In South Korea, the internet isn't just fast—it's blazingly fast. By 2024, the country clocked in with an average mobile download speed of 202.61 Mbps, ranking third in the world, just behind the UAE and Singapore. That's fast enough to download an HD movie while you're waiting for your subway train.
And it didn't stop there. By early 2025, speeds kept climbing: mobile networks hit a median of 148.34 Mbps, while fixed broadband surged to 175.18 Mbps—a jump of more than 40% in a single year. More recent estimates even put mobile at 205 Mbps and fixed broadband near 200 Mbps, leaving many developed nations in the dust.
What does that mean in everyday life? Whether it's streaming, gaming, or training massive AI models, South Koreans enjoy one of the smoothest digital experiences on the planet. In mid 1990, the Korean government launched the "KII (Korea Information Infrastructure)” project, aiming to build a nationwide broadband backbone. In 1998, Commercial broadband internet service (xDSL, cable) became widely available. By 2000, South Korea became the first country in the world where broadband internet users exceeded dial-up users. This led to a huge surge of PC-bang, i.e., internet cafe. The number of PC-bang reached tens of thousands nationwide by early 2000, which fueled the rise of e-Sports in Korea.
Perhaps this explains why the country also happens to dominate the world of e-Sports, from Starcraft to League of Legends (LOL). With speeds like these, lag isn't an excuse—it's practically a national superpower.