If we talk about auction websites we usually think of Ebay, but not in Korea. The Koreans experience the fierce competition between two auction portals, but recently, something changed.

Gmarket was founded in 2000 by Young Bae Ku, and had a revenue of 188 million dollar in 2007.The second auction site is simply called Auction.co.kr and was founded in 1998, however they got bought by US based Ebay in 2001. 

Until now, both auction portals have been competing side by side, but there has been a dramatic change recently. If we compare both sites with Alexa, we see a major decrease from half april, accelerating half may. The impact was biggest for Auction, but gmarket has stagnated as well, the decrease could be related to a major mistake made by Auction.co.kr, discovered on April 16th.

April 16th was the day that Auction.co.kr announched that 60% of the user data (over 10 million people), had been hacked. The user date included social numbers and credit card information, and raised a huge amount of questions by government, industry partners and consumers. What the results will be on a long term remains a question for now, but we see a remarkable rise of stock for competitor Gmarket on the stock market, due to the fault of Auction.co.kr.

For now, Korean operated auction portal Gmarket seems to be best of, they experienced a increase in stock-price, and second that the majority of auction users lost trust in Auction.co.kr.

Reuters (2008)

Annual report Gmarket (2007)

Ebay pressrelease (2001)

web 2.0 Asia

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