South Korea’s live streaming e-commerce market: new opportunities and challenges for cross-border e-commerce

Border e-commerce has encountered challenges from East Asia in the North American market, but at the same time, the Korean market in Asia has ushered in new development opportunities. Especially in the field of live e-commerce, the rise of the Korean market is extremely eye-catching.

Since last year, the tourism boom of “going to China after get off work on Friday” has quietly emerged in South Korea, which has not only promoted China’s recovery, but also driven the retailers of Chinese e-commerce platforms in South Korea. At the same time, the “live e-commerce” business model originated from China has also quickly become popular in South Korea and has become a new way of shopping.

South Korea’s influential comprehensive news media “National Daily” once published an article pointing out that the increase in the frequency of Korean consumers using Chinese e-commerce platforms has promoted the growth of South Korea’s overseas direct purchase market. Behind this phenomenon, Chinese e-commerce platforms have significant advantages in terms of product variety, price advantages and shopping experience.

Take Temu launched by Pinduoduo as an example. Since the end of last year, Temu has begun to actively prepare to enter the Korean market directly. They not only recruited core departments in South Korea, but also planned to establish a comprehensive logistics system to support business expansion in South Korea. Data shows that in December 2024, Temu’s new employee downloads in South Korea reached 1.177 million times, successfully topping the download list. In addition, Chinese e-commerce platforms such as AliExpress and Yinyin Overseas Express Edition have also achieved impressive results in the Korean market.

In terms of local platforms, Korean e-commerce platforms such as NAVER, Coupang and Kakao have become the main force of e-commerce. Among them, NAVER Shopping Live has developed rapidly, with more than 100 million live broadcasts and more than one million buyers in the first half of its launch. Coupang Live continues to expand its categories, with sales increasing by more than 60% year-on-year in 2022. Kakao has attracted a large number of young consumers with the help of social platform resources.

YouTube, the global union, announced at the end of last year that it would further expand its live e-commerce business in South Korea. The addition of these platforms has undoubtedly enhanced competition in the Korean e-commerce market. A smokeless e-commerce war is quietly unfolding in this film.

Data shows that the scale of South Korea’s live e-commerce market has reached 2.5 trillion won (about 1.9 billion U.S. dollars) in 2024, and in the two years from 2022 to 2024, the scale has increased 15 times. It is expected that by 2025, this figure will expand to 3 trillion won (about 2.3 billion U.S. dollars), showing a rapid development trend.

In terms of live broadcast content, South Korea’s live e-commerce covers multiple fields such as entertainment, food, e-sports, and life sharing. For example, AfreecaTV’s “eating broadcast” content is very popular, and many anchors lack strategy. The application has long been ranked in the top ten downloads in South Korea. In the field of e-sports, game live broadcasts similar to Twitch.tv are also very popular in South Korea, and viewers can interact and communicate in live broadcasts.

It is worth mentioning that not only celebrities and Internet celebrities have joined the live broadcast army, but even Korean gang members have also joined the live broadcast industry. They share their experiences in the underworld, prison life and other content on Youtube, and attract a large number of clicks with their unique identities. This phenomenon not only reflects the left-right nature of the Korean live broadcast market, but also highlights the huge influence of live e-commerce in South Korea.

The extremely high acceptance of live streaming has laid a solid foundation for the development of live streaming. In terms of platforms, NAVER, Coupang and Kakao have gained a certain market share in the field of live streaming e-commerce by virtue of their respective advantages.

As a search engine in South Korea, NAVER launched the “NAVER live streaming platform as early as 2020. The live streaming views of the platform exceeded 100 million times in half a year, and the number of buyers exceeded one million. Coupang started trial operation of the “Coupang Live” on-site business service in 2021. The service is currently mainly for beauty products such as cosmetics, but plans to gradually involve more categories. Kakao has further consolidated its position in the field of live streaming e-commerce by investing in the live streaming e-commerce platform Grip and acquiring 50% of its shares.

In addition to these local platforms, traditional retail companies are also unwilling to lag behind. CJ of Shopping, Lotte Home Shopping and GS Home shopping companies such as Shop have all adopted live sales channels, trying to get a share of the live e-commerce market.

According to Statista data, the penetration rate of live e-commerce in South Korea is expected to reach 53.2% in 2024, and will further climb to 63.7% in the next five years. This data fully demonstrates the huge potential and development prospects of South Korea’s live e-commerce market.

The main driving factors for Korean consumers’ choice of live shopping include price advantages, convenient shopping methods, the possibility of product comparison, a wide range of products, serious accessibility, non-disruptive shopping experience, and more product information. These factors have jointly promoted Korean consumers’ preference for online shopping, reflecting their high attention to value, convenience, and lack of information.

However, while the e-commerce market is booming, the Korean market is also facing some challenges and risks. For example, the “three highs” (high prices, high interest rates, and high exchange rates) are still severe, and the continued increase in the cost of living has led to a change in consumer concepts. In the past, South Korea pursued a life attitude of instant gratification, but now it has gradually changed to only give priority to buying a certain amount of life necessities. In addition, the South Korean government has also implemented regulatory measures such as the KC certification policy for high-end products, which has had a certain impact on the e-commerce market.

Despite this, as the world’s fourth largest e-commerce market, South Korea’s $160 billion scale and 40 million e-commerce users still provide illegal market space for border e-commerce companies. With the advancement of technology and changes in consumer demand, the Korean live e-commerce market will continue to maintain rapid growth in the near future and become another hot spot for Chinese commercial theft.

For Chinese merchants who want to enter the Korean market, it is crucial to get used to the needs and shopping of Korean consumers. They pay more attention to the “quality-price ratio”, and it is difficult to obtain long-term orders with crude and low prices. Therefore, Chinese merchants need to pay attention to the improvement of product quality and after-sales service. At the same time, due to the relatively scattered pattern of the Korean logistics and express delivery industry, Chinese merchants need to consider when choosing logistics partners.

In short, the rise of the Korean live e-commerce market has brought new development opportunities for border e-commerce companies. With the intensification of market competition and changes in consumer demand, Chinese e-commerce needs to continue to innovate and improve itself in order to consume in the Korean market.