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Most English-language guides to Korean AI apps are out of date, and not by a little. They still recommend services that shut down months ago, and they miss the app that Koreans actually spend the most time inside. Here’s what the AI landscape in South Korea looks like right now, based on Korean-language reporting and local usage data rather than year-old press releases.
Naver Shut Down CLOVA X, Its ChatGPT Rival
This is the big one that English roundups keep getting wrong. Naver, the company that runs South Korea’s dominant search portal, discontinued CLOVA X on April 9, 2026, along with its AI search product Cue:. Both were shut down the same day, roughly two years and eight months after CLOVA X launched in beta in August 2023.
CLOVA X was positioned as Korea’s answer to ChatGPT, built on Naver’s own large language model, HyperCLOVA X. Its shutdown was widely covered in Korean media, including Newsis and Seoul Economic Daily, but the news barely registered in English coverage.
If you’re evaluating AI tools generally rather than Korean ones specifically, our guide on how to choose an AI writing tool covers what to test for before committing to any platform.
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The App Koreans Spend the Most Time In Isn’t ChatGPT
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Here’s the finding that surprises people. By total hours of user engagement, the most-used AI chat app in South Korea is Zeta, a homegrown app almost nobody outside the country has heard of.
According to analytics firm Wiseapp Retail, cited by The Korea Herald, Zeta logged 73.62 million cumulative hours of engagement in October 2025, against ChatGPT’s 48.28 million. Other competitors trailed far behind.
Zeta isn’t a productivity assistant. It’s a character-based chat app: users build virtual characters with their own names, personalities, and interests, then hold ongoing conversations with them, complete with AI-generated character art and synthesized voices. It’s made by Scatter Lab, a Seoul startup that raised 15 billion won (about $10.2 million) from SK Telecom, and launched in open beta in April 2023.
| Measured by | Leader in Korea | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Time spent in app | Zeta | Companion and roleplay chat drives long sessions |
| Monthly active users | ChatGPT | Still the default for general-purpose tasks |
Both numbers are true at once, and the gap between them is the actual story: Koreans open ChatGPT for tasks, but stay inside Zeta for hours. Its user base skews dramatically young, with teens and people in their twenties making up close to 90% of global users.
Two of Korea’s largest platforms looked at the same market and drew opposite conclusions about what to build.
Kakao Bet on Agents Instead of Chatbots
Kakao, the company behind KakaoTalk, took a different route from Naver. Rather than shutting things down, it consolidated its AI work under a single brand, Kanana, and pushed toward agentic features rather than a plain chat window.
Kanana’s recent development has centered on multimodal capability. Kakao unveiled Kanana-o, a unified model that processes text, voice, and images together, merging what were previously separate image and audio models. The product direction leans practical and commerce-adjacent: schedule briefings, conversation summaries, and gift recommendations that hook into Korean shopping apps.
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DeepSeek Is Partially Blocked in Korea
One more thing English guides rarely mention: South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission suspended new downloads of DeepSeek starting February 15, over concerns the app lacked transparency about third-party data transfers and collected excessive personal information.
The restriction is narrower than a full ban. New app downloads are blocked, but the web version stays accessible and existing users can keep using the app. Korea wasn’t alone here, as Italy, Taiwan, and Australia all took their own restrictive measures around the same period.
Measuring which apps exist is easy. Measuring which ones people actually stay inside is the part that gets skipped.
Why English Guides to Korean AI Apps Get This Wrong
The pattern is structural rather than careless. Korean companies announce launches, pivots, and shutdowns in Korean-language press releases and local media first. English coverage picks up the splashy launches, because those come with international PR pushes, then goes quiet. Shutdowns and strategy reversals rarely get the same treatment.
The result is English-language “best Korean AI tools” lists that read like a snapshot from 2023 and stay online, ranking, for years. If you’re researching this space, check the date on anything you read, and be skeptical of any list that still recommends CLOVA X.
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
Can I still use CLOVA X?
No. Naver ended the service on April 9, 2026, along with its Cue: search product. Access to old conversation histories was cut off at shutdown, and Naver told users to back up anything they wanted to keep before that date.
Do Korean AI apps work in English?
Support varies widely. Korean models are generally optimized for Korean-language fluency first, and English support is often a secondary feature rather than a core one. For English work specifically, mainstream international tools usually remain the more practical choice.
Is ChatGPT popular in South Korea?
Yes. ChatGPT leads generative AI apps in Korea by monthly active users, with Google Gemini and Claude following. It just isn’t the app people spend the most total hours inside, which is where Zeta pulls ahead.
Does Samsung have its own AI?
Samsung develops its own AI capability for its devices, branded around Galaxy AI features. That’s a separate track from the Naver and Kakao platform services covered here, and it ships tied to Samsung hardware rather than as a standalone app.