Top Naver searches in Korea for 2018

Naver has released their top Korean searches for 2018 (2018년 네이버 최다 검색어). As usual, the Naver rankings give a better view of what real Koreans were interested in during 2018. Here they are in English with some of my classic added commentary for your information and amusement. Since many of these end up repeating across lists, I'll just stick a "see above" note for items that I already said something about.

So now sit back, relax, and enjoy this end of the year round-up of what made 2018 an interesting year for Korean netizens. 


2018년 월별 최다 검색어
2018 Top searches by Month


Let's start with the top searches for each month of the year. Obviously these tend to correspond with the breaking of some kind of news story or the release of a game/drama. Naver divides them by mobile and PC/Desktop. 


2018 Top Monthly Searches on Mobile


  1. 빗썸 - Bithumb - (one of the biggest Korean bitcoin exchanges, and biggest in the world thanks to the so called "kimchi premium" though whether it's legitimate or not is still up for debate)
  2. 김보름 - Kim Bo-reum
    South Korean Olympic speed skater made famous for her apparent bullying and outcasting of a fellow team mate. She gave a tearful apology but some refuse to believe it was genuine.
  3. 조민기 - Jo Min-ki
    Acting professor at a university, called out for inappropriate behavior by the #MeToo movement and ended up committing suicide.
  4. 밥잘사주는 예쁜누나 - "Something in the Rain" (officially) or "Pretty older woman who gives living expenses" (literally) or "Sugar Momma" (basically)
    Popular new romantic drama with a previously famous top actress (손예진) and a rookie actor (정해인). Kind of a cougar fantasy between a wealthy older woman and a handsome young gentleman. 
  5. 양예원 - Yang Ye-Won
    Famous YouTuber involved in a massive reversal scandal. Huge mess, but basically nude studio photos of her were revealed online (they are pretty explicit but more gross than sexy IMHO) which led to a huge back-and-forth about was she pressured into this, assaulted/blackmailed into doing it, or did she plain pose for the money? Photo studio guy involved ended up committing suicide, real mess here. You'll notice a lot of the juciest scandals in Korea come from people who are revealed to be (potentially) two faced. This was of course a huge news item during this year of #metoo revelations. The fact that nude photos of an attractive female were involved surely drew clicks. I am very surprised this didn't make the Google rankings so I'm curious if it was withheld. 
  6. 추자현 - Choo Ja-hyun
    Korean actress married to a Chinese actor. She wasn't an A-lister here but grew in popularity in China. Somehow a rumor circulated that she'd died while giving birth this year (the couple is a little on the older side). But the family is apparently fine. 
  7. 김비서가 왜그럴까 - What's Wrong with Secretary Kim
    Popular drama starring 박서준 based on a romance novel. He also had a popular appearance on a cooking show (윤 식당) earlier this year. And has been in every single damn commercial in Korea. In the show his secretary 박민영 has to deal with him being cold on the outside but warm on the inside (i.e. Korean women's, maybe every woman's, ideal man type).
  8. 태풍 - Typhoon
    People must have been searching this term to find out how bad the typhoon would be and when it would hit. It probably refers to Typhoon Kong-rey which was hyped to be huge but wasn't really that bad.
  9. 미스터 션샤인 - Mr. Sunshine
    Popular drama follow up from the Goddess of Korean TV scripted dramas, Kim Eun-sook, featuring top actor 이병헌 (Terminator)
  10. 구하라 - Koo Hara
    Member of girl group KARA famous this year for a very public domestic violence case that went back-and-forth between her and her boyfriend. Who was the real instigator and the real victim? Lot of he-said, she-said with the public ogling every step.
  11. 골프장동영상 - Golf course sex video
    Just as the title says, some kind of naughty video of a bigshot exec getting a "hole in one" out on the links with his, um, associate. I love that Naver included this instead of censoring it. 

2018 Top Monthly Searches on PC/Desktop


  1. 연말정산간소화서비스 - Simplified tax return service
  2. 김보름 - see above
  3. 조민기 - see above
  4. 종전 - End of war, ceasing of hostilities, weirdly I'm not sure how to translate this. I guess this was an optimistic month with all the Moon-Kim meetings this year
  5. 양예원 - see above
  6. 강진여고생실종 - Missing female high school student from Gangjin
    Gruesome murder of a female high school student by a long time family friend. Her body was found with head shaved on a mountain. Sick. 
  7. 메이플스토리 - Maple Story (longtime popular game, got some update or something, I don't know, I don't care)
  8. 태풍진로예상 - Typhoon's path (see above)
  9. 판빙빙 - Fan Bingbing
    Popular Chinese actress who disappeared from the public eye, as rumors spread that she had been murdered or imprisoned by Chinese authorities over potential tax evasion 
  10. 강서구 PC방살인 - Gangnam PC-room murder
    Case of petty revenge turned gruesome murder as some nutjob argues with computer cafe worker then waits for him outside and stabs him repeatedly to death. Worse was how this was just barely missed by patrolling police. 
  11. 로스트아크 - Lost Ark
    MMOARPG type game, sort of like Diablo. The game finally launched in November after massive delays (like 7 years of delays).


2018년 최다 검색어 Top 20
2018 Overall Top 20 Search Terms


Here are the overall Top 20 which features a lot of queries that are either lazy searches to other popular websites or queries that would trigger immediate onebox results. But this is a good resource for noting general consumer trends. It's interesting that YouTube and Google have once again made the top 3, which could be some indication of why Naver has been pushing their NaverTV streaming video services (and updating their popular blog platform to be more video-content friendly). 

Naver divides these overall terms as coming from mobile or PC devies.

2018 Top 20 Overall Mobile Searches


  1. 날씨 - weather
  2. 유튜브 - YouTube
  3. 구글 - Google
  4. 로또 - lotto
  5. 전국날씨 - nationwide weather
  6. 페이스북 - Facebook
  7. 미세먼지 - fine dust
  8. 다음 - Daum
  9. 길찾기 - directions
  10. 환율 - exchange rate
  11. 오늘의운세 - today's horoscopes
  12. 방탄소년단 - B.T. S. (internationally popular boy K-pop group)
  13. 오늘날씨 - today's weather
  14. 쿠팡 - Coupang (online retailer; Korea's version of Amazon)
  15. 빗썸 - Bithumb (see above)
  16. 영화 - movies
  17. 그것이알고싶다 - "The Its Know" or "I Want to Know" (popular investigative journalism show)
  18. 번역기 - translation
  19. 나혼자산다 - "I Live Alone" (popular reality TV show)
  20. 네이버증권 - Naver stocks
​

2018 Overall top 20 PC desktop searches




  1. 유튜브 - YouTube
  2. 다음 - Daum
  3. 구글 - Google
  4. 농협인터넷뱅킹 - Nonhyup internet banking
  5. 페이스북 - Facebook
  6. 환율 - exchange rate
  7. 쿠팡 - Coupang
  8. 국민은행 - Kookmin Bank
  9. 우리은행 - Woori Bank
  10. 사람인 - Saramin (online job/recruiting portal)
  11. 날씨 - weather
  12. 롤인벤 - League of Legends (popular multiplayer strategy game, "LOL" + Inven)
  13. 국세청홈텍스 - Korean IRS (national tax service)
  14. 아프리카티비 - afreecaTV (formerly the #1 Korean online streaming video site, rapidly losing out to YouTube due to arguably higher profits and audience for creators on YouTube. Includes lots of "meokbang" content, "BJ" streamers, and Twitch-like content)
  15. 국민은행인터넷뱅킹 - Kookmin Bank internet banking
  16. 신한은행 - Shinhan Bank
  17. 네이버지도 - Naver maps
  18. 유투브 - YouTube
  19. 옥션 - Auction (Korean online shopping portal)
  20. 민원24 - Minwon 24 (governmental-run complaint/reporting site)

2017년 대비 검색량 급증 검색어
Top Rising/Trending Searches of 2018


These are the search terms that saw a significant increase in 2018 compared to last year. This post is taking too long so I'm just going to run through some of these and many are repeats from above too. 

2018's Top Trending searches on mobile


  1. 태풍 - Typhoon (see above)
  2. 셀트리온 - Celltrion
    Korean biopharma company. I'm not familiar with the nitty gritty details but a quick perusal of news articles shows something like a general government prosecution crackdown on similar corps (like Samsung BioLogics) and their leadership transfer to second generations by stock manipulation. 
  3. 이제명 - Lee Jae-myung
    High ranked politician involved in a number of scandals and potential corruption issues. The latest was his wife's secret Twitter account, in which she bad-mouthed President Moon and others, while praising them with her public face. To me the interesting things in this guy's issues are how divided, back stabbing, and cut throat people are within the same party.
  4. 조민기 - see above
  5. 양예원 - see above
  6. 미스터션샤인 - see above
  7. 조재현 - Cho Jae-hyun (actor caught up in #metoo accusations)
  8. 밥잘사주는예쁜누나 - see above
  9. 태풍경로 - see above
  10. 프로듀스48 - Produce 48
    New season of this popular singer audition program, this season featured several members of Japanese girl J-pop group AKB48.
  11. 전국미세먼지 - nationwide fine dust
  12. 하트시그널시즌2 - Heart Signal season 2 (blind date show)
  13. 내아이디는강남미인 - My ID is Gangnam Beauty (webtoon originating TV show)
  14. 삼성전자주가 - Samsung electronics stock price
  15. 구하라 - see above
  16. 삼성바이오로직스 - Samsung BioLogics (see #2 above)
  17. 전국초미세먼지 - nationwide ultra fine dust
  18. 정해인 - Jung Hae In (rookie actor skyrocketing to popularity for 밥잘사주는 예쁜누나; see above)
  19. 같이살래요 - "Marry Me Now" or "Shall we live together?" (K-drama)

2018's Top Trending searches on PC/Desktop


  1. 로스트아크 - see above
  2. 파파고 - Papago (Naver's revamped translation tool)
  3. 양예원 - see above
  4. 업비트 - UPbit (another bitcoin exchange with questionable practices)
  5. 이재명 - see above
  6. 닥지지 - Dak.GG (PlayerUnknown's Battleground server)
  7. 조민기 - see above
  8. 연말정산간소화서비스 - end-of-year tax return filing service
  9. 조재현 - see above
  10. 피파온라인4 - FIFA Online 4
  11. 삼성바이오로직스 - Samsung BioLogics (see above)
  12. 프로듀스48 - see above
  13. 구하라 - see above
  14. 강한나 - Kang Han-na (Korean actress dating a popular Taiwanese, actor, and to be perfectly honest here she's probably on this list for her "butt crack" dress she wore to an event).
  15. 판빙빙 - see above
  16. 넷플릭스 - Netflix
  17. 이강인 - Lee Kang In (Korean teenage soccer player making a big splash in the European leagues apparently)
  18. 김비서가왜그럴까 - see above
  19. 정현 - see above
  20. 미스터션샤인 - see above

And that pretty much wraps up another year. 

It's interesting to note that 노회찬 is somehow not on any of these lists at all, despite ranking #3 on Google's newsmakers results. For a refresher, here's what I said about him over there:
노회찬 - Left-wing activist politician, famous for his clean image and anti-corruption stance on behalf of the people, involved in the Druking scandal and revealed to have been taking money and nearly as corrupt as his enemies. He committed suicide this year after the revelations.
Was he censored from the search rankings? Who knows, but I'll just casually link to this interesting article over on One Free Korea and let you draw your own conclusions:
From Sunshine to solar eclipse: Can Moon Jae-in censor his way to reunification?

There you have it folks. What a crazy year. Looking back it's funny to think the Pyeongchang Olympics were part of this year. That feels like a least a couple years ago. I swear I feel like Korea's a kind of time warp where time just plain moves faster than anywhere else. Weird to think how much my life has changed in my time here and on the other hand how little it's really changed. My age gets higher, my belly gets wider, my hair goes farther and father back.

For the top search terms this year from other search portals (Google, Daum-Kakao, etc) and other related content check out my other posts here:



Have a good one folks and thanks for sticking around. 
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