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VPS in South Korea: what to know before you rent
South Korea has some of the fastest home internet in the world: gigabit connections in apartments and dense mobile coverage are the norm. Korean hosting, however, works differently from European hosting. Speeds inside the country are huge, but international traffic is expensive, and that shows up directly in the price of plans.
Three carriers and expensive traffic
The Korean telecom market is dominated by three large carriers: KT, SK Broadband and LG U+. Each has its own subscribers, and traffic exchange between them has historically been paid and not always direct. For a server owner this is the key practical question: the data centre must be well connected to all three networks. If a host is connected to only one carrier, subscribers of the other two may get noticeably worse response times, even though the server is technically in the same country.
The second feature is bandwidth cost. Traffic in Korea costs more than in Europe, and local hosts rarely offer unlimited plans: more often you get a modest port or a fixed monthly volume. That is enough for a website or an API, but for serving video, large files or backups, work out the volume in advance and compare overage prices. If you need a lot of traffic and the audience doesn't have to be Korean, consider VPS in Japan: Tokyo is about 30 ms from Seoul, and bandwidth there is usually cheaper.
Seoul, Busan and latency from Europe and the US
Almost all of the country's data centres are concentrated in Seoul and its metropolitan area, in districts such as Gasan, Mokdong and Pangyo. The second hub is Busan in the south-east, where submarine cables land from Japan, China and, across the Pacific, the US. For a nationwide audience the difference between the capital and Busan is small; the country is compact.
From the US west coast to Seoul you can expect roughly 120–160 ms over transpacific cables, and more from the east coast. From Western Europe it is usually 200–280 ms, depending on whether the route runs through Asia overland or through the Middle East and the Indian Ocean. That is too much for an audience in Europe, so a Korean server makes sense when your users are in Korea or North-East Asia. Check the ping to the host's test IP from your own connection — the spread between providers is large here.
What people use a server in Korea for
- Game servers for Korean players. The audience is demanding about latency, and a server outside the country is immediately noticeable. Hardware and bandwidth requirements are covered on the VPS for a game server page.
- Websites, stores and apps for the Korean market, where users expect pages to load instantly.
- A Korean IP address for checking ads, regional search results and local app stores.
- A North-East Asia node in a distributed project: together with servers in Japan and Hong Kong it covers the region. All Asian locations are in VPS in Asia.
Laws and platform rules
Personal data in Korea is protected by PIPA, one of the strictest laws in Asia, with a dedicated regulator, the PIPC, and large fines for breaches. It also applies to foreign companies serving Korean users: with a significant local audience you may need a representative in the country. Transferring data abroad requires the user's consent or another legal basis. If you also serve EU users, plan for both PIPA and GDPR; the EU recognises Korea as providing adequate protection, which makes data transfers between them simpler.
Game projects have one more detail: games distributed in Korea go through age rating by the relevant committee. A server for a private community is not affected, but a commercial launch is. Many Korean hosts ask you to verify your identity or company at sign-up, and the control panel and contract may be in Korean only.
Payment
Korean hosts bill in won and are geared to local cards and payment systems; some accept international Visa and Mastercard, but sign-up can be harder for foreigners. That is why buyers from abroad often go to international providers with Seoul as one of their locations: they bill in US dollars or euros, take cards and often PayPal, issue invoices with VAT details, and some also accept cryptocurrency as a payment method. The "Payment" column in the table above shows the methods for each plan, with prices converted into your currency. Mind the time difference: Seoul is on UTC+9, so a local host's support works during the European night, while international clouds offer round-the-clock support in English.