Koreans Watch 20x More YouTube Than Netflix

Korea exports drama. But the screen Koreans actually spend the most hours on is not drama.

WiseApp Retail measured Korean smartphone users from January to May 2026. YouTube's average monthly usage came to 113.6 billion minutes. Netflix came to 5.61 billion. That is more than a twentyfold gap, and the second through fifth places combined do not reach a tenth of YouTube.

This is not just an app ranking. The same table explains why K-pop music video view counts look the way they do, why brands put idols into YouTube shows instead of TV commercials, and why news about your favourite artist always surfaces on YouTube first.

At a glance

Ranking apps is the least interesting thing this table can do. What it does not show is that the two headline numbers were produced by different behaviours — one app is watched, the other is left running. Everything below turns on that distinction.

Who did the counting, and what exactly was counted

Before interpreting a number, it is worth saying what produced it.

WiseApp Retail is a Korean app and consumer data analytics firm. It collects app activity from a panel of smartphone users and publishes estimates of user counts and time spent. When Korean media report app rankings, this is usually the source. The panel covers both Android and iOS, and the window here is January through May 2026.

The list was not open to every app. It was limited to video and music subscription apps that had more than five million users as of May 2026 and offer content or live streaming. That is why there are no games, no messengers and no shopping apps here. It is a completely different table from the commerce app rankings the same firm publishes.

The most important detail is that the unit is minutes, not people. So each figure is two things multiplied together — how many people use it × how long each person keeps it open. Miss that distinction and you will read the table backwards.

One note for readers outside Korea: Melon is Korea's oldest large music streaming service, and for years it was the reference chart for domestic song rankings. Seeing it below YouTube Music in this table is genuinely new.

Stack four years on top and you see movement, not ranking

The same study also published four-year change. This table says more than the ranking does.

Two things stand out.

First, Netflix did not shrink. The twentyfold gap makes it look defeated, but it grew 19.1% over four years. This is not a picture of one service taking from another. It is a picture of total screen time itself expanding.

Second, the music side is being reshuffled. Melon sitting below YouTube Music, and Spotify multiplying thirteenfold, together mean the map of Korean music listening is no longer what a 2020 guide would tell you.

Most of the twentyfold gap is context, not preference

But reading 20× as "Koreans prefer YouTube to drama" is only half right.

Netflix is opened in roughly one situation. You sit down, you watch a one-hour episode, you look at the screen, and when it ends you close it.

YouTube is different. It opens on the subway, during meals, while washing dishes, before sleep, and as a way to leave music playing. Minutes accumulate even when nobody is looking at the screen. Both carry the label "video app", but the number of moments in a day where each one gets opened is not comparable.

So 113.6 billion versus 5.61 billion is closer to a difference in how the app is used than a difference in what people like. That distinction matters because getting it wrong leads directly to misreading K-pop metrics.

This is where view counts stop meaning people

Add up YouTube Music, Melon and Spotify and you get 1.65 billion minutes. That is 1.5% of YouTube proper.

Music-only apps being that small suggests that a large share of music listening in Korea happens inside YouTube itself — playlist videos, live clips, music videos left on repeat. All of it lands in the YouTube column.

That fact is useful in two directions.

One is comeback timing. This is why YouTube is effectively the primary stage for a Korean idol comeback. Teasers, music videos, dance practice videos and reality content all go up there first, because that is the screen domestic fans occupy longest. Broadcasters also run separate clip-only channels alongside their main broadcast.

The other is how you read view counts. A view is a playback, not a person, and as shown above a meaningful share of playbacks are music left running. One hundred million views is not one hundred million people — so how many is it? The metric has to be opened up before it answers.

Advertising followed the same table. When a brand places an idol in a YouTube web show rather than a television commercial, that is not taste — it is following the screen where the minutes are. Korean broadcasters lost roughly 56% of their advertising revenue between 2015 and 2024 while the overall Korean ad market grew, which is why the rules on in-show product placement are being loosened in October 2026.

What this means where you are

For readers in Southeast Asia, the second row is the one that costs the most time. OTT rights in Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia are carved up differently from Korea, and shows from the same production company can land on four different services across four countries. When a Korean fan account says "it dropped on Netflix", they usually mean Korean Netflix.

Read next

• There are rules for the products in Korean dramas — where broadcast ad money went, and what changes in October
• A map of Korean TV channels — how terrestrial, cable and general programming split up
• August 2026 Korean drama lineup — what is airing in which slot right now

Sources

• Hankyung — Koreans cannot live without YouTube: 113.6 billion minutes a month
• Newsis — Koreans watched 113.6 billion minutes of YouTube, 20 times Netflix
• Digital Today — YouTube tops video and music platforms with 113.6 billion minutes