Southeast Asia is reading less about Korean language and craft — and less about Japan's too
Southeast Asia reads less about Korea than it did a year ago. Is that true of everything Korea makes, or does it depend on what?
Of the three genres we measured, only one survived the check we run before publishing a median. In that one — language, writing, dress and martial art — Korean articles fell 25.5% and the Japanese articles beside them fell 28.2%. Both fell. That points away from Korea, not at it.
The genre we can report
Reads per million reads of each Wikipedia, summed across Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia. The window is 2024-07 through 2026-06, 24 months, split 12 against 12 — the first twelve months against the last twelve.
| Article | First 12 months | Last 12 months | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Korean language | 168.3 | 95.4 | −43.3% |
| Hangul | 67.1 | 62.7 | −6.5% |
| Hanbok | 40.7 | 30.8 | −24.4% |
| Taekwondo | 165.9 | 121.8 | −26.6% |
| Control — the same kind of article about Japan | |||
| Japanese language | 296 | 236.5 | −20.1% |
| Kana | 19.9 | 13 | −34.8% |
| Manga | 113.9 | 112.7 | −1.1% |
| Kimono | 49.7 | 35.7 | −28.2% |
| Karate | 87.3 | 56.1 | −35.7% |
The Japanese articles are here as a control, not as a competitor. If they had held steady while the Korean ones fell, the fall would be about Korea. They did not. Both sides of the table are down by roughly the same amount, which means what moved is the appetite for this kind of article — the reference kind, the kind you open to learn what something is.
The two we could not use
We measured three genres. Two of them produced numbers that look like a finding and are not one. Here they are anyway, because leaving them out would turn this page into a claim it cannot support.
| Genre | Korea | Japan (control) | Why we cannot use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Music | −10.8% (4 articles) | +14.5% (3 articles) | Removing one article moves the Korea and Japan figure by more than half its own size |
| Screen | −4.3% (4 articles) | +22.9% (4 articles) | Removing one article moves the Korea and Japan figure by more than half its own size |
⚠ Read those two rows as unmeasured, not as a result. Korean music at −10.8% against Japanese music at +14.5% is the kind of gap that would make a headline. It rests on four articles and three, and taking one out of either moves the answer far enough to reverse it. We are not going to print it as though it held.
How we decided what we could use
Each genre here holds three to five articles, so every figure on this page is the median of a handful. Before publishing any median we remove one observation, recompute, and repeat for each — a jackknife. If that moves the answer by more than half its own size, we do not report it.
⚠ The check runs in one direction only. A jackknife understates how much a median varies and is not consistent for the median, so a swing it finds is real while a swing it misses may simply be one it cannot see. Language and craft passing the check is not proof that its figure is solid — it is the absence of one specific way of being fragile. The method and its limits are here.
What this page cannot tell you
Not why. A control can remove an explanation — if Japanese articles of the same kind fell too, the fall is not about Korea — but it does not supply the one that replaces it.
Not two of the three genres. Music and Screen have too few articles for their medians to survive removing one, so this page reports that it cannot use them rather than quietly leaving them out.
Not interest, and not learning. This counts people opening an encyclopaedia article.
⚠ The three genres are our own grouping, not the encyclopaedia's. The article lists are published here so the same reads can be grouped a different way. Company articles sit with music because someone looking up HYBE is closer to someone looking up a song than to someone looking up a film.
Reads — Wikimedia Pageviews API, human traffic only, monthly. The most recent month is dropped because Wikimedia's monthly totals can still be filling when we fetch.
Card set — free to share
Five cards, 1080×1350. Every figure on them is in the table on this page. Take them.
Fourteen seconds, with sound
A man and a woman read out the two medians side by side — the Korean articles and the Japanese ones beside them — and say plainly that both fell. Free to repost with the address on it.
What we wrote from this data
- Fewer people are looking up what hangul is. The same is true of kana
Reads of Korean language, hangul, hanbok and taekwondo fell 25.5% across four Southeast Asian Wikipedias in a year. The Japanese equivalents fell 28.2%. Two other genres we measured could not be used at all, and we say why.
16 August 2026