SNS & Internet Culture

KakaoTalk is essential for Koreans — it's a super app beyond messaging, enabling money transfers, taxi hailing, and shopping. Naver dominates search, with Naver Blog and Cafe as information sharing hubs.

In Japan, LINE is the national messenger with a particularly developed stamp (sticker) culture. Search is split between Google and Yahoo Japan, and anonymous board culture (2ch→5ch) parallels Korea's DCInside.

Korea has a strong real-name culture online, while Japan has more developed anonymous culture. Korea's 'comment culture' and Japan's 'matome site' culture are also interesting differences.