“If you make it big, even 1 billion won a year is no big deal” ... They said everyone was becoming a YouTuber, but the top 10% are “scooping it all up”

[Financial News] The top 10% of corporations in industries related to one-person media, including YouTubers, accounted for 76% of total reported revenue, it was found.
According to Yonhap News on the 20th, data titled “Taxation Data on One-Person Media Creators, Including YouTube,” obtained from the National Tax Service by Jung Tae-ho, a Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker on the National Assembly’s Finance and Economy Planning Committee, showed that 2,024 corporations in industries related to one-person media filed corporate tax returns in 2025, reporting a total of 1.1134 trillion won in revenue.
Of these, 207 corporations (the top 10%) had annual revenue of at least 1 billion won and reported revenue of 842.7 billion won. By contrast, the remaining 1,817 corporations, each with revenue of less than 1 billion won, reported a combined 270.7 billion won, just 24% of the total.
The number of corporations with revenue of at least 1 billion won rose 9.4-fold, from 22 in 2021 to 207 last year. Over the same period, their reported revenue increased 13.3-fold, from 63.6 billion won to 842.7 billion won. Their share of total reported corporate revenue also rose from 60% to 76%.
The number of businesses related to one-person media is also growing rapidly. The number of active individual business operators rose 3.8-fold, from 9,633 in 2021 to 36,604 in 2025, while the number of active corporations increased 2.7-fold over the same period, from 1,167 to 3,182.
The National Tax Service does not directly receive income data from overseas video platforms, but tracks income using foreign-currency receipt data related to YouTube advertising revenue, Super Chat and Super Thanks, channel memberships, and other sources. The NTS says it compares and analyzes these data against value-added tax and income tax returns to verify filings by businesses suspected of failing to file or underreporting their income.
Jung said, “As the one-person media industry grows rapidly, its revenue structures and business models are also becoming more diverse,” and pointed out, “We need to further refine how we secure tax information and manage the tax base, taking into account the shift toward reported revenue being concentrated among some high-income corporations.”
He also stressed, “We need to reliably secure tax information from overseas platforms and strengthen the system for verifying tax returns to improve tax equity with businesses that file their returns faithfully.”
[email protected] Kim Su-yeon Reporter