Health content in Korean digital media

The Korean online landscape is an intimidating beast. There are so many different services that seemingly overlap but cater to specific topics or are preferred by different demographics. To my Western eyes, the content presentation seems messy and overloaded. I think about health a lot and have been wondering where it sits in this landscape, so I did a little bit of digging. The following is in no way exhaustive research on the topic but rather a quick survey of online communities, apps, and blogs.

There is a lot I still don’t understand as Google translate will only get you so far. I intend to expand on this as I learn more, but if you notice something big that I am missing, please enlighten me.

Online Communities – Naver Cafe

Naver Cafe is a service to build online communities around specific topics and that, to me, looks and feels a bit like a throwback to Yahoo. There is a ranking system that uses botanical terms that I don’t yet understand and, therefore, won’t dive into. An alternative to this service is Daum Cafe Naver is the clear market leader.

• The most popular Naver Cafe group on health seems to be centered on finding/selling organic produce and boasts 426k members
• Exercise and supplements seem to go hand in hand are quite popular within this category
• Among the top 10 groups on health, three focus on illnesses (diabetes and cancer)
• I suspect that cancer would be a higher ranking theme if the topic weren’t split across a myriad of groups focusing on specific types
• Even the most popular groups in this category are completely dwarfed by the undisputed overall #1 (classifieds for used items) at 17m members – that’s 1 out of 3 people living in Korea
• Bonus factoid: there’s a group for the game “League of Legends” that has over 800k members

Apps – Wiseapp

Wiseapp seems to be the Korean version of App Annie. They provide download and usage statistics for apps in Korea. I’m not quite sure how they get their usage time data so take this with a grain of salt.

• Average daily app usage on mobile devices is 3h 45 minutes (which seems low judging from what I see around me)
• Health apps make up only 1.6% of usage time which would translate to just over 3.5 minutes a day
• There are no health or fitness-related apps in the top 10 (that’s what you’re limited to if you don’t subscribe to Wiseapp for a mere $500/month)

Blogs – Blogchart

Korea has no shortage of blogs. Blogchart offers some high-level statistics on blogs and hosting services across different categories. The rankings change real-time and the following observations are based on data from May 21st, 2019.

• Naver controls that space, hosting 68% of all Korean blogs, with Daum a distant second at roughly 16%
• There are two categories that (technically) qualify as health: medical and well-being/health
• Medical
  • Currently, the top ranking medical blog in Korea has an oral health theme and only ranks 845th (it topped out at 644 in the past) – it also contains a surprising number of food pics
  • The #2 medical blog is run by the Korean Association for Health Promotion and ranks all the way down at 1744 overall but has made it to an impressive 64th rank at some point
• Well-being
  • The leader in the well-being/health category is a blog called Gyulyi’s Herbal Medicine which ranks 18th across all blogs monitored by Blogchart and made it as far up as #9
  • A large number of the high-performing “well-being” blogs turned out to be lifestyle blogs around fashion, cats, and restaurant reviews, with the occasional diet tip sprinkled in for good measure. These blogs seem to be doing much better than actual health blogs, with their top 10 ranking better than #845 earlier in this list).

What does this mean?

Again, this isn’t exactly scientific research but all signs point to health content not performing very well across social groups, apps, and blogs. This is a bit surprising considering how big of an issue chronic conditions like hypertension are. I’m not sure whether that is because Korean consumers are not interested in their health or because nobody has figured out how to present relevant content engagingly. Personally, I hope it’s the latter.