Owner Rakuten Inc.
(Viki) Alexa rank 4,688 (August 2015) Launched 1998 | Website www.soompi.com Registration Optional | |
Available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Thai | ||
Soompi is an English-language website providing coverage of Korean pop culture. It has one of the largest international Internet community for K-pop, mostly concentrated in news and forums. With more than 22 million fans across all platforms, Soompi offers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Thai services to cater to people from non-English speaking countries.
Since its establishment in the late 1990s, Soompi has grown into an authoritative source for Korean popular culture, and is one of the longest-running, and most frequently visited websites providing coverage of K-pop music.
At first, its visitors were mostly Koreans residing in foreign nations, with over 1.2 million people visiting the site. Currently, however, the majority of its members are non-Koreans in the United States, Canada, Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia, among others.
History
Soompi was founded in 1998 by Korean American web developer Susan Kang; the site quickly gained traction with fans throughout the world. In February 2011, Soompi was acquired by Enswers, Inc., a Seoul-based IT venture company specializing in video search technology, and operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of it.
Soompi launched Soompi France in 2011 and Soompi Spanish in 2012, and it works closely with major Korean entertainment agencies such as JYP Entertainment, S.M. Entertainment, and YG Entertainment.
Viki acquired Soompi on August 19, 2015.