YouTube Red launches in Korea

The paid subscription service YouTube Red is launched in Korea. It's priced at "₩7,900/month, 1-month free trial, excludes VAT." Google announced it on their YouTube Korea blog. It will have all the same basic offerings - background play, ad free, etc.

Screenshot of YouTube Red launch announcement on YouTube Korea blog


In fact the only really Korea-specific thing I noticed in the announcement is this:

한국에서도 좋은 소식이 있는데요, 바로 한국 첫 오리지널 시리즈를 케이팝 대표 아티스트 빅뱅과 함께하기로 했다는 것입니다!
YouTube Korea Blog: 유튜브 레드와 유튜브 뮤직, 한국에서 만나보세요!

So the boy K-pop group Big Bang will be the draw for the "YouTube Originals" service. I don't personally see this being able to compete with the offerings of Naver V Live. Plus, I can think of 10 groups off the top of my head more popular today than Big Bang.

They included a Korea-specific video (unlisted, weirdly) that shows the personalized stations you can have if you're a subscriber.



The post's author had a sign off, like the English YouTube blog does, with a shout out to what video she watched recently. It was a newish K-pop hit called TT (spoken "tee tee") by girl group TWICE, which was claimed to be overly sexual for the girls doing the sad ㅜㅜ gesture but was really just an excuse to point at their breasts and sing "titties".

Twice's 'TT' sparks dispute over sexual references - The Korea Herrald

Make of that what you will. Here's the music video for your, uh, research.


Source: YouTube Korea blog

UPDATE: Korea Herald wrote about it too, but looks like they just took the info from the same blog post. Not much new there:
 Google launches ad-free YouTube subscription service in Korea | Korea Herald

Comments