ChatGPT's average monthly users in South Korea surpassed 23 million in the first half of this year, in what analysts see as evidence of the continued expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) service usage.
App analytics firm WiseApp·Retail released its ranking of the fastest-growing mobile apps in the first half of 2026 on the 15th. A survey of Korean smartphone users (Android·iOS) found that ChatGPT averaged 23.24 million monthly users in the first half of this year. That marked an increase of 9.86 million from the same period last year, the steepest growth among all mobile apps.
Ranked second was "Setlog," a daily-sharing social networking service (SNS) popular among the MZ generation, with an average of 7.33 million monthly users. Setlog was first launched on the iPhone in February this year, and its Android version was released in April.
Third was Google's AI service "Gemini," used by 7.79 million people on average per month, an increase of 6.81 million from the same period a year earlier.
Following were Digital Onnuri with 3.63 million, Naver Plus Store with 3.59 million, Google with 3.47 million, Block Blast with 2.75 million, KakaoPay with 2.49 million, Spotify with 2.22 million, Monimo with 1.94 million, TikTok with 1.91 million, TikTok Lite with 1.85 million, Coupang Eats with 1.81 million, Google Chrome with 1.55 million, and Daiso Mall with 1.51 million, in order of the largest increases in users.
The app with the most average monthly users in the first half of this year was Google, with 46.95 million. It was followed by Google Chrome with 43.03 million, ChatGPT with 23.24 million, Coupang Eats with 12.84 million, KakaoPay with 11.05 million, TikTok with 9.49 million, Naver Plus Store with 8.07 million, Google Gemini with 7.79 million, Monimo with 7.51 million, Setlog with 7.33 million, TikTok Lite with 6.29 million, Spotify with 5.59 million, Digital Onnuri with 5.54 million, Block Blast with 5.41 million, and Daiso Mall with 5.28 million.
More Than Half of Search Service Users Turn to AI
Generative AI also showed notable growth in the search market. According to the "AI Search Trend Report 2026" released by OpenSurvey on the 13th, more than half of search service users over the past three months used generative AI, with ChatGPT at 58.1% and Gemini at 52.2%. Gemini in particular saw its usage experience surge by 23.3 percentage points compared with December last year.
Naver still held its position as the top primary search service used recently, but the usage rate of portal site searches such as Naver and Daum has been on a downward trend. Naver's primary-use response rate this month was 38.8%, down 7.2 percentage points over six months. Google (16.6%), YouTube (10.8%), Gemini (9.1%), and ChatGPT (8.7%) followed.
