YouTube is gaining a strong foothold in Korea as its number of monthly users is close to outpacing that of dominant players like Kakao and Naver.

The gap between the two platforms’ monthly active users (MAUs), or those who have used the service at least once in the past month stood at 507,487 in May according to the local market tracker Mobile Index on Monday.

That is a drastic downfall compared to 2.9 million in 2020, followed by 2.2 million in 2021. Last year, the gap between the two platforms’ MAUs stood at 1.5 million.

YouTube’s MAUs reached 40.9 million in May while that of Kakao stood at 41.1 million.

The number of Naver’s MAUs, the country’s biggest search engine, was at 38.8 million in May.

YouTube is also popular in Korea’s music streaming industry which used to be dominated by Melon, a music streaming service operated by Kakao Entertainment.

Melon’s market share in Korea’s music streaming industry stood at 29.1 percent in May while that of YouTube trailed closely behind with 24.3 percent.

The gap between the two platforms used to stand at 15.7 percentage points back in 2020 with Melon grabbing 31.6 percent and YouTube grabbing 15.9 percent.

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]