The survey was conducted through interviews between July 16 and Oct. 14 last year. Anybody who accessed the Internet in the recent one month was classified as a user in the poll.

The respondents said they usually log on to the Internet for shopping, social media services and online banking.

By age, the Internet usage rate reached 100 percent for teens and those in their 20s, followed by 99.8 percent for those in their 30s and 99.4 percent for those in their 40s.

People in their 50s registered a usage rate of 94.9 percent, while more than 1 in 2 people older than 60 used the Internet, the poll showed. The Internet usage rate for people aged 60 and older rose by the steepest 14.9 percentage points to 51.4 percent, it found.

By gender, 91 percent of men used it, compared with 85.6 percent of women.

South Koreans used the Internet for an average of 14.3 hours a week, up 0.6 hour from a year earlier, with 98.9 percent getting on the net more than once per week.

The poll found 92.5 percent of the users older than 6 used instant messaging services, with 99.2 percent favoring Kakao Talk, followed by Facebook and Line.

The usage rates for various Internet services posted slight gains, with those for instant messaging, social media, Internet shopping, Internet banking and cloud service rising to 92.5 percent, 65.2 percent, 57.4 percent, 57.5 percent and 25.3 percent, respectively, according to the survey. They used Internet shopping two to three times and spent 86,865 won ($74) on average a month.

In terms of households, South Korea's Internet usage rate came in at 99.2 percent, the highest among the 175 member states of the International Telecommunication Union. (Yonhap)