Start here
Marketing in Korea, explained
If you are bringing a product or a shop to Korea, most of what you know about search and social media still applies. Three things do not. Naver comes before Google. Reviews feed the search engine directly. And the law asks for a few things before you sell. This guide covers those differences, using official documents wherever we could get them.
Where Koreans actually search
Numbers here carry the survey, the year and who was asked. Without those three, a number is not worth repeating. All of these are secondary sources, so we say "reportedly". B
| Service | Use rate (Opensurvey 2026, 2,000 people aged 10 to 59) |
|---|---|
| Naver | 81.6% |
| YouTube | 72.3% |
| ChatGPT | 54.5% |
| Gemini | 28.9% |
Naver and YouTube are reportedly trending down and the AI services up. The direction is set. But today, eight in ten of your customers are still on Naver. A plan that starts with Google and Instagram will miss most of them.
Generative AI use reportedly reached 44.5% of the whole population in 2025 (Ministry of Science and ICT, 50,750 people aged 3 and over). Among internet users it was 87.4% in 2026 (KT Nasmedia, 2,000 people aged 15 to 69). Both are correct. They asked different people. Keep the sample next to the number.
Read these in order
- 1 · SearchHow Naver search works, and what it removesThe four blocks on a results page, what Naver says it filters out, and why "no fixed ranking" is written in its own documents.
- 2 · LocalNaver Place: the listing every local customer sees firstRegistration, the four ranking factors Naver names, the abuse rules, and how reviews become search terms.
- 3 · AdsPaid channels: where the money leaksPlace ads charge for a "directions" tap. Local keywords get three ad slots, not ten. Meta's learning phase restarts when you swap creative.
- 4 · SellingSelling online: Smart Store, Coupang, and Instagram without checkoutTwo fee layers on Smart Store, a 3% to 1% cut for traffic you bring yourself, category fees on Coupang, and why Meta checkout is US-only.
- 5 · LawBefore you sell: the E-Commerce Act, privacy law, and the 2027 domestic-agent ruleMail-order business registration, six items on your site, three items in every ad, seven-day withdrawal, and what changes for foreign sellers in January 2027.
How to read the grades
| Mark | Meaning |
|---|---|
| A | We hold the full official text. Korean passages in “quotes” are verbatim and are checked against our archive every time the site is built. English renderings next to them are ours. |
| B | Several secondary sources agree, but we could not open the original. We write "reportedly" and do not state figures as fact. |
| Editor's note | An interpretation we made by joining two sources. No document says it that way. |
Platform rules are re-checked every six months, AI topics every three, laws at each amendment. Each page shows its publish and update dates.