[fivre]

that has nothing to do with staffing. Korea has a uniquely hostile ISP market where service providers want to charge foreign services ridiculous amounts (versus peering agreements in most markets) for access to Korean consumer networks

[seoulmetro]

Korea has a philosophy of local conglomerates first and foreign companies only existing if they prop the local conglomerate up.

It's a very good strategy as the Korean market is lucrative and the Korean companies have opportunities to spread worldwide. (they just suck at it)

Twitch got sent a foreigner-tax and didn't pay it, that's all. Korea already has a thriving version of Twitch called AfreecaTV. (edit: Oh it's not that thriving on their international site, maybe Korean site is better.)

[TMWNN]

>Korea has a philosophy of local conglomerates first and foreign companies only existing if they prop the local conglomerate up.

I don't doubt that there is some degree of domestic favoratism—it would be surprising if there weren't any—but Korea was for years the last bastion of Internet Explorer because of government requirements, as opposed to Chrome, Firefox, or some special Korea-reskinned Chromium. iPhone has lots of market share despite Samsung.[1] Relevant to this discussion, Korean players going back to Starcraft a quarter century ago were and are well known for competing in and livestreaming mostly non Korean-developed videogames.

[1] Yes, I know about Apple being a Samsung customer

[johannes1234321]

> (they just suck at it)

That's the counter-argument.

As they don't have competition from global products, they can deliver worse products and don't have the need to improve.

This can be seen in many markets with import restrictions/tarifs.