Top 10% of YouTubers and BJs Earn Over 300 Million KRW Annually... What About the Bottom 10%?

Annual 20.09 Million KRW per Creator in Bottom 10%
Overall Income Increased but Income Gap Between Top and Bottom Widened

Among individual media creators such as YouTubers and BJs, the top 10% earned more than 340 million KRW annually, while the bottom 10% barely exceeded 20 million KRW in income.

According to data received from the National Tax Service by Kim Young-jin, a member of the National Assembly's Planning and Finance Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea (Gyeonggi Suwon-byeong), 19,290 individual media creators filed comprehensive income tax returns for the year 2022, marking a 19.4% increase from 16,294 in the previous year. The total income these creators earned over the year was 1.4537 trillion KRW, up 34.2% from 1.0835 trillion KRW the previous year. The average income per person also rose by 13.3%, from 66 million KRW to 75 million KRW.

Although creators' incomes increased overall, there was a wide disparity between the top and bottom earners. The total income of the top 10% of creators for 2022 was 665.048 billion KRW, accounting for 45.7% of the total income. The average income per person in the top 10% was 344.94 million KRW, a 12.7% increase from 306.09 million KRW the previous year. Expanding this to the top 30%, the total income reached 1.0256 trillion KRW, representing 70.4% of the total, with an average income per person of 177.26 million KRW.

The total income of the bottom 10% of creators was 38.79 billion KRW, making up only 2.7% of the total income. However, the average income per person in the bottom 10% increased by 13.3%, from 17.75 million KRW to 20.09 million KRW compared to the previous year.

Assemblyman Kim stated, "Since there is a significant wealth gap among YouTubers, it is socially important to be cautious about blindly chasing illusions based solely on some high-income YouTubers." He added, "As the scale and value created by media creators are expected to grow in the future, the National Tax Service must prepare thorough measures to prevent tax blind spots."

Meanwhile, the National Tax Service announced that in the second half of this year, it will strengthen verification of online platform tax evasion such as omitted YouTuber advertising and sponsorship income, as well as irregular issuance and trading of virtual assets through overseas exchanges, as part of its tax administration operation direction.