal battles, its gravitational pull in Korea shows no signs of slowing. YouTube remains not just the most popular streaming platform in Korea, but the centerpiece of the nation's digital life.
Of all age groups, Koreans in their 50s and 60s — traditionally less associated with digital innovation — now report the highest YouTube news usage rates at 52–55 percent, significantly higher than the international, 47-country average of 28-32 percent, highlighting that the platform's influence in Korea is uniquely cross-generational.
The free model also resonates: as subscription fees decline for paid streaming platforms, free services like YouTube are expanding their dominance. In 2024, South Koreans spent an average of just 10,500 won (approximately $7) per month on paid OTT subscriptions, down slightly from previous years.
'YouTube has embedded itself into every layer of Korean society — news, entertainment, even political mobilization,' said a researcher at the Korea Press Foundation in the report. 'It's no longer just a platform. It's the public square.'
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