Naver released their year-end wrap-up of top searches in South Korea in 2021 a couple of weeks ago but I'm just now getting around to taking a look. Here are their lists translated to English for you with some brief explanations for topics that might not be readily known.
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| Overall top Naver searches in 2021. Images: Naver |
Overall top Naver searches in South Korea in 2021
I like that Naver releases this list. Google's year end results are always weighted for the past year rather than raw absolute search volume. But to start with here, Naver gives us the absolute searches that topped the year, which of course are almost identical to the top searches ever other year. Here we can discover that the overwhelming majority of searches on Naver are actually just people looking for links to other websites (as usual, YouTube tops the list) or quick-hit information that Naver can return immediate in onebox results (like "weather).
Mobile devices
- weather
- YouTube
- Samsung Electronics
- Winning lottery numbers
- Corona Live (website that tracks COVID cases: corona-live.com)
- Corona infections
- Samsung Electronics stock price
- Naver Real Estate
- directions
- Corona
- Daum (rival portal site)
- lottery
- Nate Pann (popular netizen discussion website on rival portal Nate)
- spell checker
- today's weather
- Naver Stocks
- today's fortune
- Coupang (shopping website)
- exchange rate
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| Example screenshot of Naver's onebox results for "weather" search |
PC / desktop
- YouTube
- Coupang (shopping website)
- Daum (rival portal site)
- weather
- spell checker
- Kookmin Bank
- Samsung Electronics
- Papago (online multilingual Korean language translator by Naver)
- Nonhyup internet banking
- Netflix
- Saramin (job search website)
- exchange rate
- Naver Maps
- Corona
- Woori bank
- Upbit (cryptocurrency exchange website)
- translator
- Shinhan bank
- directions
Top monthly Naver searches in South Korea in 2021
The next list gives a better indication of what was more specifically
popular in 2021 by dividing up the most common search terms by
month.
Mobile devices
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January
경이로운소문
"Uncanny Counter" or "Amazing Rumor"
Popular teen K-drama on channel OCN. Wikipedia explains: "Based on the Daum webtoon Amazing Rumor by Jang Yi, it centers on the titular character So Mun, a high school student with disability who is enlisted to be part of the Counters, a group of paranormal-hunters who search for and fight against evil spirits that escape from the afterlife to prey on humans."
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February
펜트하우스시즌2
Penthouse season 2
One of the wildest melodramatic soap operas on Korean television in recent years.
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March
펜트하우스시즌2
Penthouse season 2
-
April
빈센조
Vincenzo
Popular Korean drama featuring popular heartthrob actor Song Joongki who returned to the screen in this drama following his divorce. The show also featured cute actress Jeon Yeobin who was featured in Google's "Best of 2021" app campaign which I discussed here: Google-produced "Best of 2021" app awards videos, plus YouTube's top Korean videos for 2021
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May
비트코인시세
Bitcoin value
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June
펜트하우스시즌3
Penthouse season 3
-
July
도쿄올림픽일정
Tokyo Olympics schedule
-
August
코로나백신접종예약
Corona vaccine reservations
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September
오징어게임
Squid Game
-
October
김선호
Kim Seonho
K-drama actor who went viral this year after the release of unflattering text messages that suggested he had forced a girlfriend to get an abortion. More on that here.
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November
요소수
Urea water, aka DEF (Diesel exhaust fluid)
Korea experienced a surprise shortage of this necessary diesel engine add-on this year that even led the local map apps to offer special services detailing where users could find it (see my tweet).
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January
5인이상집합금지
Prohibition of gatherings of more than 5 people
Part of the new rules for COVID control. Obviously many people were searching to find answers to how exactly this rule was to be enforced.
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February
기성용
Ki Sung-yueng
Korean football (soccer) player who had a rough year. Despite being married to an attractive actress 10 years older than him, Ki was caught up in multiple hot topic issues this year including a real estate speculation case and a teammate sexual abuse case.
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March
e학습터
EduNet cyber-learning system
COVID lockdowns meant a depressing online-classes start to the Korean school year
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April
페이스북
Facebook
Probably trended this month because of their big worldwide outage of Facebook, Instagram, etc
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May
홈택스
Hometax
Korean national tax website
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June
잡코리아
Job Korea
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July
도쿄올림픽일정
Tokyo Olympics schedule
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August
코로나거리두기단계
Corona social distancing level
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September
코로나거리두기단계
Corona social distancing level
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October
롤드컵
"LOL Cup"
Instead of the normal "World Cup", the League of Legends (LOL) online gaming World Championships
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November
미리캔버스
Miricanvas
A popular and simple app for making great looking graphical designs for logos, video thumbnails, promotional imagery, etc.
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| JoongAng Daily article on footballer Ki Sung-yeung |
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| Miricanvas layout graphical design promotional image. Image: JTBC |
Naver also included this list of top trending searches on both mobile and
PC. These are search terms that saw much higher popularity this year
compared to last year. But I won't bother going through them because
they're mostly the same content that has already appeared on these other
lists. Take a look yourself here in this image:
The Naver blog post also divides up a few of the most popular searches in
specific categories, including:
- entertainment
- drama
- COVID19
- movies
- sports
- games
- public institutions
Check out the list yourself here in this image:
The full post can be found here:
NAVER Search & Tech 2021년 네이버 검색어 결산을 공개합니다 : 네이버 블로그
NAVER Search & Tech 2021년 네이버 검색어 결산을 공개합니다 : 네이버 블로그
Happy new year folks. And if you
want more of these, see my other End of Year wrap-up lists here:
10원 Tips: Year in Review posts
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