South Korea’s content industry posted 161 trillion won in revenue last year, with growth led by music, knowledge information, comics and animation.
According to the “2025 Q4 and Annual Content Industry Trends Analysis Report” published on the 30th by the Korea Creative Content Agency, 2025 annual revenue for the domestic content industry rose 2.6% from a year earlier to 161.4839 trillion won.
By genre, music grew 15.8%, knowledge information 7.8%, comics 7.4% and animation 6.8%, the report said.
The report analyzed 11 content genres, combining business surveys, management data from listed companies and basic industry statistics to outline changes in revenue, exports and employment.
Exports in 2025 climbed 5.9% from the previous year to $14.90582 billion. Music (32.4%), film (19.9%) and character content (12.8%) led the increase.
The music sector recorded strong growth on expanded overseas performances and wider global activity by K-pop artists. Film exports benefited from strong results for highly anticipated releases, while character content gained from rising overseas demand for Korean characters. By contrast, content solutions (down 10.3%), animation (down 7.6%) and publishing (down 3.1%) declined amid slower conditions in some overseas markets.
Content companies also reported broad use of generative artificial intelligence. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the adoption rate was 32.1%, meaning about one in three companies used the technology. Among 810 adopters, 66.2% introduced it in some departments, while 33.8% deployed it companywide.
By sector, adoption was highest in games (70.0%), followed by animation (51.6%), advertising (40.9%), knowledge information (33.7%), and broadcasting and video (31.9%). The most common use was content production (62.7%), followed by business planning (43.7%) and content creation (32.8%). Among companies that had not adopted generative AI, 16.6% said they plan to do so, suggesting further expansion.
The report also covers genre-by-genre trends, listed-company performance, business sentiment among content firms and the broader macroeconomic environment. It is available on the agency’s website.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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