"Changed Nationality Due to Expensive Subscription Fees"... Digital Nomads Leaving Korea [Chosun Price Chronicles]

⑤ Streaming Service Subscription Fees Vary Greatly by Country
To Save Even a Penny, Circumventing by Changing Nationality Is Necessary
YouTube Subscription Fees Jump 42.6%

India, Turkey, Argentina, Ukraine, Egypt…. In Korea, the YouTube Premium subscription fee is 14,900 KRW per month, but if you subscribe through accounts from these countries, you can use the service for 2,000 KRW, or at most 4,000 KRW, even considering exchange rates. There are numerous user reviews stating, "I create a new Google account and subscribe through countries with lower fees to make payments indirectly."

At the 'Google for Korea 2023' event, visitors are viewing the YouTube 15th anniversary pre-exhibition. The photo is not related to the specific content of the article. Photo by Yonhap News.

As the subscription economy penetrates daily life, consumers have gained the convenience of freely accessing desired content by paying a monthly subscription fee. However, the term 'streamflation' (streaming + inflation) has emerged due to the steep rise in subscription fees. Last December, Google raised the YouTube Premium subscription fee from 10,450 KRW to 14,900 KRW per month, a 42.6% increase. When paying through the iPhone App Store, which has a different commission policy, the monthly subscription fee rises to 19,500 KRW.

Disney Plus increased its monthly plan, which allows 4 simultaneous viewers in 4K resolution, from 9,900 KRW to 13,900 KRW last November. This is nearly a 40% price hike. Tving also raised its subscription fees by about 20% in December. The previous Basic plan at 7,900 KRW, Standard at 10,900 KRW, and Premium at 13,900 KRW were increased to 9,500 KRW, 13,500 KRW, and 17,000 KRW respectively.

Reducing services and eliminating low-cost plans... 'Sneaky price hikes' draw criticism

Netflix has drawn criticism for 'sneaky price hikes' through restructuring its plans. Currently, Netflix offers three plans: an ad-supported Standard plan (5,500 KRW) for two simultaneous users, a Standard plan (13,500 KRW), and a Premium plan (17,000 KRW). Before 2022, it operated with a Basic plan (9,500 KRW) for one user, a Standard plan (12,000 KRW) for two users, and a Premium plan (14,500 KRW) for up to four users. However, after adding the ad-supported plan, the Basic plan was removed. With the disappearance of the Basic plan, the cheapest ad-free plan became the Standard plan, effectively a 44.4% (4,000 KRW) increase from 9,500 KRW to 13,500 KRW, which has sparked criticism.

Photo by Pixabay

Additionally, since last November, Netflix has monetized account sharing. To share an account with users outside the same household, an additional 5,000 KRW per month must be paid. For the Premium plan (17,000 KRW), which allows up to two additional users, if three people share an account, they must pay the original price (17,000 KRW) plus an additional fee (10,000 KRW), resulting in each paying 9,000 KRW.

Subscription prices soaring... Consumers resist price hikes

Increases in online video service (OTT) subscription fees translate into household burdens. According to the Korea Creative Content Agency's '2023 OTT Usage Behavior Survey,' 86.5% of the population used paid or free OTT platforms in the past year, subscribing to an average of 2.1 platforms per person. For paid OTT platforms, 55.2% of the population used them, subscribing to an average of 1.8 platforms per person. In contrast to the current majority of OTT subscription fees being around 10,000 KRW, consumers consider the appropriate monthly subscription fee for paid OTT platforms to be 7,006 KRW.

Consumers are engaging in various methods of 'subscription fee dieting.' Numerous online communities and social networking services (SNS) share methods to bypass YouTube Premium fees, with many success stories. Some companies claim to provide 'safe bypasses that cannot be blocked.' As YouTube cracks down on bypass accounts, platforms mediating OTT subscription sharing have emerged.

Illegal streaming services are also thriving. Some consumers burdened by subscription fees flock to illegal sites offering free content, causing the monthly active users (MAU) of the illegal video streaming site 'NunuTV' to reach 10 million at one point. As of December last year, this number was comparable to Netflix's MAU of 11.64 million.