Titles · drama
Squid Game is the only Korean number one 8 countries had
94 countries have given a Korean title Netflix's number one place. The median country has done it for two titles, ever. Only eight have had five or more, and all eight are in Asia.
The table this is written from: /by-country
Netflix has published a per-country weekly top 10 for 268 weeks. In that time 94 countries have handed the number one place to a Korean title at least once, and 84 different Korean titles have taken it somewhere.
Both of those numbers sound like a wide, moving picture. Counted per country, it is not.
The median country has given number one to two Korean titles. Ever.
Eight countries have a rotating cast. The rest do not
| Country | Distinct Korean titles that reached number one |
|---|---|
| South Korea | 37 |
| Vietnam | 12 |
| Indonesia | 8 |
| Thailand | 8 |
| Hong Kong | 8 |
| Malaysia | 7 |
| Singapore | 6 |
| Japan | 5 |
That is the complete list of countries with five or more. All eight are in Asia. The other 86 countries sit at four or fewer, and half of them at two or fewer.
In eight countries the only Korean title that has ever been number one is Squid Game.
Outside Korea, nobody holds it for long
Korea’s own series chart kept a Korean title at number one for 87 consecutive weeks. Vietnam managed 34, Indonesia 25, Thailand 21 — and in every one of those runs the place changed hands repeatedly. Vietnam’s 34 weeks passed through eleven titles.
Outside Korea, the longest any single Korean title has held number one is eight weeks — Squid Game in Germany, from 26 September 2021. Seven-week reigns happened in fifteen more countries — Bahrain, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Every one of them is Squid Game, and fourteen of the fifteen start in the same week — 26 September 2021. The fifteenth starts a week later.
In 155 of the 180 country-and-category runs we measured, one title accounts for the whole run. Squid Game is that title in 70 of them.
What the two shapes mean
They are not the same event described twice.
A relay — Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea — means the audience is there continuously and the catalogue keeps feeding it. A single reign means a title arrived, took the top place, and nothing Korean replaced it.
Most of the world has had the second kind. When a headline says Korean titles dominate Netflix, it is usually describing eight countries.
What this does not say
It says nothing about hours watched. A number one place in Iceland and a number one place in Brazil count the same here, and they are not the same audience. It also says nothing about titles that charted without reaching the top — most Korean titles never do.
Every country’s full record is at by country.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- Netflix — Tudum per-country weekly top 10 files — the number one place in each country and category, week by week, counted by us across 268 weeks · https://www.netflix.com/tudum/top10
What we checked
- A run is counted per country and per category. Films and TV are separate ladders, so a country can appear in both and they are not merged.
- A run means the top place stayed with a Korean title for consecutive weeks. It does not mean one title stayed — most of the long runs change hands.
- 84 Korean titles have held a number one place somewhere. The count of titles per country is of distinct titles that reached number one, not of titles that charted.
What we left out, and why
- Hours viewed. This counts the top place, not how much was watched in it. A number one in Iceland and a number one in Brazil are one row each.
- Countries Netflix does not publish a chart for. They are absent from this piece, not counted as zero.
- Weeks before Netflix began publishing per-country files in July 2021.
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 /by-country and /who-is-first.
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