WebProNews

YouTube's recent entry into the Korean market has failed to have a strong impact there.

The number of daily visitors to YouTube English and YouTube Korean sites reached 382,000 on January 23, the day it launched according to Rankey. Com, an online traffic-monitoring firm. The numbers began to dwindle the following day and dropped to 115,000 on January 31.

YouTube competitor Pandora TV the No. 1 local video-sharing site in Korea, received an average of 997,000 daily visitors during the same period. Other video sharing sites such as Mncast, Mgoon and Gom TV had two to five times more visitors than YouTube.

A YouTube spokesperson said it was too early to call the Korean launch a failure. "Our own analysis shows a big increase in the traffic, and we have favorable responses from our partner sites as well," the spokesperson said, according to The Korea Times. "Koreans are not well aware of us yet, so we are planning to launch promotion campaigns in March."

Korean media and local Internet companies have been critical of the Korean government for subsidizing Google and YouTube and not investing in local technology so Korean companies could expand abroad.