Top 1% of Korean YouTubers dominate 30% of total revenues

Tzuyang, a popular Korean YouTuber with more than 9.2 million subscribers, eats king crab during a live-stream eating show, Feb. 2. Captured from Tzuyang's YouTube channel

The top 1 percent of YouTubers in Korea earned an average annual income of nearly 850 million won ($640,400), data showed, Wednesday.

Data from the National Tax Service (NTS) in 2022 also showed that their income accounted for almost 30 percent of the total revenues raised by the country’s content creators on YouTube.

“The data suggests a significant wealth gap across Korean society is also witnessed within the burgeoning creator economy,” said Rep. Yang Kyung-sook, a main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) lawmaker.

Also a member of the National Assembly’s Strategy and Finance Committee, Yang released the data after the NTS submitted it to her.

A total of 39,366 content creators were registered on YouTube in 2022, with their aggregate income amounting to 1.14 trillion won, according to the tax agency.

The number of such creators steadily increased – from 2,776 in 2019 to 20,756 in 2020 and 34,219 in 2021.

Their combined income went up over time as well, from 87.5 billion won in 2019 to 452.1 billion won in 2020 and 858.9 billion won in 2021.

The 2022 figure was also noteworthy as the aggregate income surpassed the 1 trillion won mark for the first time.

Earnings, however, were heavily concentrated to just 393 YouTubers who were in the top 1 percent bracket.

Each of the 393 raked in 848 million won on average, which accounted for 29.2 percent of the total income generated by Korean YouTubers.

The proportion of the top 1 percent of YouTubers’ earnings was up from 26.4 percent in 2019 when the NTS recognized content creators as an official occupation.