Hectomedia, a Hecto Group affiliate, is introducing new Chinese and Portuguese services for its AI-based multilingual K-culture service K-snapp (k-snapp.com) as it seeks to expand global users. With the expansion, K-snapp has widened its service scope into a global K-culture platform spanning major languages used by more than 3 billion people worldwide.

K-snapp is a platform that provides K-culture news to global fans in multiple languages using AI-based content curation technology. It analyses entertainment news and K-star social media data with AI to select issues that draw high interest from global fandoms. It applies AI automation across the entire process of translation, editing and distribution. It aims to be a global fandom platform that enables quick access to K-culture news without language barriers and supports communication.

K-snapp currently offers services in Korean, English, Spanish and Japanese, and added Chinese (simplified and traditional) and Portuguese through the latest revamp. Chinese has the largest number of users in the world, and Portuguese is a global language widely used across South America, Europe and Africa, centred on Brazil. The service expansion is expected to further improve platform accessibility for K-culture fans in Asia and South America.

The Korea Foundation (KF) said a survey found about 225 million Korean Wave fans are active across 119 countries worldwide. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Creative Content Agency said Korea’s content exports amount to about $13.2 billion (about 17 trillion won). South America, including Brazil and Mexico, is emerging as a new core market for the Korean Wave as K-pop streaming rises rapidly.

K-snapp is also seeing global user inflows spread quickly even though it remains in an early stage of service.

The company said February unique visitors rose 443.1 percent from December last year, recording strong growth. The recent country share of visitors was Japan, South Korea, the United States and South America, and it was analysed that K-culture fans’ platform use is increasing across diverse regions.

K-snapp plans to expand its content categories into K-lifestyle fields such as beauty and food to introduce Korean Wave content more broadly to global users.

Hectomedia CEO Sung-hyun Kim (김성현) said K-snapp is a platform that helps fans worldwide access K-content without language barriers based on AI, as global interest in K-culture rises rapidly. He said the company will continue expanding services in various languages and grow into a global K-culture platform.