Korean TikTok users up despite data leakage worries

Yonhap, Philippine News Agency

TikTok launched its smaller version, TikTok Lite, in Korea in late 2023 amid concerns over possible user data leaks to China and the app’s addiction risks. (File Photo: Kon Karampelas/Unsplash)

SEOUL – South Korean users of the popular short-video app TikTok are on the rise despite concerns over possible data leakage, an industry data tracker said Wednesday.

Data from tracker IGAworks showed that South Korea’s monthly active users (MAU) of TikTok and TikTok Lite, owned by China-based ByteDance, reached 4.89 million and 4.79 million, respectively.

TikTok Lite is a faster version of TikTok, designed for users who have less than 3 gigabytes of random access memory (RAM) or limited data.

The combined MAU of TikTok and TikTok Lite stood at 9.69 million, exceeding the 8.61 million monthly users held by Meta Platforms’ social media app Facebook here in January, the data showed.

TikTok launched its smaller version, TikTok Lite, in Korea in late 2023 amid concerns over possible user data leaks to China and the app’s addiction risks.

Most recently, TikTok parent ByteDance turned out to have shared Korean user data sent by the DeepSeek chatbot, developed by a China-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup.

South Korea temporarily suspended new downloads of DeepSeek in the country over concerns about its data collection practices. (Yonhap)