The Best VPNs for South Korea

We used ExpressVPN’s Seoul server to access every popular Korean content platform from overseas, including Kakao TV, Coupang Play, MBC, SBS Korea, Wavve, TV Chosun, and Tving.

We used ExpressVPN’s browser extension and app to access sites like Wavve.

Thanks to ExpressVPN, we streamed a whole variety of Korean movies, dramas and animations available inside Korea.

We also accessed Korean exclusives in the local Netflix and Crunchyroll libraries, which was a nice bonus.

ExpressVPN continues to deliver very fast speeds while connected to its Korean servers, even from far away countries like the US and UK.

During our ExpressVPN speed tests, we registered an average long-distance download speed of 85Mbps.

This is one of the fastest recordings for a VPN connecting around the world, and resoundingly beats CyberGhost’s 81Mbps.

ExpressVPN passed all of our security checks, too. It uses the best available encryption to secure your connection (AES-256 & ChaCha20), and has even developed its own security protocol to do this: Lightway.

Lightway wasn’t just extremely fast, it also produced very little latency, which was exactly what we needed to smoothly play South Korean MMORPGs, like the Lineage games, and PUBG Mobile KR.

Out of all the VPNs we’ve reviewed, ExpressVPN offers the widest range of device compatibility.

You can use its service on pretty much every device, thanks to its easy-to-use custom apps for computers, smartphones, and streaming devices like Android TV and Apple TV.

Testing ExpressVPN’s Apple TV app.

We also tested ExpressVPN’s Chrome and Firefox extensions, which work just like the fully-encrypted applications. They’re useful to get a Korean IP address and unblock content directly from your web browser.

And being the only VPN service with a dedicated router app, you can use the VPN on multiple devices simultaneously, including gaming systems and Roku devices (which don’t support VPN apps).

What we love about ExpressVPN’s apps is that they all use a very similar interface, so switching from one to another is almost seamless. They also give you the option to change the language settings to Korean.

ExpressVPN is not cheap, and its best price deal of $4.99/mo over 28 months is still more expensive than many competing services.

Saying that, the level of streaming, speed, and security performance you’ll get in return is worth the price in our opinion.

On thing ExpressVPN should do is add more Korean server locations and IP ranges to future-proof against VPN blocking by streaming and gaming platforms.

While the exact number of Seoul IP addresses available with ExpressVPN is undisclosed, many of the ones we tested belong to the same IP range.

If you don’t want to subscribe just yet, you have the option to trial ExpressVPN for 7 days via the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

And once your trial has ended, you can continue enjoying the service risk-free by taking advantage of its 30-day refund policy.

In our streaming tests, CyberGhost successfully accessed 85% of Korea-only content platforms, including:

• Kakao TV
• MBC
• SBS
• Wavve
• TV Chosun
• Tving

Despite these strong geo-unblocking results, CyberGhost still can’t access Netflix Korea. You should stick with ExpressVPN if you want to watch Korean Netflix.

While CyberGhost has native apps for all popular devices, it doesn’t match ExpressVPN’s level of compatibility in several areas.

Firstly, CyberGhost’s browsers extensions are basic and haven’t been updated in a long time, with no access to Korean servers.

Secondly, the lack of a router app means that to use CyberGhost on devices like Xbox or PlayStation you’ll have to manually install it on your home router; a fiddly and time-consuming process.

CyberGhost has the most South Korean servers of any VPN, with 24 servers in Seoul.

CyberGhost has servers in Seoul.

Connecting into South Korea from abroad, CyberGhost delivered an average download speed of 81Mbps.

It’s considerably below ExpressVPN’s speed performance, but it’s still good enough to stream Korean content buffer-free from as far away as North America or Europe.

You can’t use CyberGhost for free indefinitely like TunnelBear, but you can take advantage of a range of free trials. The options available include:

• 1-day free trial on macOS and Windows devices
• 3-day free trial on Android
• 7-day free trial on iOS

Alongside its free trials, CyberGhost offers one of the longest refund guarantees of any VPN: 45 days.

TunnelBear has a free VPN server in Seoul which allows you to access the Korean internet for free.

The big drawback is that usage is heavily restricted by a 2GB monthly data cap.

This will limit your streaming time to roughly 1 hour per month at Full HD resolution. For light web browsing, you should be able to get around 24 hours.

TunnelBear Free’s speeds, especially those of the free Korean server are surprisingly fast. Our tests show that it’s actually faster than the paid version, with an average download speed of 85Mbps.

This represents only 15% slower than our standard internet connection, despite thousands of miles of distance between our physical location and Seoul.

TunnelBear’s free app unblocked 57% of the streaming services we tested it with, including Kakao TV, TV Chosun, and SBS Korea. Very impressive for a free service.

Unfortunately, Netflix and Wavve detected TunnelBear’s VPN connection and blocked it.

Unlike with CyberGhost, TunnelBear’s free browser extension has a Korean server and makes for an even quicker way to get a Korean IP address.

TunnelBear’s free app is identical to the paid one, with the exception of the data cap.

You’ll therefore get access to the same server network, including free VPN servers in Japan, and the same level of security, with best-in-class AES-256 cipher.

The apps have a fun theme and are well-designed, but are only available on the most popular desktop and mobile devices i.e. Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.

There are no other native apps and there is no way to manually set up the VPN on your router. For device compatibility and ease-of-use, both ExpressVPN and CyberGhost are a lot better.

Not to mention TunnelBear’s disappointing customer support. For any sort of assistance or answers, you have to be a paid subscriber and, even then, live chat is not available.