Titles · drama
A Korean title lasts 6.2 weeks in Vietnam, 2.0 in Britain
Across 93 Netflix markets, the countries that see the most Korean titles also keep each one on the chart longest. The two move together, correlation 0.72. Vietnam gives a Korean title three times the shelf life Britain does.
The table this is written from: /catalogue-depth
Two things could be true about a market that sees a lot of Korean titles. It might be churning through them — many titles, each on the chart briefly. Or it might be holding them — many titles, each staying a long time.
Across 93 Netflix markets it is the second, and the effect is large.
| Market | Distinct Korean titles | Chart places | Weeks per title |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vietnam | 261 | 1,617 | 6.2 |
| Indonesia | 275 | 1,550 | 5.6 |
| Malaysia | 259 | 1,346 | 5.2 |
| South Korea | 592 | 2,871 | 4.9 |
| Japan | 245 | 1,096 | 4.5 |
| France | 81 | 194 | 2.4 |
| Germany | 60 | 144 | 2.4 |
| United States | 39 | 85 | 2.2 |
| United Kingdom | 47 | 95 | 2.0 |
| Iceland | 43 | 77 | 1.8 |
Depth and shelf life rise together — correlation 0.72 across the 93. The median market keeps a Korean title for 2.9 weeks. Vietnam keeps it for 6.2, Iceland for 1.8.
The gap is a market difference, not a title difference
A Korean series that reaches the UK chart is usually the same series that reaches Vietnam’s. It is not a shorter show in Britain. It leaves sooner.
Ten Asian markets — Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan — sit at a median of 4.9 weeks per title, and the lowest of the ten is 4.5. The other 83 markets sit at a median of 2.6.
Five of those 83 clear 4.5 anyway, and they are worth naming: Bangladesh (5.3), Pakistan (5.1), Bolivia (5.0), Ukraine (4.8) and India (4.6). Three of them — Bangladesh, Pakistan and India — hold a Korean title longer than Japan does, on 538 to 766 chart places each. That is not a rounding artefact of a thin market; those are real runs, in countries that appear on no list of K-drama markets we have seen.
Ukraine is the one that is thin: 92 places across 19 titles, where a single long run moves the figure a long way. We separate it rather than average it in.
Vietnam gives a Korean title 3.1 times the shelf life Britain gives it.
Why “how many countries” undersells it
Reach is the number most often quoted about a Korean title, and it treats every country as one unit. By that measure Britain and Vietnam count the same.
They do not behave the same. Vietnam gave Korean titles 1,617 chart places out of 5,360 — 30.2% of everything on its top 10 for five years. Britain gave them 95, or 1.8%. That is seventeen times the places, from a market of comparable chart size.
A title that “charted in 60 countries” spent most of those weeks in a handful of them.
What this cannot say
It cannot say why. Catalogue availability, dubbing and subtitling, promotion, chart size and simple habit are all plausible, and this data contains none of them. Weeks per title is also a mean: a market carrying one unusually long run will read higher than its typical title does.
Every market’s full record is at catalogue depth.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- Netflix — Tudum per-country weekly top 10 files — every chart place a Korean title took in each country, 268 weeks, counted by us · https://www.netflix.com/tudum/top10
What we checked
- Weeks per title is chart places divided by distinct titles for that country. It is a mean, and a market with one very long-running title will be pulled up by it.
- A chart place means a week inside that country's top 10. A title watched heavily but outside the ten does not appear at all, in any market.
- 93 countries are counted. Countries Netflix does not publish a chart for are absent, not scored as zero.
What we left out, and why
- Hours viewed. This counts weeks on a list, which is a different measure and does not convert into the other.
- Why a market keeps a title longer. Catalogue, promotion, language, habit and chart size all plausibly matter, and we measured none of them.
- Titles that never charted anywhere. They are invisible in every figure here.
The data behind this
Written from the same data
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The figures in this article, as images. Free to repost with the address on them.
If you work in this business
Everything on this page is measured from the same weekly Netflix lists, per market and per title. We publish the pages free; what we sell is the same measurement cut to one company's catalogue — including the figures behind /catalogue-depth and /by-country.
What a company sheet contains, and what it cannot tell you →