Meta's AI agent app Muse is drawing global attention, and South Korean users are finding ways around its unavailability at home — even though the app has yet to officially launch in the country.
The buzz is adding pressure on Naver and Kakao, the two domestic platform giants competing for dominance in the personal AI market.
According to the IT industry, workaround sign-up methods for Muse have been circulating on SNS since late last month. Users are creating overseas access environments through virtual private networks or remote browsers to get around the regional restriction.
Muse is Meta's personal AI assistant app. Beyond answering user questions, its core function is to handle tasks on the user's behalf — managing schedules, searching for information and more.
The response since launch has been strong. After its US debut earlier this month, Muse topped Apple's App Store free download chart, overtaking OpenAI's ChatGPT.
The excitement has fed through to Meta's share price. From around $560 in early September, the stock climbed to about $727 on Thursday (local time) — a gain of roughly 30% in a single month.
Despite Muse remaining unavailable in South Korea, interest among domestic users has surged as workaround methods spread rapidly.
A review of Google Trends data for South Korea from Sept. 1 to Thursday showed that "Muse Korea" ranked second among the top rising search terms related to "Meta Muse." The search interest score for "Muse VPN" hovered near zero until mid-September before soaring to its maximum of 100 on Sept. 28.
The search interest score represents the volume of Google searches for a given term over a specific period on a scale of 1 to 100, with higher numbers indicating greater search frequency.
Archive links collecting Muse use cases are also being shared across SNS, covering everything from workaround access methods to practical applications in work and daily life — a sign that hands-on experience with the app is growing among Korean users.
![Meta [Reuters]](https://wimg.heraldcorp.com/news/cms/2026/10/05/news-p.v1.20260519.3e93d172300a416fad468f6394c3270b_P1.jpg)
The industry expects Muse to launch in South Korea before long. Stefano Prata, Meta's vice president of privacy policy, said at a Global AI Privacy Forum held last month that he hoped Muse would launch in South Korea soon, adding that he would return to headquarters and work to raise the priority of a Korean release.
That prospect weighs on Naver and Kakao, both of which have set AI agent advancement as a goal for this year.
Both companies are focused on building ecosystems in which users turn to their own services as the first entry point for AI agents. Naver is rapidly integrating AI agents into its search, shopping and maps functions. Kakao is also expanding AI services centered on KakaoTalk, including Kanana in KakaoTalk and ChatGPT for KakaoTalk.
Naver and Kakao have already moved to block external AI agents from accessing their platforms in response to the threat.
However, the industry sees simply blocking data access as insufficient. The concern is that if Korean users begin using the Muse app or web service in earnest, Meta could seize the "first AI agent" entry point that Naver and Kakao have been working to secure.
"Separate from the question of whether Naver and Kakao hand over their data to Muse, Muse's very existence is a threat," one industry official said. "Muse would take over the entry point for AI agents itself, acting as the gateway that decides what services users get."
"Ultimately, the power to decide which services to use could shift to AI agent apps and web services like Muse," the official added.
chami@heraldcorp.com
