Netflix Korea scraps cheapest membership option

Netflix’s cheapest ad-free basic membership with a 9,500 won ($7.20) price tag is no longer available in Korea for new users.

The Netflix logo displayed on a large digital display behind a Korean flag in Seoul on Oct. 7, 2021. [AFP/YONHAP]

Netflix’s cheapest ad-free basic membership with a 9,500 won ($7.20) price tag is no longer available in Korea for new users.

“New and rejoining users can no longer subscribe to the ad-free basic membership,” Netflix Korea said on Tuesday.

The cheapest remaining option for joining users is the standard membership which costs 13,500 won a month. That is a 42 percent price increase, or 4,000 won higher than the previous ad-free option.

Current users to the ad-free tier can continue to use it unless they decide to cancel the account.

Netflix has been pushing forward with its new ad-supported plan globally since November 2022 and in turn, removing ad-free basic memberships in countries such as the United States, Britain, Canada, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia and Japan.

The global streaming giant’s cheapest ad-free tier is now removed from all 12 countries which had implemented an ad-supported plan, including France. Korea and France were the two remaining countries where both subscription plans — the cheapest basic tier without ads and ad-supported plan — were offered.

Netflix membership in Korea now consists of three plans — ad-supported standard membership with a monthly payment of 5,500 won, an ad-free standard membership for 13,500 won and premium membership for 17,000 won.

Netflix’s membership price hike is one among a string of price bumps from various streaming platforms.

YouTube announced on Sunday that it will raise its premium package price by 42.6 percent to 14,900 won.

It was YouTube’s first price hike since September 2020, when monthly fees were raised from 8,690 won to 10,450 won.

In September, Disney+ also upped its standard membership fee by 40.4 percent to 13,900 won.

Local streaming platform Tving also raised its subscription fees for newly joining users from this month, a 20.3 percent hike for the basic membership fee to 9,500 won, a 23.9 percent increase for standard membership to 13,500 won and a 22.3 percent surge for premium membership to 13,900 won.

Tving is also following the lead of Netflix to implement an ad-supported plan that costs 5,500 won monthly from the first quarter of next year.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]