
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

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 % |