Telecommunication in South Korea

Compared to the European Union, South Korea is at the forefront of the development of telecommunications. Under the country code +82, there were a total of 94.37 million connections in 2020. Among them were 70.51 million mobile phones, which corresponds to an average of 1.4 per person. In the EU, this figure is 1.2 mobile phones per person.

With about 315,697 webhosts, South Korea is below the world's average by population. At the end of 2020, 307,856 million of these, or about 98 percent, were secured with SSL or comparable encryption.

Back to overview: South Korea

Development of telephone and internet connections

With an average download speed of 105.38 Mbit/second for fixed-network broadband internet, South Korea ranked 23rd in an international comparison. The upload rate was only 94.59 Mbit/second (8th place). The quality of the Internet, consisting of signal fluctuations (jitter) and latency, is very far ahead at 5th place.
In mobile internet, i.e. on tablets and smartphones, South Korea comes 4th with a download speed of 111.94 Mbit/second. The upload speed of around 14 Mbit was only enough for 25th place.

The Speedtest Global Index published regularly by Ookla is based on several million individual measurements in April 2022 from 181 countries.

The following diagrams show the development of the various telephone and Internet connections as a percentage of the country's population. Values above 100% mean that, on average, every inhabitant has more than one connection.

Access to the Internet in South Korea from 1990 - 2020

Broadband internet in South Korea 1998 - 2020

South Korea is doing very well in the expansion of broadband Internet connections. Around 97% of all residents have access to the Internet. Around 43% have their own fast Internet connection, which is at least faster than the former ISDN (more than 256 kbit/s). All fixed connections via DSL, cable or satellite were counted here, but not those connected to the Internet via mobile communications.

Landlines 1990 - 2020

Mobile phones 1990 - 2020

Distribution in 2020	South Korea Total	South Korea percent	EU Total	EU percent
Internet users	49.97 m	96.51 %	379.48 m	84.74 %
Broadband users	22.33 m	43.12 %	163.72 m	36.56 %
Landlines	23.86 m	46.08 %	160.15 m	35.76 %
Mobile cellulars	70.51 m	136.18 %	540.56 m	120.71 %

Country comparison South Korea : United StatesThe United States and South Korea compared: demography, Economy, energy, languages and further dimensions.

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