If you take a bunch of ripped, shirtless male K-pop idols in boxing gloves and run them around in the ring until they’re sweating, what do you get? For Netflix: Another global hit.
Streamer’s K-Drama bloodshedNow in its second season, it is currently breaking its global viewing charts. Season 2 received 7.4 million views last week, making it the most watched non-English TV show worldwide on the service, and the third most popular show overall.
bloodshed There is no exception for Netflix. Last week, three of the 10 most watched non-English language shows on the service were Korean. The week before that, it was four out of 10, and the week before that, it was three. And Netflix’s three most-watched TV show seasons of all time, in any language? All Korean.
Those three seasons are Season 1-3 squid game. The life-or-death competition drama broke viewership records when it debuted in 2021, with 1.65 billion hours watched in its first four weeks. As Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos claimed in 2022, “It was probably the greatest show in the history of television.” squid game The viewing figure has exceeded 4.5 billion hours.
but here’s the thing squid game: Despite its unmatched success, it has only accounted for a small percentage of the overall viewing of Korean content on Netflix, with audiences around the world embracing the country’s story wholeheartedly. From 2023 to 2025, Netflix subscribers will stream more than 51 billion hours of Korean movies and TV shows, according to Netflix data I recently analyzed for a new special low pass Report.
From small points of interest to a global phenomenon
Netflix’s success with Korean dramas did not come out of thin air, as Sarandos himself admitted in 2021. “It’s not like we had to go and teach someone in South Korea how to make great content,” he told Netflix investors that year. “It’s an incredible market for that. And there’s always been a curiosity around the world. The K-drama market has always had a little bit of room for success everywhere.”
This also includes the United States, where services like Drama Fever, Viki, and KDrama have long tried to bring Korean storytelling to Western audiences. squid game Became a huge success for Netflix. DramaFever executives in particular quickly realized that there was an untapped audience for Korean content in the United States. “We [catered] Primarily for Midwestern middle-aged women, but also Latino teens,” says DramaFever co-founder Hyun Park.
DramaFever and other niche services specializing in Korean entertainment also benefited from Hollywood’s shortcomings: as major studios bet on big franchises with big budgets and recognizable stars, Korean shows and movies were largely ignored. This reduced licensing costs and made it possible for these services to purchase foreign rights to Korean TV shows and movies at cheaper prices.
However, the dramafever ultimately wore off too quickly. The service reportedly racked up more than 400,000 paying subscribers — not enough for Warner Bros., which shut down DramaFever in 2018, two years after its acquisition from SoftBank.
One of the challenges of DramaFever was that it tried to build an audience for a show that was unfamiliar from the beginning. Netflix, on the other hand, has a built-in audience, a huge dubbing operation, and recommendation algorithms that help viewers around the world find titles they might like — whether it’s action-packed, dystopian shows. squid gamelike a heart-touching drama extraordinary lawyer wooOr like a high school zombie thriller we are all dead.
Aside from big budgets and splashy productions, what unites many of these shows and movies are big, emotionally charged stories based around friendship, love, and loss. At the same time, squid game Like a cop show, late stage takes on capitalism Stranger Explores the impotence and thriller of the separation of state powers Glory Demands accountability for bullying and emotional abuse – all things that speak to a universal desire to right wrongs.
In addition to audiences and algorithms, Netflix also has deep pockets, and is willing to spend big on things that work, even if they run counter to traditional Hollywood ideas about the importance of Western stars and directors. Netflix committed to investing $500 million in Korean content in 2021. By 2023, Netflix promised to spend an additional $2.5 billion on Korean films and TV shows. More investment may come early this year.
Will all this success ruin K-dramas?
Netflix’s Korea strategy also benefited from some other trends: The COVID-19 pandemic not only fueled the shift to streaming, but also prompted Hollywood studios to pause production on many popular shows — and with it, audiences became eager to discover something new.
All this coincided with the growing interest in K-beauty and K-pop, which contributed to a virtuous cycle: many Korean pop stars shine as actors, and their music literally becomes the inspiration for new movies and TV shows. case in point: kpop demon hunterWhich is now the most streamed film ever on Netflix. And yes, it’s made in America, but its story will get more people interested in Korean entertainment.
The K-drama streaming boom has not been without its drawbacks. Some critics fear that the global success of Korean dramas will lead the country’s film industry to tone down its products, and for example, give up exploring issues related to class inequalities, which many of today’s K-dramas touch on. Jinyoung Choi, an assistant professor at Georgetown University, put it this way in an interview last month:
“When the spotlight gets so bright, the production logic can change: bigger budgets, tighter schedules, higher expectations, more stakeholders. And when the risk starts to seem costly, projects can gravitate toward what’s already proven — familiar beats, familiar casting, familiar pacing. The worry you hear is whether you end up with a handful of reliable templates, while having a harder time creating weirder, faster, less algorithm-friendly stories.”
There are also concerns that the global K-drama boom could shift the focus of Korea’s entertainment industry toward international audiences to compensate for the struggling local market. South Korean box office sales are expected to decline 16 percent in the first 11 months of 2025. And while theaters in many European markets have bounced back from the pandemic, and in the US last year reached 80 percent of their 2019 totals, Korean ticket sales are still about half what they were before the pandemic.
Park believes that one of the problems with the country’s film and TV industry is its short-term thinking that prevents them from creating lasting franchises. “Korean companies have been bad at owning and maintaining IP,” he says. “We give our IP to whoever pays for it, we do one season of our story, and move on to the next season. I think it’s destroyed our market.” Rather than creating long-term franchises, Korean studios have traditionally treated shows as short-term projects, and sold all rights to local broadcasters. They worry that streamers like Netflix, which like to acquire global rights to their projects, could make this trend worse.
But there is one caveat. “My disclaimer is: Thanks to Netflix, Korean content is here,” Park says.
This goes both ways: Thanks to the success it’s had with Korean content, Netflix also feels emboldened to invest more in other markets that aren’t traditionally seen as promising hunting grounds for global TV hits. The company now has original production in 50 countries and is making significant investments in markets such as Japan and India.
Or, as Sarandos said, speaking about success. squid game In 2021: “Proving that a great story from anywhere in the world can entertain the world.”
For more data and insight on Netflix’s success with Korean dramas, Check out my free report: The K-Flix Phenomenon.
<a href