Forty percent of Korean investors trade online

By CNN's Kristie Lu Stout

SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- Nearly 40 percent of Korean investors trade shares on the Net, new data has revealed.

In a study by Korea's DigitalRep, 22.9 percent of respondents said they had invested in the stock market, of which 38.9 percent had traded shares through the Internet.

Multiple reports have confirmed that South Koreans are the most active and sophisticated Internet users in the world -- a merit earned partly by the abundant and readily available broadband access in the country.

Korean Net users were found to be more experienced at stock trading than offline investors, with 26.2 percent frequently trading stocks.

Only 18.4 percent of non-Internet users are revealed by the DigitalRep study as frequent stock traders.

A recent report by ACNielsen's Internet measurement division, eRatings, shows that Koreans access the most number of Web pages per month, while spending the least amount of time on each page -- merely 28 seconds before clicking on.

Abundant broadband

Analysts say such rampant usage can be attributed to Korea's high speed broadband networks.

Broadband Internet connections offer faster access to Internet services at a flat monthly fee. South Korea has the highest take-up of broadband in the world, according to an April OECD report.

The country has 10 connections per 100 people, in contrast to four in Canada and three in the U.S..

Another survey by Internet measurement firm NetValue also confirms South Korea's network speed superiority.

Close to 60 percent of all Korean households access the Internet through broadband connections, NetValue reported.

There are 20.9 million Internet users in South Korea as of end-March, according to official estimates.