Titles · drama
Alchemy of Souls ran 27 weeks and never hit number one
Of the ten most watched Korean titles on Netflix's global chart, nine reached number one. Alchemy of Souls charted longer than eight of them — 27 weeks — and peaked at three. Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha lasted 16 weeks and peaked at two.
The table this is written from: /watched
Netflix has published a global weekly top 10 for 268 weeks. In that window 237 Korean titles entered it, together drawing 24.0 billion hours.
Rank those titles by hours and look at the top ten. Nine of them reached number one. The exception charted longer than eight of the nine.
| Title | Weeks on the chart | Peak | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Squid Game | 42 | 1 | 5.05bn |
| Extraordinary Attorney Woo | 21 | 1 | 0.66bn |
| All of Us Are Dead | 11 | 1 | 0.66bn |
| Queen of Tears | 15 | 1 | 0.65bn |
| The Glory | 13 | 1 | 0.56bn |
| Bon Appétit, Your Majesty | 10 | 1 | 0.51bn |
| When Life Gives You Tangerines | 9 | 1 | 0.48bn |
| King the Land | 11 | 1 | 0.45bn |
| Alchemy of Souls | 27 | 3 | 0.42bn |
| Agent Kim Reactivated | 8 | 1 | 0.37bn |
Alchemy of Souls is second only to Squid Game in weeks charted, and it never took the top place. Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, just outside this table, lasted 16 weeks and peaked at two.
Two different things get called “biggest”
A peak of one is a fact about a single week. Twenty-seven weeks is a fact about five months.
All of Us Are Dead and Alchemy of Souls are within 60% of each other on hours — 0.66bn against 0.42bn — and the first did it in 11 weeks while the second took 27. Per week on the chart, All of Us Are Dead drew 60 million hours and Alchemy of Souls drew 16 million.
Neither number is wrong. They answer different questions, and a headline that says “biggest Korean drama” almost never says which one it means.
One title is a fifth of everything
The gap at the top is not a gradient. Squid Game drew 7.6 times the hours of the title ranked second and holds 21% of all 24.0 billion hours by itself. The other 236 titles share the rest.
The top 50 titles together account for 72.5% of the hours — and 49 of those 50 are series. One film makes the list.
What this cannot tell you
Netflix publishes hours only for the weeks a title was inside the global top 10. Everything watched before a title entered, or after it fell out, is invisible here. Every figure in this piece is a floor on how much a title was watched, not a total.
The full ranking, all 237 titles, is at most watched.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- Netflix — Tudum global weekly top 10 files — hours viewed, chart position and week, counted by us across 268 weeks · https://www.netflix.com/tudum/top10
What we checked
- Hours are as Netflix publishes them for the global weekly top 10. A title's hours outside the weeks it charted are not published anywhere and are not counted here.
- A peak of one means the title held the number one place on the global chart in at least one week. It says nothing about how many weeks it held it.
- 237 Korean titles entered the global chart in this window. The ranking here is by total hours across every week each one charted, not by any single week.
What we left out, and why
- Viewing outside the weekly top 10. A title that fell off the chart kept being watched, and none of that is published. Every figure here is a floor.
- Country charts. This is the global chart only. A title can be number one in twenty countries and never reach the global ten.
- Quality, ratings and reception. This counts hours and chart places.
The data behind this
Written from the same data
Take this away — 10 cards
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 /watched and /staying-power.
What a company sheet contains, and what it cannot tell you →