The ongoing political turmoil following President Yoon Suk Yeol's Dec. 3 declaration of martial law led to a significant jump in the use of mobile news apps in December, a report by a data analysis firm showed Sunday.
According to the IGA Works Mobile Index, mobile news apps were newly installed on phones by local users about 310,000 times in the month of December 2024, marking an 63.15 percent increase compared to new incidences of users installing news apps in December 2023.
By month, it marked the third most number of times mobile news apps were installed since March 2021, when the data analysis firm first started keeping track of the figure. The all-time highest and second highest records were both set in early 2022, in March and January of that year, respectively, thought to be affected by the presidential election on March 9 that went down as the closest presidential race in the country's history.
Last month, the country was hit by President Yoon Suk Yeol's shocking martial law declaration on Dec. 3, which was followed by revelations of his allegedly illegal orders to military commanders, the opposition's push to impeach the embattled president, fueled by millions coming out to call for his impeachment and arrest. Yoon is currently under criminal investigation and on trial for impeachment on charges of leading an insurrection and committing abuse of power.
The rush of people here to install news apps last month even surpassed that of November 2022, when Koreans installed news apps some 270,000 times to check updates related to the tragic crowd crush in Itaewon, Seoul on Halloween weekend.
The most popular news app in Korea by monthly active users -- referring to the number of users that engage with a particular app within a 30-day window -- was Google News with 319,169 MAU.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
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