The Korea Press Foundation said in its Korea Press Yearbook 2016 that only 14.3 percent of respondents to its annual survey said they subscribe to printed newspapers at home. This is about one fifth of the 69.3 percent that answered positively to the same question in 1996.

The book showed that the country‘s newspaper-reading population has also declined sharply.

Only 20.9 percent answered “yes” when asked if they had read printed newspapers in the past week, down 4.5 percentage points from 25.4 percent in 2015. The 20.9 percent portion is about one fourth of the share in 1996.

The rate has been on a sharp decline from 81.4 percent in 2000 to 76 percent in 2004, 68.8 percent in 2006 and 58.5 percent in 2008, 52.6 percent in 2010, 40.9 percent in 2012 and to 30.7 percent in 2014.