What is a Naver Account?
A Naver Account is the key to unlocking free access to Naver’s features and services. As South Korea’s equivalent to Google, Naver is not only Korea’s most popular search engine, but it’s a mix of all kinds of different useful services like email, Drive, Maps, News, Shopping, Blogs and many others you probably haven’t heard of yet.
Follow these simple steps to get your free Naver account and keep reading for 11 best ways to take full advantage of it.
How to Create a Naver Account
You can create a Naver account both on a pc or desktop and mobile smartphone or tablet using the same process. All you need is a valid phone number, either from Korea or from overseas. Have your phone close to you and let’s get started!
STEP 1 – Open Naver in your browser or the Naver App on mobile (Play Store/App Store)
STEP 2 – Click the “Sign Up” Button
STEP 3 – Check to Agree to the Terms and Conditions
If you don’t want to share your user location or receive promotional information, you can tick just the first two required items and click Confirm.
STEP 4 – Fill out the form
Create a username & password and then fill in the other necessary personal information. You don’t need to give a recovery email as it’s not required.
STEP 5 – Verify your phone number and hit “Sign Up”
You can choose your country code from the tiny arrow, then put in your phone number and click “Send Code”. You will receive a text message with a verification code, which you then have to input in the “Enter verification code” box. Once your code has been entered and verified, you can hit “Sign Up”.
…and you’re done. Log in and enjoy the whole Naver experience!
11 Ways to Use a Naver Account
Naver Keep
The Naver main page and the Naver App are like the main hubs of the Naver universe. This is where you search for things, find news and explore the Korean online realm. You can use all of these things even without a Naver account, but the advantage of signing up for one is that, you can use the saving, bookmarking and organizing feature. Once you are logged in, you can easily use Keep to save your favorite pages, access and organize them by tags and categories at any time from your mobile or PC.
Naver Mail (네이버 메일)
Naver Mail is an email service that offers all Naver accounts 5GB of storage for emails and attachments. You essentially get a new email address that you can use for all kinds of purposes in Korea, and you can even connect your Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook and other addresses in order to see all your emails in one place.
You can use Naver Mail through the mobile app (Play Store/App Store).
Naver Drive | MyBOX
Naver MyBOX is the company’s cloud storage platform. With a Naver Account, you get a generous 30 GB of storage to use freely (compared to the 15GB in Google Drive), with the possibility to extend up to 80GB in exchange for a premium. You can use MyBOX to store and share documents, images, videos and any other important files you have.
Although MyBOX is fully in Korean, you can get around it by right-clicking the page and choosing “Translate to English”, if you are using the Chrome browser. It’s a piece of cake from there on. The app version is available in both Play Store and App Store.
Naver Office (네이버 오피스)
Through Naver Office, a Naver account will grant you access to the whole Office Suite online. There, you can work with all kinds of files and documents just like you would in Google Docs (documents, sheets, slides, forms) and here comes the best part: you can especially open AND edit the famous headache-inducing .hwp files! Isn’t that great news?
The only downside is that Naver Office is fully in Korean and the Google Chrome page translation function doesn’t seem to work on it, but it’s quite intuitive and easy to use if you can read a bit of Hangul. Check out the images below for a little guidance.
Naver Booking (네이버 예약)
Many places in Korea require reservations in advance, from local hair salons to art exhibitions. This has become the norm even for the places with no entrance fee as a safety measure during COVID-19 times.
With a Naver account and Naver Booking, you not only make reservations, but you can also keep track of them easily and conveniently. After logging in, you can see all of your bookings in one place, rather than having to check each booking individually by code, making the process more efficient and comfortable. You can also leave reviews for the places you visited. If you want to know how to make reservations and appointments in Korea, visit our guide on how to easily make reservations and appointments.
Naver Map (네이버 지도)
Although you can use the Naver Map App (Play Store/App Store) without a Naver account, logging in will save you lots of time by allowing you to save all your favorite places in various categories. You can save your home address, your school, your office and other places you visit frequently, and also build a bucket list of restaurants, cafes and places you would like to visit. You can also customize the categories whichever way you want to.
Naver Webtoon (네이버 웹툰)
Save all your favorite webtoons and keep the reading progress saved by logging in with your Naver account. If you are a creator, you can even upload your own webtoon! The bad news is that this service is not available in English, but you can use it as a fun way to learn and practice Korean.
For Webtoons in English, check out the Naver WEBTOON website. If you don’t know where to start, visit our article on 15 Korean webtoons everyone should read for our Webtoon recommendations!
Naver Dictionary (네이버 사전) – WordBook Feature
Naver Dictionary (Play Store/App Store), especially the English one, is very popular amongst foreigners learning Korean. The explanations and examples that this dictionary provides are always useful, but if you are serious about learning the Korean words you find through it, you might want to log in with your Naver account and start using WorkBook. This feature in Naver Dictionary allows you to save the unknown Korean words you find into customizable lists and categories, and it provides features such as making notes on the word or marking it as memorized. It will for sure come in handy to those of you learning Korean!
Naver Blog (네이버 블로그)
Keep records of important moments in your life or write down your thoughts whenever you feel like it in your Naver Blog. Some people write reviews, some describe experiences, some use it as a diary, so the possibilities are endless. The platform allows you to share your posts with the whole world, but it also offers an “Add a neighbor” (“이웃추가”) feature you can use to follow the content of your favorite Naver blogs.
Naver Cafe (네이버 카페)
Naver Cafes are online hubs for various communities of people with similar interests, like Facebook Groups or the old-fashioned forums. Here, you’ll find fan cafes for K-Pop Stars or other celebrities, as well as second-hand sale cafes, sports groups cafes, game community cafes and many others.
Depending on the cafe, you’ll have to first answer some questions, usually in Korean. Some cafes might also require your authentication with a valid, government-issued ID card, whether Korean or foreign.
To find more online communities for foreigners in Korea, check out our article on top online communities for expats in Korea.
Naver Pay (네이버페이)
Naver Pay is a payment system especially useful for Naver’s shopping platform (Naver Shopping), where authorized sellers put their products up for sale. To set up Naver Pay, you need to connect a valid Korean bank account to your Naver account, then you’re ready to shop!
Check out our article on how to verify your naver account and set up naver pay for foreigners to set up your account now!
How to Delete a Naver Account
If you decide you have no need for your Naver account anymore, you can easily delete it from either your desktop or mobile.
* Disclaimer: Once the Naver account is deleted, you permanently lose your account profile, as well as subscriptions, saved pages and files on all other Naver services (Mail, MyBOX, Keep, Blog etc.). The only things that remain despite the deletion are comments made on any Naver platform, so make sure you check and delete any unwanted comments before you delete your account.
STEP 1 – Open Naver in your browser or the Naver App on mobile and Log In
STEP 2 – Open your Account Profile page (내정보)
STEP 3 – Scroll down and click on the “Delete” button
STEP 4 – Read through, tick the box and click Next (mobile)/Confirm (desktop)
Let us know in the comments if you found this article useful! What other ways of using a Naver account do you know?