318 pieces, newest first. Every one of them names its sources, says what we cross-checked, and states what we could not measure and left out.
Stars 156 · Titles 85 · Industry 74 · Tradition 3 · first published 6 August 2026
21 of these carry a correction. We keep the old value beside the new one on the corrections page.
Go Min-si co-leads Dead-End Job, released on Netflix on 30 October 2026. On Netflix's weekly country lists since July 2021, three of her series passed 39 countries, and the widest, Tastefully Yours, comes from the same creator.
Tastefully Yours: 54 countries, 8 weeks, best position 1, number 1 in 17 countries; 53 at once in the week ending 18 May 2025. Global non-English TV list: 6 weeks, best rank 2.
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Hanwha Life beat G2 Esports 2-0 on 31 October (KST) and moved to 2-2; G2 go home at 1-3. On 1 November Hanwha Life play Bilibili Gaming for a quarter-final place, two years after losing to them 1-3 in the 2024 quarter-finals.
Game 1 (G2 blue): Hanwha Life won; kills 22–11, gold 59,151–49,906, towers 9–1, dragons 3–0, barons 1–0.
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Dead-End Job, Lee Jae-wook's Netflix horror series, arrived on 30 October 2026. On Netflix's weekly country lists since July 2021, his widest lead role is Alchemy of Souls, in 45 of 93 countries. His two widest titles of all are cameos.
Alchemy of Souls (parts 1 and 2 together): 45 countries, best position 1, number 1 in 8 countries.
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T1 swept Movistar KOI on 29 October (KST) and became the third team into the quarter-finals. In the last two Worlds, six teams qualified at 3-1: one won the title, one reached a semi-final, four went out in the quarter-finals.
Game 1 (T1 blue): T1 won; kills 20–10, gold 82,899–79,836, towers 10–5, dragons 4–3, barons 1–1. Faker played Syndra.
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Top Esports came back from a game down against Bilibili Gaming on 30 October and joined Invictus Gaming in the quarter-finals. The LPL went from no qualified teams after three rounds to two. T1 knocked Top Esports out in 2024 and 2025.
Game 1 (Bilibili Gaming blue): Bilibili Gaming won; kills 21–6, gold 62,797–48,937, towers 10–1, dragons 2–2, barons 1–0.
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On 1 November (KST) six teams at 2-2 play three best-of-threes for the last quarter-final places. In the last two Worlds, the six teams that won these deciders included a 2024 finalist, Bilibili Gaming, and the 2025 champion, T1.
Round five, 1 November 2026 (KST): 02:00 Movistar KOI v Karmine Corp; 05:00 LOS v LYON; 08:00 Hanwha Life Esports v Bilibili Gaming.
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Team Liquid beat Anyone's Legend 2-0 on 27 October (KST), and China's 2025 quarter-finalists left the Swiss Stage without a win. In 2024 and 2025, all four teams that went 0-3 came from outside the LCK and LPL.
Game 1 (Anyone's Legend blue): Team Liquid won; kills 16–5, gold 69,657–55,504, towers 9–2, dragons 4–1, barons 2–0.
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In the first two full days of the Swiss Stage, Faker's article was read at twice its usual daily rate in the typical language edition. German, Polish and Spanish rose three to four times; Japanese stayed flat and Korean fell.
Usual day = median of 1 to 13 October 2026 (UTC). Swiss days = 24 and 25 October 2026 (UTC), the first two full days after the Swiss Stage began at 17:00 UTC on 23 October.
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On Netflix's weekly country lists since July 2021, Park Bo-gum's widest title is When Life Gives You Tangerines, in 43 of 93 countries. Encounter is next at 16. Reply 1988 reached only 5 countries but stayed 39 weeks.
When Life Gives You Tangerines: 43 countries, 21 weeks, best position 1, 42 countries in the same week at its widest.
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T1 won their single game against CTBC Flying Oyster 14 kills to 6 on 27 October (KST) and moved to 2-1 in the Swiss Stage. In Riot's records for the last two Swiss Stages, 12 teams reached 2-1 and nine went on to the quarter-finals.
T1 (blue) 1–0 CTBC Flying Oyster: kills 14–6, gold 56,668–50,500, towers 7–4, dragons 1–2, barons 1–0.
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Two series share the English title. The Netflix hit that charted in 79 countries from 13 September 2026 is a Dutch drama. The MBC thriller starring Yoo Yeon-seok and Seo Hyun-jin premieres on 30 October 2026.
Netflix's The Perfect Lie: 79 of 93 countries, all in the week of 20 September; 6 weeks (13 September to 18 October 2026), best position 1; number 1 on the global non-English TV list in its first two weeks.
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After three rounds of the 2026 Swiss Stage, Korea's LCK has Gen.G and Dplus Kia in the quarter-finals and all four teams alive. China's LPL has none through yet. At the same point in 2024 and 2025, each league had exactly one team through.
LCK after three rounds: 2024 Gen.G 3-0, T1 2-1, Hanwha Life 2-1, Dplus Kia 2-1; 2025 KT 3-0, Gen.G 2-1, Hanwha Life 2-1, T1 1-2; 2026 Gen.G 3-0, Dplus Kia 3-0, T1 2-1, Hanwha Life 1-2.
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Netflix brought the All of Us Are Dead cast back at its Korea 10th-anniversary event, with no release date. Of 401 Korean series on Netflix's weekly top 10 since July 2021, two filled all 93 country charts in one week: this and Squid Game.
All of Us Are Dead: in 93 of 93 countries in the week of 6 February 2022; 34 distinct weeks on at least one country's chart; 619 country-week places; first week 30 January 2022; last week 5 January 2025.
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Dplus Kia beat Movistar KOI 2-0 on 26 October (KST) to qualify first. Riot's records for 2024 and 2025 show the first team in went out in a quarter-final once and lost the final once. T1 won both years from fifth and eighth.
Match: Movistar KOI 0–2 Dplus Kia, best-of-three, 26 Oct 2026 04:00 KST. Game 3 marked 'unneeded'. Dplus Kia's Swiss record: 3-0.
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Gen.G lost game 1 to LYON, then won the next two on 26 October (KST) to finish the Swiss Stage 3-0, after Dplus Kia. In 2024 and 2025 the first two teams through came from two different leagues.
Game 1 (LYON blue): LYON won; kills 10–4, gold 66,649–59,709, towers 9–3, barons 2–0.
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Invictus Gaming beat Hanwha Life 29 kills to 9 on 26 October (KST), and G2 also fell to 1-2. In Riot's records for the last two Swiss Stages, 12 teams reached 1-2 and three qualified, among them T1, the 2025 champion.
Invictus Gaming 1–0 Hanwha Life Esports, best-of-one, 26 Oct 2026 02:00 KST: kills 29–9, gold 60,316–51,064, towers 7–3, dragons 4–0. Hanwha Life took the only baron.
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Song Hye-kyo and Gong Yoo lead Tantara, due on Netflix in December 2026. On Netflix's weekly top 10 since 2021, Song's widest title is The Glory (91 countries); Gong's are Squid Game (93) and The Silent Sea (76).
Song Hye-kyo, TV: The Glory 91 countries, 29 weeks, best position 1, first week 1 Jan 2023; Descendants of the Sun 2 countries, 4 weeks; Now, We Are Breaking Up 1 country, 5 weeks. Film: All In 3 countries, 2 weeks.
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Over the first two Swiss days, the Chinese article on Worlds 2026 drew 1.8 times the English one. Gen.G's Korean page drew 5 of 2,056 reads. CTBC Flying Oyster, from Taiwan, was the most-read team: 6,678.
Tournament article, UTC 23 + 24 Oct: Chinese 7,473 + 11,244 = 18,717; English 4,951 + 5,295 = 10,246; Spanish 595 + 730 = 1,325; Vietnamese 196 + 185 = 381. On 16 Oct, the first play-in day: Chinese 4,747, English 4,365.
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In Star News's STARPOLL male idol vote, Keonho passed Sunghyun on 24 October. By 25 October Sunghyun was first again with 64,617 votes to Keonho's 49,264. He gained 39,130 votes in a day; Keonho gained 14,889.
Male idol, first two places: 12 Oct Sunghyun 152,428, Keonho 126,351; 23 Oct Sunghyun 15,418, Keonho 9,859; 24 Oct Keonho 34,375, Sunghyun 25,487; 25 Oct Sunghyun 64,617, Keonho 49,264.
Doctor X: Mafia in White, SBS's remake of TV Asahi's Doctor-X, premiered on 9 October. English Wikipedia's page on the Japanese original went from a median 1,059 reads a day to 9,288 on 11 October, more than lead Kim Ji-won drew that day.
Baseline: median of 1 September–8 October 2026.
Blackpink's Lisa released Press Play and i-dle's Minnie released her first Thai-language EP on 23 October 2026. Lisa's English Wikipedia page rose 2.4 times to 12,079 reads. Her Thai page did not move: 207 reads, against Minnie's 407.
Baseline: median of 1–18 October 2026. Release-day figure: 23 October (UTC day).
i-dle's Minnie released her first Thai-language EP, i love you to the moon and back, on 23 October, her birthday. Thai Wikipedia reads of her went from a median 60 a day to 407. Chinese (648) and English (943) stayed bigger.
Baseline is the median of 1–18 October 2026; the release-day figure is 23 October (UTC day).
Round three runs over 26 and 27 October (KST). Gen.G play LYON and Dplus Kia play Movistar KOI, best-of-three, for the quarter-finals. Hanwha Life meet Invictus Gaming and T1 meet CTBC Flying Oyster in single games.
Round-three slots on the official schedule: 26 Oct 02:00 and 03:00 KST best-of-one, 04:00 and 07:00 best-of-three; 27 Oct the same four slots.
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Gen.G beat Hanwha Life 23-7 in kills and Dplus Kia outlasted T1 in the longest game of the day, taking the elder dragon after T1 had claimed the soul. China's LPL, winless on day one, won three of its four games.
All round-two matches were best-of-one (Bo1), played in Allen, Texas. Times are Korea Standard Time (KST); Texas is 14 hours behind.
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The tvN drama charted in 3 countries in the week to 11 October and in 22 the week to 18 October, fourth on Netflix's global non-English list with 2.8 million views. 11 are in Asia, 6 in the Gulf and North Africa, none in Europe.
Week to 11 Oct, 3 countries: Indonesia 8th, South Korea 6th, Vietnam 8th.
From March to September, Spanish Wikipedia read BTS at a sixth of the English rate or less. Since the Latin American leg opened in Bogotá on 2 October, Spanish has outread English on seven days, peaking at 1.48 times on 22 October.
Days on which Spanish Wikipedia's BTS article had more reads than English Wikipedia's, 1 Mar–22 Oct 2026: 3, 4, 7, 8, 15, 21 and 22 October. None before October.
Sunghyun led STARPOLL's male idol vote in every snapshot since 16 September. On 24 October Keonho, up 24,516 votes in a day to Sunghyun's 10,069, took first. English Wikipedia reads of Cortis fell from 2,328 a day in August to 1,394.
Male idol category, first place by snapshot: 16 Sep Sunghyun 282,130; 24 Sep Sunghyun 356,277; 3 Oct Sunghyun 90,402; 12 Oct Sunghyun 152,428; 23 Oct Sunghyun 15,418 (Keonho 9,859); 24 Oct Keonho 34,375 (Sunghyun 25,487).
Doctor X: Mafia in White led Netflix's non-English TV list with 7.1 million views in the week to 18 October. It charted in 48 countries: all 15 in Asia, 17 of 21 in Latin America, and 2 of 35 in Europe.
Global non-English TV, week to 18 Oct: 1 Doctor X: Mafia in White 7.1m views (30.0m hours); 2 Take Charge of My Heart 6.4m (67.8m hours); 3 The Trap 5.4m (26.4m hours); 4 100 Days of Deception 2.8m (13.0m hours).
We compared each artist's English Wikipedia reads in the three days from release with the two weeks before. The typical October comeback lifted reads by 1.23 times. Teen Top went from 116 a day to 816. Fourteen artists were read less.
Lift = median daily reads on release day and the two days after ÷ median daily reads over the 14 days before release.
Jeongyeon left JYP on 10 August, Chaeyoung on 13 August and Jihyo on 21 October. Each day, English Wikipedia's Twice article went from about 1,550 reads to 4,316–5,565. Jihyo's own page reached 5,220, level with her solo debut day.
Twice article: July 2026 median 1,548 a day; 10 Aug 5,565; 13 Aug 4,316; 21 Oct 4,554. The only other day above 4,000 since 1 July was 14 July (5,323).
In Swiss Stage round one, IG fell to Gen.G, TES to Hanwha Life, BLG to Movistar KOI and AL to Karmine Corp. Korea's LCK went 3-0, including a Dplus Kia comeback from a 0-7 kill deficit.
All round-one matches were best-of-one (Bo1), played at the Credit Union of Texas Event Center in Allen, Texas.
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Netflix's per-country file shows the 2012 Japanese series 'Doctor-X: Surgeon Michiko Daimon' entering the Top 10 in Indonesia and Vietnam in the same week its Korean remake topped both. In 277 weeks of data it had never charted in either.
Week of 12–18 October 2026, TV: 'Doctor X: Mafia in White' is No. 1 in Indonesia and Vietnam. 'Doctor X Surgeon Michiko Daimon' is No. 10 in both.
Both K-dramas premiered on 9 October. In Netflix's own weekly file, Doctor X tops the chart on views. Take Charge of My Heart logged 67.8 million hours to Doctor X's 30.0 million and charted in 64 countries to its 48.
Week of 12–18 October, global TV (Non-English): Doctor X rank 1 — 30.0 million hours, runtime 4.25 hours, 7.1 million views. Take Charge of My Heart rank 2 — 67.8 million hours, runtime 10.53 hours, 6.4 million views.
In this week's STARPOLL 'King of Kings' vote, trot singers took four of the top five places. On English Wikipedia, Lim Young-woong, with 389,228 votes, averages 81 reads a day. Actor Kim Soo-hyun, fourth in the vote, averages 1,337.
STARPOLL 'King of Kings' top five, 23 Oct 2026: Lim Young-woong 389,228; Park Seo-jin 181,132; Song Ga-in 36,917; Kim Soo-hyun 32,478; Lee Chan-won 29,896.
K-dramas travel, but Korea's own Netflix chart is full of shows that don't. Over the past year 37.5% of its TV Top 10 places went to titles in no other country's Top 10, second of 93 countries. The middle country: 0.8%.
South Korea, 52 weeks: 520 TV Top 10 places, 195 held by a title that appeared in no other country's TV Top 10 that same week — 37.5%.
Her EP is out on 23 October. Across 21 months of English Wikipedia reading, her album release day drew under half of an Oscars night three days later. This autumn a single lifted reading to 15,000; the VMAs, to 79,000.
Wikimedia counts days in UTC. A US evening event lands on the next UTC day, so the 27 September VMAs appear as 28 September, and the 2 March 2025 Oscars as 3 March.
Netflix's own files show four versions of the Korean format in its global Top 10: the original, an Asia edition, and this autumn Italy and Mexico, both in one week. The original reached 91 countries' Top 10s. Italy reached 27, Mexico 14.
Global TV (Non-English) Top 10 weeks for each version: 'Physical: 100' season 1 six weeks (29 Jan–5 Mar 2023), No. 1 twice; season 2 three weeks (24 Mar–7 Apr 2024), No. 1 once; 'Physical: Asia' four weeks (2–23 Nov 2025), best No. 3; 'Physical 100: Italy' two weeks (13 and 20 Sep 2026), best No. 5; 'Physical 100: Mexico' two weeks (20 and 27 Sep 2026), best No. 4.
He drew the free kick that put LAFC ahead at Citi Field and hit the inside of the post with the last kick of the match. The box score records no goal and no assist. LAFC left New York with one point and sit sixth in the Western Conference.
Kick-off was 17 October 2026 in New York, which is 18 October in Korea. Korean-language reports date the match 18 October; US reports date it 17 October. Same match.
The K-pop group released its 11th mini album October 15. English Wikipedia reading jumped for the group page and two members that day. A third promoting member recorded zero reads. A fourth has had almost none all month.
Pre-release baseline (20 Sep-14 Oct, 25 days), median daily English Wikipedia reads: Teen Top (group page) 116; Niel 42; Changjo 23; Ricky 4; Chunji 0.
'Take Charge of My Heart' premiered on Netflix October 9 with Chae Soo-bin and Kim Young-kwang billed as co-leads. We measured English Wikipedia reading for both around the premiere. One actor's surge badly outran the other's.
Pre-premiere baseline (20 Sep–8 Oct, 19 days), median daily English Wikipedia reads: the show's own page 475; Chae Soo-bin 592; Kim Young-kwang 810.
Both shows launched on Netflix October 9. Korea Times named 'Doctor X: Mafia in White' the week's global non-English chart-topper. Its lead actor's English Wikipedia reading rose the least of three leads we measured across both premieres.
Pre-premiere baseline (20 Sep–8 Oct, 19 days), median daily English Wikipedia reads: Kim Ji-won 1,062; Kim Young-kwang 810; Chae Soo-bin 592.
Korean press has tracked BTS's Jin topping a K-pop fan-voting app's individual ranking for well over two years running. We measured English Wikipedia reads for his page over the same recent stretch. They fell to the lowest point in 45 days.
45-day window (1 Sep–15 Oct 2026) median daily English Wikipedia reads for Jin's page: 1,396.
Korean press is billing October 26 as a three-way K-pop comeback collision. We measured English Wikipedia reading for the three groups over six weeks. One gets roughly double one rival's reads, five times the other's — and has for months.
Median daily English Wikipedia reads, 1 Sep–15 Oct 2026 (45 days): IVE 733, ILLIT 1,554, RIIZE 312.
Korean press reported this week that BTS's 'Arirang' topped Olivia Rodrigo's Spotify streaming total. We measured English Wikipedia reads for both acts over the same 44 days. BTS's fell 18%. Rodrigo's rose 28%.
Median daily English Wikipedia reads over the full 44-day window: BTS 5,159; Olivia Rodrigo 11,932.
A Korean brand index ranked So Ji-sub first among top celebrity endorsers for July 2026, G-Dragon second. English Wikipedia reading for the same month keeps So Ji-sub on top, then reorders nearly everyone below him.
K-Brand Index's July 2026 ad-model (광고모델) ranking, built from an undisclosed combination of online mentions (a score we do not reproduce), placed: 1. So Ji-sub, 2. G-Dragon, 3. Son Heung-min, 4. Yoo Jae-suk, 5. Lim Young-woong, 6. Byeon Woo-seok, 7. Kim Go-eun, 8. Lee Dong-wook, 9. Kim Do-young, 10. Karina.
Five Korean groups debuted in 2025 under BigHit, SM, JYP, Starship and F&F. Ranked by English Wikipedia reads in their first 90 days, Cortis was fourth. Ranked by the last 30 days, it is first — and nothing about the opening predicted it.
Median daily English Wikipedia reads, first 90 days after debut: Hearts2Hearts 840, AHOF 700, KickFlip 280, Cortis 231, Idid 196.
South Korea took back-to-back Asian Games League of Legends gold without dropping a game. Faker sat out the final. He still outread every teammate who played it — and two of them, Zeka and Canyon, have no article to be read.
South Korea beat Chinese Taipei 3-0 in the Asian Games League of Legends final at Aichi Sky Expo and finished the tournament without dropping a game, a second consecutive Asian Games title after Hangzhou 2022.
Their agencies confirmed the relationship on 2 October. Across five Wikipedia editions both pages peaked the same day. Nana drew more reads in all five; T.O.P's page jumped further above its own normal in four. Two measures, two answers.
All ten series we measured — two names across five Wikipedia editions — peaked on the same calendar day, 2 October (UTC), the day the Dispatch report and the label confirmations appeared.
Of the 243 Korean titles we track on Netflix charts, 76 share an exact English name with a film or series from another country. Desire is used by sixteen. We measured our own blind spot and are printing it.
243 Korean titles, checked against 975 works carrying the same English labels, covering 24.4 billion viewing hours in total.
Across 93 countries and 268 weeks, Korean titles took 30.2 per cent of Vietnam's Netflix top 10 slots and 1.6 per cent of America's. Where the share is small, one show is nearly all of it.
Korean share of all top-10 slots, 268 weeks: South Korea 53.6 per cent, Vietnam 30.2, Indonesia 28.9, Malaysia 25.1, Taiwan 24.2, Thailand 24.0, Hong Kong 22.9, the Philippines 22.8, Japan 20.4. The median across all 93 countries is 4.6 per cent.
We have school records for 4,535 of the 9,249 people on our roster. Among the 55 schools large enough to count, ten hold 54.7 per cent of them — and one holds 352 on its own.
Of 9,249 people on the roster, 4,535 have a school recorded and 4,714 do not — so this measures slightly under half of the roster.
We sorted 1,047 Korean actors who reached a Netflix chart by Chinese zodiac year. The most common sign has 103 of them and the rarest has 76 — and that spread is statistically indistinguishable from chance.
1,047 Korean actors who reached a Netflix chart have a date of birth on Wikidata. Spread across the twelve zodiac years: Dog 103, Rooster 92, Pig 92, Goat 91, Monkey 91, Dragon 90, Rat 89, Rabbit 86, Ox 82, Tiger 78, Horse 77, Snake 76.
A trio of Korean fighting-game veterans, average age 41.7, beat Japan 5-2 for gold on 27 September. Two days later, English Wikipedia readers still looked up Faker — who hadn't played a match yet — about ten times as often.
On 27 September, a South Korean trio — Bae 'Knee' Jae-min (Tekken 8), Lee Kwang-no (The King of Fighters XV) and Yeon Je-gil (Street Fighter 6) — beat Japan 5-2 in the Asian Games fighting-games final at Aichi Sky Expo, after trailing 1-2, for South Korea's first Asian Games gold in the discipline. Their average age was reported as 41.7.
BTS won Best K-Pop at the 2026 VMAs on 27 September. That day, BTS's English Wikipedia article was read 5,152 times — not enough to crack the world's top 1,000. Katseye, who lost, was read 106,190 times: world rank 21.
BTS's English Wikipedia article ('BTS', no redirect) was read between 4,736 and 5,578 times a day every day from 20 to 26 September 2026 — a flat, steady range. On 27 September, the day they won Best K-Pop for 'SWIM' at the VMAs, it was read 5,152 times: inside that same steady range, and not among the day's 1,000 most-read English Wikipedia articles.
BLACKPINK's Lisa won Best Pop for "Dream" at the 2026 VMAs on 27 September in Los Angeles. In the award's 17-year history, only one other winner has been an Asian act: BTS, six years earlier, as a group.
Best Pop winners, 2010–2026 (17 ceremonies): Lady Gaga (2010), Britney Spears (2011), One Direction (2012), Selena Gomez (2013), Ariana Grande ft. Iggy Azalea (2014), Taylor Swift (2015), Beyoncé (2016), Fifth Harmony ft. Gucci Mane (2017), Ariana Grande (2018), Jonas Brothers (2019), BTS (2020), Justin Bieber ft. Daniel Caesar & Giveon (2021), Harry Styles (2022), Taylor Swift (2023), Taylor Swift (2024), Ariana Grande (2025), Lisa ft. Kentaro Sakaguchi (2026).
"Sour Grapes," out 28 September, is NiziU's first Korean-market mini album — arriving nearly six years after their November 2020 Japan debut and following two smaller Korean single albums.
NiziU debuted in Japan on 30 November 2020 with the single 'Step and a Step,' formed through the JYP Entertainment–Sony Music Japan audition show 'Nizi Project.'
STARPOLL's Male Idol leaderboard put Jin fifth on 16 September with 4,574 votes. Eight days later he had 19,663 — a 4.3x rise — and had moved past 2PM's Junho into third place. Junho's own count rose too; Jin's just rose faster.
Male Idol vote, 16 September 2026: 1. Sunghyun (CORTIS) 282,130. 2. Kunho (CORTIS) 228,120. 3. Junho (2PM) 15,240. 4. Juhoon (CORTIS) 7,363. 5. Jin (BTS) 4,574.
Of the four titles we checked against Netflix's own weekly country tables, KPop Demon Hunters topped 76 of the 93 countries carrying it (81.7%). Agent Kim topped only 25 of 81 (30.9%).
Titles chosen were the ones repeated most often in our own community and news collection for 2026-09-03 (664 items) — a frequency pick, not a hand pick.
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Not one show — 30 different Korean titles traded the number-one TV spot on South Korea's own Netflix chart 32 times, without a single non-Korean title breaking in, from April 2022 to December 2023.
180 countries were checked for their longest run of consecutive weeks with a Korean title at number one in either the TV or Films category.
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School of Performing Arts Seoul has 125 credited alumni with measurable Wikipedia language editions — a median of 13 per person. Seoul Institute of the Arts has 352, nearly three times as many, at a median of 6.
4,535 people have a school recorded on Wikidata out of 9,249 Korean public figures in our birth-year roster; every one of the 4,535 could be matched to a school, and no school field was blank once matched.
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The Great Flood and Squid Game both peaked at number one in 93 countries, the widest reach in our panel of 974 Korean Netflix titles. Squid Game stayed on the charts 60 weeks. The Great Flood managed 11.
974 Korean titles have ever appeared on a Netflix weekly country Top 10 table in the tracked window.
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Across 2,372 Korean singers, rappers, composers and music groups, the top 24 (1%) account for 21.5% of a month's English Wikipedia reading. The bottom half — 1,186 names — account for 3.7%.
2,372 names total (822 groups, 1,550 people). All 2,372 had a measurable reading value; none were excluded for missing data.
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Over three days, two Korean entertainment outlets ran 19 headlines naming a BTS member. V, who draws the most English Wikipedia reading of the seven (3,948/day), appeared in none of them. Jin appeared in 12 and reads fourth.
90 headlines collected across 3 days (2, 3, 4 September 2026); 19 of them named the BTS group or a specific member.
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Among 774 Korean music acts with enough monthly English Wikipedia history to measure, 731 have already fallen to half their peak reading — and the typical group got there in 2 months.
847 acts identified; 774 had at least 24 usable months of reading history to measure a peak and a since-peak trend. The other 73 are reported separately, never filled in as zero.
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NewJeans, IVE, LE SSERAFIM, aespa, ITZY, (G)I-DLE, STAYC and NMIXX all averaged fewer English Wikipedia reads a month in the last 12 months than in their second year after debut. The declines range from 9% to 53%.
Two windows compared per group: their second year after debut (months 13-24) and the most recent 12 months on file (September 2025-August 2026).
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Hwang Sun-woo averaged 14.9 English Wikipedia reads a day in early-to-mid September. The day he finished second in his 100m freestyle heat at the Asian Games and advanced to the final, that hit 307 — 20.6 times his baseline.
10-18 September baseline: 14.9 views/day. 20 September (heat day): 307 views, 20.6x baseline.
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Among 9,249 Korean public figures, February is the most common birth month, June the least — a 10,000-draw test found this is essentially not chance. Narrowed to 1,317 idols, the same test can't tell the pattern from noise.
Broad list: 9,249 Korean public figures. February averaged 30.6 people born per day, the highest of any month (1.21x an even split); June averaged 21.8, the lowest (0.86x). A 10,000-draw resample test (seed 20260904) put the odds of this month-to-month spread arising by chance at effectively 0.
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Across 269 weeks of Netflix's Top 10 charts in 93 tracked markets, 974 Korean titles have placed at least once. 447 of them — 45.9% — never placed top 10 anywhere but a single country. The median title charted in just 2.
974 distinct Korean titles placed in at least one country's weekly Top 10 at least once across the 269-week window.
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Yeo Seo-jeong averaged 7.8 English Wikipedia reads a day in early-to-mid September. The day she topped vault qualifying at the Asian Games and reached her first final in eight years, that hit 78 — 10 times her baseline.
10-19 September baseline: 7.8 views/day. 22 September (qualifying day): 78 views, 10.0x baseline.
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Only 12.6% of 3,671 Korean music credits and 14% of 4,554 acting credits have measurable English Wikipedia reading. Of 992 people credited with both, 47.5% do — and exist in a median of 10 language editions against 1.
Music-only roster: 3,671 people. 463 (12.6%) have any measurable English reading in the 30-day window; median among those measured is 25 views/day.
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In 14 of 51 comic-to-screen adaptations we measured, the original comic reads more on English Wikipedia than the film or show made from it. Three of those 14 are different Garfield adaptations — all losing to the same original.
51 adaptation-source pairs measured with both sides having recorded reading. In 37, the adaptation read more (median 14.05x for Korean-original pairs, 3.7x for others, per our earlier piece). In 14, the source comic read more than its adaptation.
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The Esports at the 2026 Asian Games page averaged 276 English Wikipedia reads a day in early September. By the day after the opening ceremony, that hit 2,537 — 9.2 times the baseline, building for days before the Games opened.
1-7 September baseline: 276.3 views/day. 20 September (day after the opening ceremony): 2,537 views, 9.2x baseline.
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Among groups with a recorded end date on Wikidata, Korean groups' median lifespan is 3 years against 5-7 for Japan, the US and the UK. Not a ranking — the Korean cohort was founded a median 31 years later than the UK's.
South Korea: 691 groups countable, 67 (9.7%) have a recorded end date. Of those 67, median lifespan is 3 years and 97.0% ended within 10 years. Median founding year among the recorded-ended group: 2011.
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Korean cast in 7+ Netflix Top 10 titles had a narrower 30-day Wikipedia reading spread (0.25) than those in just 1 title (0.31). A resample test says that gap shows by chance alone 11.2% of the time — short of what we call confirmed.
Steadiness ratio = last 7 days of reading summed / first 7 days summed, over the 30-day window. A ratio near 1.0 means reading held roughly flat; further from 1.0 means it moved.
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We scanned the 30 August 2026 daily top-1,000 most-read English Wikipedia articles for Korean film and TV titles. Two made the list: Mousetrap at rank 186 (21,033 reads) and Four Hands, Two Sonatas at rank 340 (15,420 reads).
992 of the day's top 1,000 slots were successfully matched to a Wikidata item; 17 could not be resolved and are excluded, not counted as non-Korean.
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Eum Moon-suk played the film Hope's most talked-about supporting role. His English Wikipedia reading averaged 186 a day in early September, then climbed toward North America's release window, peaking at 905 — 4.9 times his baseline.
7-day baseline, 1-7 September 2026: 186.0 views a day.
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Han-na Chang averaged 25 English Wikipedia reads a day in early September. Two days after she conducted the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra's season opener in Amsterdam, that number hit 1,186 — 47 times her baseline.
9-day baseline, 1-9 September 2026: 25.3 views a day.
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All four original members of Jewelry performed together for the first time in 20 years on a Korean TV music show. Seo In-young's English Wikipedia reading went from a 98-a-day baseline to 662 the next day.
23-day baseline, 20 August-11 September 2026: 98.3 views a day.
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Jo Aram averaged 313 English Wikipedia reads a day in early September. The day her new KBS2 drama's second episode aired, that number hit 2,877 -- 9.2 times her baseline.
11-day baseline, 1-11 September 2026: 313.4 views a day.
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Nana's English Wikipedia page averaged 918 reads a day for a week. The two days her stage fall and hospitalization were reported, it hit 9,691, then 18,446 — 20 times the baseline, our clearest single-cause spike yet.
8-day baseline, 10-17 September 2026: 918 views a day.
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Yekwon Sunwoo averaged 15 English Wikipedia reads a day for a week. The day his cameo aired on a Korean classical-music drama, that jumped to 315. The day after, it hit 447 — 30 times his baseline.
9-day baseline, 28 August-5 September 2026: 14.8 views a day.
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A brand reputation ranking put BTS's Jimin first, BIGBANG's G-Dragon second, and ATEEZ's San third. English Wikipedia reading landed in the same order — unlike a group ranking we tested a day earlier.
The Korea Corporate Reputation Institute's September 2026 individual boy-group brand reputation index (a third-party score we do not reproduce here) placed Jimin first with an index of 3,905,514, G-Dragon second at 3,517,368 (up 56.04% from August), and San third at 3,296,639. The institute measured 19 August-19 September 2026.
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Pentagon released their first single in three years, 'Coward,' on 11 September to mark their 10th anniversary. That same day was their single highest reading day in our 30-day window — 595 views, and a 2.6x week-over-week rise.
'Coward' (겁쟁이) was released 11 September 2026 at 6pm KST, per allkpop — Pentagon's first group activity since 2023.
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Song So-hee released 'NANSEN' on 13 September. Her English Wikipedia reading peaked the next day at 573 views — 3.0x her 30-day average, and her sharpest week-over-week rise this month.
'NANSEN' was released 13 September 2026 at 6pm KST across streaming platforms, per STARNEWS.
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Last week we reported Seo Kang-joon's English Wikipedia reading had risen 2.59x and said we could not find why. A new drama premiere we missed explains it — and his co-star's reading rose on the same days, for the same reason.
The drama premiered 12 September 2026. Seo Kang-joon's single highest day in our 30-day window was 13 September (7,856 views); Ahn Eun-jin's was 14 September (6,260 views) — both fall immediately after the premiere, not before it.
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STARNEWS reported BTS passed 9 billion Spotify streams in a year, first for an Asian act. Wikimedia has no data yet for that day, but the 10 days before it read at 0.70x the 10 days before that.
First 10 days of our window (20-29 August 2026): BTS's English Wikipedia page averaged 8,257 views a day.
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We couldn't check 18 September's reaction to IU's debut-anniversary donation when we first wrote about it. Now we can — and the announcement day read exactly like the elevated week before it, not higher.
30-day baseline (19 August-17 September 2026, excluding 17 September itself): 1,937 views a day — the same baseline we set in our earlier piece on this donation.
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The music video for Katseye's 'Animal' passed 100 million YouTube views on 16 September 2026. English Wikipedia reading that day was 0.62x baseline — lower than on 22 of the previous 23 days we measured.
24-day baseline (20 August-12 September 2026): Katseye's English Wikipedia page averaged 21,573 views a day.
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The 18th Melon Music Awards named its first lineup — Plave, Riize, NCT Wish, Alpha Drive One and Lngshot — on 16 September. Plave's English Wikipedia reading was already 1.52x its baseline three days before the announcement.
22-day baseline (20 August-11 September 2026, excluding 23 August as an unexplained outlier — see excluded): Plave's English Wikipedia page averaged 139 views a day.
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The Korea Corporate Reputation Institute ranked girl group Re:Scene first among K-pop groups for September 2026, ahead of BTS and BLACKPINK. Their English Wikipedia page averaged 11 views a day over the same 30 days.
The Korea Corporate Reputation Institute's brand reputation index (a third-party score we do not reproduce here) placed Re:Scene first among K-pop groups for September 2026, with BTS second and BLACKPINK third. Re:Scene members also swept the top individual idol spots.
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Across our 2,371-person K-pop panel, actor Seo Kang-joon's most recent seven-day reading average came in at 2.59x his 30-day average — one of the sharpest rises in the panel, and one we could not attach to a specific news event.
30-day average (17 August-15 September 2026): 1,552 views a day.
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Our panel holds 2,371 Korean pop-culture people and groups, each checked against 30 days of English Wikipedia pageviews. 29 of them — 1.2% — recorded a daily average of exactly zero.
Panel size: 2,371 people and groups, each with an English Wikipedia article confirmed to resolve to them specifically (not a disambiguation page).
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IU marked her 18 September debut anniversary with a 200 million won donation as 'IUaena,' bringing this year's giving to 600 million won. Her English Wikipedia reading had already risen the week before — we can't tie it to today's news.
30-day baseline (19 August-17 September 2026, excluding 17 September itself): IU averaged 1,937 English Wikipedia views a day.
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Big Hit Music announced the milestone on 17 September — the first fully Korean-language song by a K-pop soloist to cross 1 billion Spotify streams. English Wikipedia reading of Jimin that day sat at 0.89x his 30-day average.
30-day baseline (19 August-17 September 2026, excluding 17 September itself): Jimin averaged 2,022 English Wikipedia views a day.
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SM Entertainment announced the milestone on 17 September — the second Riize song to pass 100 million Spotify streams. Riize's own English Wikipedia page drew 301 views that day, the lowest of the 30 days we checked.
30-day baseline (19 August-17 September 2026, excluding 17 September itself): Riize averaged 411 English Wikipedia views a day.
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Blackpink's Rosé released 'new trick' on 18 September. The day before release, her English Wikipedia page ran 1.26x her 30-day average — ahead of, not on, the release itself.
30-day baseline (19 August-17 September 2026, excluding 17 September itself): Rosé averaged 2,631 English Wikipedia views a day.
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Our attention stories compare one day's English Wikipedia reading to a 30-day average. Across seven Korean stars over 78 days, the weekday alone moves that number 28% — for Jin, 68%. We re-checked three published calls; all hold.
78 days per page, 1 July-16 September 2026. Each star's own 78-day mean is set to 1.00, so the weekday figures below are that star's own reading, not a comparison between stars.
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Checking a current list of prominent K-pop acts against our English Wikipedia panel, one name came back blank: Lisa. Pulled by hand, her 30-day total beats every BTS member we track — and every other Blackpink member too.
Panel query, 17 Aug-15 Sep 2026: 2,371 people and groups matched, 0 unresolved. Lisa was not among them.
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Agency BELIFT LAB confirmed on 16 September that ILLIT's 'It's Me' had passed 100 million streams in Japan — the group's third song to do so. English Wikipedia reading of ILLIT that day sat at 0.93x its 30-day average.
30-day baseline (18 August-16 September 2026): ILLIT averaged 1,731 English Wikipedia views a day.
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Jin's 'Don't Say You Love Me' crossed 1 billion Spotify streams around 18-19 August; Spotify's Billions Club formally added it on 12 September. English Wikipedia reading of Jin sat at 0.93x and 1.01x of his average on those two dates.
30-day baseline (18 August-16 September 2026): Jin averaged 1,817 English Wikipedia views a day.
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LE SSERAFIM closed BlizzCon 2026 in Anaheim on 13 September. Their English Wikipedia reading rose to 2.89x baseline the next day. Three other widely-reported K-pop stories this week produced no measurable reading change at all.
LE SSERAFIM 23-day baseline (18 August-9 September, before the BlizzCon news cycle): 1,922 English Wikipedia views/day.
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STARPOLL's actor vote ranked Kim Hye-yoon first among women, Byeon Woo-seok third among men. On English Wikipedia, their Lovely Runner co-star order flips, and Park Eun-bin reads far higher than the woman who outvoted her.
Male Actor vote, accessed 16 September 2026: 1. Kim Soo-hyun 29,713 votes. 2. Lee Jun-ho 16,265. 3. Byeon Woo-seok 6,180. 4. Chu Young-woo 1,938. 5. Kim Nam-gil 1,735.
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T.O.P ruled out joining BIGBANG's 20th-anniversary activities at a Yokohama fan meeting on 7 September. English Wikipedia reading moved 1.21x that day and 0.73x when STARNEWS's report ran on 15 September — both ordinary swing.
30-day baseline (18 August-16 September 2026): T.O.P averaged 1,448 English Wikipedia views a day.
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A Seoul court suspended EXO-CBX's contract with its agency on 15 September. We can't check that day's reading yet, but an earlier filing story moved all three pages together — a bigger, unexplained rise the day before hit only Baekhyun.
30-day baseline (16 August-14 September 2026): Baekhyun averaged 293 views/day, Chen 187, Xiumin 159.
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STARPOLL's 16 September vote put NewJeans' Minji first among female idols, Irene third. Irene's English Wikipedia reading ran 1.14x Minji's over the 30 days ending the day before the vote.
Female Idol vote, 16 September 2026: 1. Minji (NewJeans) 18,270 votes. 2. Haerin (NewJeans) 15,716. 3. Irene (Red Velvet) 14,811. 4. an unlisted NewJeans member we could not match to an individual English Wikipedia page (see excluded). 5. Hyein (NewJeans) 12,491.
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On the concert day and the day Lea Salonga explained why she'd unfollowed them, RM and J-Hope's English Wikipedia reading stayed inside their own 30-day range. Salonga's page spiked twice — on two other days entirely.
30-day baseline before the concert (13 July-11 August 2026): RM averaged 90.5 views/day, J-Hope 2,296.3, Lea Salonga 1,288.3.
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Stray Kids became Rock in Rio's first K-pop headliner on 12 September. Their English Wikipedia reading rose 1.41x. Mamamoo's Hwasa, also on the bill, rose 2.42x — while Mamamoo's own group page fell below average within a day.
9-day baseline (1-9 September 2026, before the festival buildup): Stray Kids averaged 2,143 views/day, Hwasa 538, Mamamoo (group page) 456.
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A Reddit post reporting Chung Ha's split from MORE VISION lined up with a real jump in her English Wikipedia reading. But an unexplained spike three weeks earlier was still bigger — and we don't know what caused it.
30-day pull (16 August-14 September 2026): 11,824 views total, averaging 394/day, in a daily range of 167-1,505.
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A report says V's Champion deal hit a record $6.3M 'media impact value' in 48 hours. The one number we can check ourselves — his English Wikipedia lookups — stayed inside its usual daily range.
30-day pull (16 August-14 September 2026): 107,703 lookups total, averaging 3,590 a day. Daily range 3,030-4,299. The single highest day in the window was 7 September (4,299), five to eight days before the reported deal news — not adjacent to it.
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A fan-voting app crowned Jimin August's runaway idol champion by an 850-million-vote margin. On English Wikipedia the same month, he drew fewer lookups than two of his own bandmates — a pattern that holds again in September's first 12 days.
September 1-13, 2026, English Wikipedia lookups: Jung Kook 49,576 (1st) · V 42,795 (2nd) · RM 28,921 (3rd) · Jimin 25,057 (4th, 12.0% of the seven-member total) · Jin 22,585 · Suga 21,786 · J-Hope 18,803. Same seven titles, same access filter, pulled fresh for this piece.
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Fan-vote apps like KDOL rank K-pop idols head-to-head. We checked one such pairing — BTS's Jung Kook and RM — the only way we can: English Wikipedia lookups. Jung Kook draws 1.7 times RM's count, in every window we hold.
15 August-13 September 2026, 30 days: Jung Kook 111,152 lookups (avg 3,705/day) vs RM 63,723 lookups (avg 2,124/day) — Jung Kook reads 1.74 times RM's count.
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Two thresholds set by the data itself — 6+ weeks on a country's Netflix top 10, charting in only 1 country — catch 24 Korean titles. Three genuinely travelled abroad. The other 21 never charted anywhere but South Korea.
Both thresholds come from the measured distribution of the 546 titles we hold, not from a number we picked. The run-length cutoff (6 weeks) is the median run across those titles; the country-count cutoff (1 country) is the first quartile of how many countries they charted in.
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An 11-day baseline put Hoshi at 17% of his group's own page. On the day a Korean entertainment desk reported his torn ACL, he jumped to 52% of it — while Seventeen's page traffic stayed flat.
This is a direct follow-up to our 12 September piece on Seventeen's thirteen members, which ended its window on 11 September specifically because Wikipedia's pageview data is not final for a day or two after it happens — we said then that a follow-up would have something to measure against. This is that follow-up, using the first day the injury's own pageview count is available.
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Korean outlets named Jin sales king for a sold-out plush toy. On the one number about his group we can check ourselves — a year of English Wikipedia lookups — he ranks 5th of 7 BTS members, 4th of 7 in the most recent month.
This is the same twelve-month BTS panel published in our 10 September 2026 piece on members outdrawing their groups — the same window, the same filter, the same seven names. We do not re-run a fresh pull to make a number come out differently.
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Across 12 Korean titles whose English Wikipedia pages spiked, the bigger the show's own peak, the smaller its lead actor's share of that peak — a correlation of -0.68 on a hand-picked dozen, not a random sample.
The correlation: r = -0.68 across the 12 titles (t = -2.92, 10 degrees of freedom) — the bigger a title's own peak, the smaller its lead actor's share of it. Parasite peaked at 2,696,922 views with its top actor at 3.9%; Crash Landing on You peaked at 131,083 with its top actor at 34.2%.
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Hoshi tore his ACL six months before discharge — today's biggest Seventeen headline. We used it to extend a count: thirteen members against their group's Wikipedia page, cross-checked against an archive from five days earlier.
The same ratio, measured twice, five days apart, on two different one-year windows collected by two different runs: our 7 September archive of 380 acts found Seventeen's members at 2.43 times the group page. This window, collected 12 September, finds 2.43 times again, even though the group's total and every member's total moved by mid-single digits in between.
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We photograph the front pages of Korean forums and English-language Korea subreddits once a day. Over eight consecutive days, 0.2 percent of Korean forum posts were still there the next evening. In the subreddits it was 36 percent.
One capture per day. Nine dated files exist; the 11 September capture was taken at 03:24 rather than the usual 20:00 hour, so the gap before it is seven hours rather than a day and it is excluded. The eight days used were all captured between 20:00 and 20:56
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We counted quoted ages in Korean front pages last night, then won amounts in the same 1,365 headlines. The business desk uses money in 22 percent and ages in none. The entertainment desk is the mirror image. No headline carried both.
The same 1,365 headlines and the same ten days as our earlier count of quoted ages, so the two measurements are directly comparable and the age column here reproduces that article exactly
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We keep a daily copy of three English-language Google News queries about Korea. Over nine days the phrase 'KPop Demon Hunters' appears in 645 of 1,110 K-pop items. The busiest subject in the drama feed reaches 71, in the economy feed 90.
The unit is an item-day: an item still in the feed the next day is counted again. 3,375 item-days across the nine days contain 1,131 distinct titles, so between 63 and 71 percent of each feed is something we had already seen
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Ten days of Korean front pages, 1,365 headlines. One entertainment desk opened 27 percent of its stories with an age in quote marks. The other did it in 3 percent. The general and business papers: zero in 1,080.
Ten days is ten days. 26 ages is a small sample, and the age brackets below should be read as a first look rather than a distribution
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A forum called spreading visitors beyond the capital the unfinished task. In the admissions table 58 percent of foreign entries are already outside it, and the top district is Gangneung, not Jongno. But 112 of 206 districts count nobody.
Provinces: 7,961,838 foreign admissions across 14 provinces. Capital region (Seoul, Gyeonggi, Incheon) is 3,358,821, or 42.2 percent. The remaining 57.8 percent is outside it
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A Korean desk called it NewJeans' lost two years. We counted English Wikipedia lookups for all eight fourth-generation girl groups. NewJeans sits at 0.61x its pre-dispute reading; the other seven have a median of 0.66x. Two fell further.
The comparison set is fixed by debut year (2018-2022), not by preference. Picking the rivals would make our taste the finding
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If you cannot read Korean, the only legible part of a front page is its Latin script. We counted every Latin word in 1,388 headline-days. The K-culture desk prints them four times as often as the general paper, and prints a different kind.
The unit is a headline-day: a headline still on the front page the next day is counted again. 1,388 headline-days across the ten days contain 1,010 distinct headlines, so about 27 percent of what we counted is a headline we had already seen
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Jin has topped a Korean idol poll for 68 straight weeks. On English Wikipedia lookups he is fifth of seven BTS members. But ranks three to six sit inside 7% of each other, so the ranking barely means anything in the middle.
Titles were resolved before counting. 'RM (rapper)' is a redirect and returns 27,156; the article 'RM (musician)' returns 711,190. Counting the redirect would have put RM last instead of third.
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Every person named in one day of two Korean entertainment desks, against how many the English-speaking world looks up. Sixteen of eighteen are findable. The day skews to actors two to one, but per head they lead idols by just 1.13 times.
The two totals in this piece were computed from the stored file, not typed by hand: 3,005,232 lookups across 16 people, median 101,338.
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One morning brought two announcements: a BLACKPINK member fronting an iPhone camera, a BIGBANG member fronting McDonald's. Our brand panel covered luxury, jewellery, fashion and cars — not phones, not burgers. So we added both.
The two new kinds were measured over the same August 2025 to July 2026 window as the six kinds already on the panel, not from the day we thought of them. Pageviews can be requested for past months, so a late addition does not look artificially small.
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Virtual performers have been shipping for 27 years. Over twelve months the biggest virtual page beat six real K-pop groups combined — by 0.4%. Move the window one month and the lead disappears. Last month the real groups won by 3.2 times.
Two of the fifteen articles came back rate-limited (HTTP 429) on the first pass and were refetched until they returned data. We did not publish the comparison while the real side was missing two of its six members, because a short real side biases the result toward the virtual one.
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HYBE sold 17.5% more than the year before and still reported a net loss 85 times larger. SM, JYP and YG all grew revenue and profit. Filed figures, in English, with the filing receipts named.
CJ E&M appears in our company list but has neither a 2025 filing nor a market capitalisation in the datasets we hold, so it is reported as unmeasured rather than counted as zero.
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Jennie's solo single matched a BTS record, so we counted lookups for three groups and all fifteen members. Only Lisa passed her own group page — by 7,413 out of 1.8 million. Added up, BLACKPINK's four beat its name 3.25 times.
Every title was resolved through redirects before counting. The pageviews API does not follow redirects, so a redirect title returns only the traffic that arrived through that name. Counting 'RM (rapper)' rather than 'RM (musician)' gave 27,156 instead of 711,190 — twenty-six times too small.
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Korean entertainment labels a couple by the years between them: 14 younger, 9 younger, 9 younger, in one morning. We measured the years inside the groups instead. The median spread from oldest to youngest member is 4 years.
The 14-year threshold was taken from today's headline rather than chosen by us, and we report the 9-year and 10-year counts beside it so the result does not rest on one cutoff.
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The Asia Artist Awards is running its 2026 lineup posts under the line IN KAOHSIUNG. We had measured which language edition reads Korean stars most: Chinese leads for 306 of 478. Lee Da-hee, named today, is read 2.4x more in Chinese.
The panel-wide figure — Chinese leading for 306 of 478 — was measured on 9 September before any of today's headlines were read, and is published in full on the linked page rather than only in the fragment quoted here.
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We asked Wikimedia how many people opened 478 Korean entertainers' articles in 15 language editions over three months. With English set aside, Chinese leads for 306 of them and Japanese for 142. These are languages, not countries.
Every one of the 7,170 person-edition requests came back. None was blocked or rate-limited, so no cell in this count is a silent zero standing in for a failed request.
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Fans are organising around 13 October. We hold full birth dates for 9,249 Korean entertainers, so we counted every calendar day. That date holds 26 people, ranking 137th of 366. Two of the busiest single days are artefacts we can name.
Months are compared per day, not by raw total, because February has fewer days and would otherwise look empty. February is credited 28.2425 days to account for leap years across the panel.
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Chinese Wikipedia is the most-read edition for 306 of 478 Korean stars. For BTS it leads for none. Spanish tops six of the seven members; Japanese tops Jimin by 4,669 reads over three months.
Jimin's margin is small and we publish it as a margin: Japanese 43,832 against Spanish 39,163, a gap of 4,669 reads over three months. A different window could plausibly flip it, and a reader is entitled to know that before quoting the result.
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We sorted every one of the 428 Korean music groups on Wikidata by the sex recorded for each member. 185 are all-men, 182 all-women, 12 mixed. But 127 groups still contain a member with no sex recorded, so the mixed number can only go up.
Groups are sorted only when every named member has a sex recorded. 49 of the 428 have no usable member record at all and are reported as unsorted rather than folded into a category.
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Wikimedia publishes no reader age. It does publish device, which is often used as a proxy for one. Across 372 Korean acts, desktop share barely moves with debut era: 2.9 points from the 1990s to the 2020s.
The denominator was verified against a count made a day earlier for a different question. Desktop share is desktop reads over all-access reads, so a wrong denominator would produce a wrong share silently. We already held all-access totals for these acts from the member-versus-group collection, fetched them again today, and compared: 372 of 372 acts agree to within one percent, with a median difference of 0.0%. The well did not move under us.
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Korean outlets report Jin leading one idol vote 67 weeks running and another 131. We counted English Wikipedia reads for 380 Korean acts and 1,247 members: BTS sends 65.7% of its reading to member pages, and Jin draws 11.5% of that.
Two independent measurements agree. The data page already carried a separate count made on 5 September: eight soloists against their groups, median daily reads over thirty days. This article's dataset is twelve-month totals across 380 acts. Where both contain the same pair they point the same way in 8 of 8 — different windows, different units, different collectors. The page recomputes that comparison on every build rather than quoting a number we checked once.
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Cube, SM and Hybe all had something out this week. For each of nine K-pop companies we hold a reader count, but the share of the roster we can see runs 37% to 67% — so the ranking everyone wants is the one thing the data will not give.
The coverage figure is published beside every company figure, and it is what makes this not a ranking. Of the artists we can attach to a company, the share who also reach a reader count runs from 37.2% at Hybe to 66.7% at FNC. Two companies measured at different coverage are not comparable, and the page says so in the same table rather than in a footnote.
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The generation labels are quoted like facts, but nobody sets them. We put 182 Korean acts against English Wikipedia reading: the bands overlap 86% to 100%, and in both boundary years we could measure, the real break sits one year away.
A second, unrelated measurement points the same way. Our group-afterlife page counts something different — how many months an act takes to fall from its best month to half of it — and found that number does not vary by debut era either: about two months whether the act started in 1995 or 2020. Two instruments, two units, one conclusion, and neither was built to test the other.
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We cannot measure event economics and do not claim to. We can measure the shape of attention: in one month, 774 Korean acts drew 2.67 million English Wikipedia reads, 24 acts hold half of it, and the lower half of the list holds 3.1%.
Two counts, neither collected for this question, land in the same place. The main count is one month across 774 acts. The check count is twelve months across a different set of 380 acts, gathered separately. The most-read act comes out at 9.7% of everything in one and 9.8% in the other, and both put about half of all reading inside the top twenty. If the lopsidedness were an artefact of a single month, the two would not agree at the top.
Built from /attention-share
Wikidata records a birthplace for 149 of the 3,204 Korean names we track: 4.7%. Seven were born outside Korea. Nationality is not in there at all, so the biggest Korean story about citizenship and stardom is invisible to this record.
We test Korea by coordinates, not by the country field, and that choice was forced by an error we made. Wikidata's P17 records involvement as well as location, which is how a battle fought in Vietnam once entered our list of Korean places. Coordinates cannot be dragged in by involvement, so the test is on a bounding box instead.
Built from /born-abroad
For 774 Korean acts we know the single month each was read most on English Wikipedia. By calendar month they are not even — January runs 45% above expectation, September 39% below. Among the 100 biggest peaks, none landed in February.
Expectation is not the flat one-twelfth. February has 28 days and collects fewer reads, so it is less likely to hold an act's best month for reasons that have nothing to do with music. We built the expectation from the actual number of days each calendar month contributes to the window, and the day counts are printed on the data page so the arithmetic can be checked. Without that correction February reads as 59% of expectation; with it, 64%.
Built from /peak-month
Mattel and LEGO are only now dating their KPop Demon Hunters toys. We counted the weeks the film actually spent in each country's Netflix Top 10: 93 countries, Latvia 62, Mexico 51, the United States 49, South Korea 32.
Weeks are counted from the raw weekly country tables, not from a summary: a country-week counts only if the title appears in that country's published Top 10 for that week.
Built from /demon-hunters-countries
We found the single best month of 774 Korean acts on English Wikipedia and counted what survived it. The median act fell below half within two months. One group held out 65. BigBang's own last peak halved in one.
An act needs at least 24 usable months to enter the table. 73 of the 847 acts found had fewer and were dropped rather than counted as zero.
Built from /group-afterlife
Wikipedia publishes each country's most-read articles daily. Across 20 countries and 14 days, 87 Korean articles ever appeared — 63 of the 93 appearances were Japan alone. Nine countries had none.
Every one of the 21,975 distinct articles that entered any country's daily list was resolved against Wikidata individually. No article was called Korean because its title looked Korean.
Built from /what-countries-read
577 Korean films have reached a Netflix Top 10 somewhere since July 2021. The median one charted in a single country for three weeks. Korean series do five countries and six weeks. One film managed all 93 at once.
A place is one appearance in one country's weekly Top 10. A title at number four in Vietnam for three weeks holds three places there. Reach counts distinct countries out of 93, never a sum of places.
Built from /korean-movies-on-netflix
51 comics that Korean studios adapted, measured beside the adaptations. Korean webtoon sources were out-read in 16 of 18 cases, median gap 14x. Foreign sources — mostly Japanese manga — 3.7x, and won a third of the time.
Both sides of every pair are counted the same way: English Wikipedia, human traffic only (agent=user), the same 30 days. No bot traffic is included on either side.
Built from /webtoon-adaptations · /webtoon
For the 183 Korean acts whose whole career fits inside our measuring window, the median act's biggest month on Wikipedia came two years after debut. 35 peaked in year one. 20 waited six years or more.
The peak-timing figures use only acts that debuted in 2016 or later. Our reads begin in July 2015, so for an act that debuted earlier we cannot see whether its true peak came before our window — those 350 acts are excluded from this question rather than given a wrong peak.
Built from /group-afterlife
I Am Solo is heading to Netflix in over 190 countries. Netflix publishes weekly top tens for 94. Of 974 Korean titles that ever charted anywhere, the median reached 2 countries and 447 reached exactly one.
The 94 is counted from the file itself rather than taken from any description of it, and it is printed beside the date of the copy we read
Built from /netflix-which-country · /by-country · /netflix-tudum-data-dictionary
Christian metal band Demon Hunter has sued Netflix over the name KPop Demon Hunters. Of 974 Korean titles on the Netflix charts, 423 already carry an English name that belongs to a work from somewhere else too.
15 titles we could not classify at all are counted as unknown rather than pushed into either bucket, and 11 more show no Korean work under that name in Wikidata despite charting as Korean
Built from /is-it-korean · /demon-hunters-countries · /netflix-which-country
Korean pages carried four Jin stories in one day, one calling him the most-searched person in the world for Gucci. We cannot count Google searches, so we counted English Wikipedia reads against his own bandmates.
A change under 5% is recorded as no change rather than as a small move, so ordinary noise is not reported as an effect
Built from /what-moves-english-reading · /casting-news-reading · /which-language-reads-you
People search the phrase for individual Korean films and shows. The Netflix files cannot answer it — but they can say where a title stands among 546. Reaching No.1 in some country turns out to be the common case, not the rare one.
546 of the 974 titles have a standing computed. The remaining 428 charted too thinly for all three measures to be placed, and we say so rather than filling them with zeroes
Built from /titles · /catalogue-depth · /by-country
Korea runs a public platform holding 1,344 culture datasets — tourism, leisure, K-pop audiences. We counted every listing. Most cost nothing. Only 322 have been updated in the last twelve months.
Our count of 1,344 matches the total the platform states for itself, so nothing was missed in the fetch
Built from /korea-culture-data-market · /netflix-tudum-data-dictionary
Astrology sites tell you which signs go together. Nobody checks. We counted all 4,651 member-to-member pairings inside 259 K-pop groups and set each pair of signs against chance. Every one lands between 0.75x and 1.25x.
Members with no recorded birth date are left out rather than filled in. 65 of 1,581 member slots have no date, and the figures describe the 1,513 we could count
Built from /star-sign-pairs · /kpop-birthdays · /star-signs
Seven members, six signs, one overlap — RM and Jung Kook, both Virgos. Drawing seven Korean stars at random gives six distinct signs 38.7% of the time, the commonest outcome there is. The population they came from is the strange part.
The chance baseline is drawn from our own distribution, not from a flat twelve. Seven people are drawn 200,000 times with a fixed seed (20260905), so the figure reproduces exactly on a re-run
Built from /bts-star-signs · /star-signs
We counted daily English Wikipedia reads for every performer named in a K-drama casting story, 14 days before against 7 days after. Four held level, two were read less afterwards, none rose. Six is a small number and we report it as six.
A change inside plus or minus 20% is recorded as level. Daily reading moves that much on its own, and calling a 5% drift a finding would be reporting noise
Built from /casting-news-reading · /rookie-reading
Of the five K-pop groups that debuted in 2025, Cortis is the only one read more in English now than in its first months — 2,196 readers a day against 231. Three of the other four are read less than they were at debut.
Medians, not averages. Cortis's single biggest day is 6,788 reads against an ordinary 2,196; an average would carry that day into every comparison
Built from /rookie-reading · /cannot-see
We counted daily Wikipedia reads in both languages for the same six Korean singers. Jimin draws 2,091 English readers a day and 61 Korean ones. Lim Young-woong, who filled a stadium three nights this weekend, draws 91 in English.
Medians over 30 days, not averages. A comeback or a concert week would otherwise decide a figure by itself
Built from /which-language-reads-you · /cannot-see
English Wikipedia has moved six of the 100 most-read Korean stars to a different name in the last two years. In every one, the old title still takes most of the reading — 72% to 94% of it, four to 22 months on.
The six were not chosen. They are every person among the 100 whose reading arrives mostly at a title other than the article's, and each turned out to have a move log entry
Built from /name-spelled · /streak-vs-read
Taemin and TEN both had comeback stages on Music Core on 5 September. We put eight K-pop soloists beside their own group on English Wikipedia: only Hwasa is read more than their own group. Jimin sits at 0.27 of BTS.
Medians, not averages, over 30 days. A comeback week would otherwise decide a figure by itself
Built from /member-vs-group · /rookie-reading
Fan-vote apps report number ones in streaks of weeks. We counted which BTS member the English Wikipedia read most, week by week, for 171 weeks. V led 108 of them — and Jung Kook still has the higher median week. Both are true.
Our first pass typed the article titles by hand and was wrong for two of seven people. RM measured 184,204 views under RM (rapper); his article is RM (musician), at 2,130,446. Suga measured 354,555 under Suga (rapper); his article is Suga, at 2,046,562. Both were six to twelve times low
Built from /streak-vs-read
93 countries took KPop Demon Hunters into a Netflix top 10, number one in 76 of them. A trade headline says DreamWorks is answering with Forgotten Island. We counted what is being answered — Korea sat exactly at the median.
The title matched 3,043 rows under one exact name. No fuzzy matching was used, so a near-miss title cannot inflate the count
Built from /demon-hunters-countries · /watched · /by-country
Netflix publishes two Top 10 data files. We counted what is in them so you do not have to download 30MB to find out: every column, the weeks and countries covered, and which columns are empty and how often.
An empty cell is a blank, N/A or NA. A literal 0 is not counted as empty, because folding zeroes and blanks together is what produces wrong totals from this data
Built from /netflix-tudum-data-dictionary · /netflix-which-country
Of the 100 most-read Korean stars, the 20 whose article sits under a single word carry a median of 6.5 bracketed titles — Rain (entertainer), Rain (singer), Rain (soldier). The 80 with a full name carry none. Fame does not explain it.
Fame was tested as an alternative explanation. Splitting the 100 into four equal groups by total reads, the full-name median is zero in every one of the four. Reads and total title count correlate at only 0.248 by rank
Built from /name-spelled · /streak-vs-read
English Wikipedia moved his article to Jung Kook in March 2025. Seventeen months on, 4.09m of the 5.77m reads about him land on the old title. Of the 30 most-read Korean stars, only he is reached mostly by a dropped name.
The rename date is read from Wikipedia's own move log, not inferred: Jungkook to Jung Kook on 2025-03-15. We do not describe it as recent or long ago without that date beside it
Built from /name-spelled · /streak-vs-read
He plays Taipei tonight and Jakarta next week. We counted daily Wikipedia views in every language those seven cities speak: English leads at 120.7 a day, and English is official in one stop of the seven.
An absent language edition is recorded as no article, never as 0. Malay, Tamil and Cantonese carry no article about him, which is a different fact from an article nobody opens
Built from /tour-city-languages · /which-language-reads-you · /how-many-languages
We joined 4,535 Korean entertainers to the schools Wikidata records for them. School of Performing Arts Seoul put 58.4% of its 125 alumni into ten or more language editions. Yonsei managed 16.0% of 75.
The join is not partial. All 4,535 people in the school table matched a row in the birth table, so no name in this count is missing its language figure and none was filled with a zero
Built from /school
The same 1,113 actors, the same 30 days. Charting credits move an actor's attention floor sevenfold but not the direction it travels: the median actor was flat in all four bands. The trend we did see failed its own resampling test.
Movement is defined once, in the collector, as the last 7 days' views divided by the first 7 days': 1.00 means a flat month. The article does not redefine it
Built from /kpop-attention
We counted English Wikipedia readers for 2,372 Korean music acts over 30 days. The top 5% took 50.2% of all daily reading. Among groups alone the top 1% took 29.0%, against 19.2% among individuals.
All 2,372 acts returned a reading figure, so no share below is computed over a set with holes and no missing value was filled with a zero
Built from /kpop-attention
We counted 1,303 members of 263 K-pop groups. Put on a per-day footing, March runs at 1.20 times an even month and July at 0.69. Scattering the same birthdays evenly 10,000 times produced a gap that wide 1.1% of the time.
Months are not the same length, so every month is put on a per-day footing before comparison. February uses 28.2425 days, the leap-year average, not 28.
Built from /kpop-birthdays
We took the 1,113 actors credited in Netflix's charting Korean titles and counted their English Wikipedia readers. Median daily views go 56, 137, 304, 392 as charting credits pile up. The single highest belongs to someone with three.
All 1,113 actors have both a credit count and a view figure. Nobody was dropped and no missing value was filled with a zero; the script reports both gap counts and both are 0
Built from /kpop-attention
We ranked 3,253 Korean stars by the same surge measure a trending list uses. The top result rose 654x — from one English Wikipedia reader in week one to 654 in week four. Put a floor under it and the top falls to 6.26x.
The two panels hold 2,372 and 1,113 rows. 232 names appear in both, and for all 232 the daily figure is identical because both came from one API call pattern over one window. Merging by name leaves 3,253 people; adding the panels would have counted those 232 twice
Built from /surge-floor
Across 90 K-culture headlines from two Korean outlets, 19 mentioned BTS. Only Jin and Jimin were named — 12 and 9 times. V and Jung Kook, the two most-read members on English Wikipedia, were named zero times.
Built from /member-vs-group · /most-read · /pickup
The scattered cases are the famous ones. Of 7,730 Korean chart lives lasting two weeks or more, 6,725 are present every single week from first to last. The median is three weeks, spanning three weeks, unbroken.
Built from /weeks-counter · /exit
It sat on some country's Netflix Top 10 for 62 straight weeks. Counted country by country, four of 93 passed 52 weeks and only Latvia held every week without dropping out. Korea ran 32 weeks, the median of all 93.
Each country's weeks are re-walked in date order to separate a cumulative count from an unbroken run, because Netflix's own weeks-in-top-10 column counts cumulatively and not consecutively
Built from /run-length · /by-country · /netflix-which-country
It is the longest any Korean title has spent in one country's Netflix top 10. The 72 weeks are spread across 96 weeks of calendar, and the longest unbroken run inside them is 53. Squid Game's 43 weeks in India span 201.
Built from /weeks-counter · /exit
Of every Korean title either country had on a Netflix top 10 in the same week, 77.9% was on both lists. The 15 most alike pairs on the board are all in Southeast or East Asia — and nowhere resembles Korea's own chart.
Built from /same-list · /by-country
Britain manages 33%. Ranking 92 markets by how often they carry a Korean title in the same week it first charts anywhere puts eight Asian markets at the top — and the median lag, the obvious measure, cannot see any of it.
Built from /pickup · /by-country
Every chart row carries a weeks-in-top-10 number. Across 500,340 rows it adds exactly one on every consecutive week — and after a gap it keeps counting 98% of the time. It is a cumulative tally, and reading it as a streak overstates runs.
Built from /weeks-counter · /exit
Korean titles have held nine or ten of a chart's ten places 51 times. Outside Korea every one is in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia or Singapore. Taiwan, fourth by Korean share, has never done it.
Across 9,246 Korean entertainers, the 992 credited with both singing and acting sit in a median of 10 Wikipedia language editions, against 1 for either alone. Hold that count fixed and actors are still opened more often.
The language-edition gap is recomputed inside four age bands, because a longer career leaves a longer record, and it survives all four at 4x to 15x
Built from /how-many-languages · /works-and-readers · /actor-reach
Two Korean dramas were reported this week as topping Netflix's non-English chart. Counted country by country, Agent Kim Reactivated reached number one in 25 of the 81 countries that carried it, and never appeared on a US or UK chart.
Titles were not chosen by us. They are the Korean titles repeated most often in our own community and news collection for this date, 664 items, and the frequency is archived with it
Built from /by-country · /hard-markets · /netflix-which-country
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.
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.
Built from /catalogue-depth · /by-country
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.
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.
Built from /watched · /staying-power
We measured twelve Korean breakouts on English Wikipedia: the title's biggest day, and that day for its most-read cast member. The bigger the title, the smaller the share reaching any one actor. r = -0.68, n = 12, p = 0.016.
108 cast members were measured and 30 could not be — no article, no data in the window, or a renamed page. Those 30 are unmeasured, not zero, and one of them could hold a higher figure than the one we report for its title.
Built from /most-read · /person
On 30 August, 75 Korean entertainers were in the Korean Wikipedia's 300 most-read articles. 26 of them have no English Wikipedia article at all. Nineteen of those 26 are singers.
294 of the 300 ranked articles resolved to a Wikidata item and none failed to resolve after that, so this is a complete pass over the list rather than a sample of it. Two of the 113 Korean people had no occupation recorded and are excluded from the 75 rather than counted as anything.
Built from /most-read · /how-many-languages
Four Hands, Two Sonatas — the Korean drama that broke into the world's 1,000 most-read Wikipedia articles this week — is set in an arts high school. Those schools are real. We counted 366 Korean stars across seven of them.
Our roster holds 9,249 Korean entertainers. 4,535 of them have a school recorded on Wikidata and 4,714 do not. Everything on this page is counted out of the 4,535 — a school with no entry is unrecorded, not absent, and the missing half is larger than the half we can see.
On 29 August the English Wikipedia article for the Korean series Mousetrap was opened 23,512 times — rank 157 in the world that day. Squid Game's best day in the same month was 5,205. Two days earlier Mousetrap drew 658.
We resolved every one of the ~990 ranked articles to a Wikidata item and asked whether its country of origin or its subject's citizenship is South Korea. On 29 August 15 articles could not be resolved and on 30 August 17 could not — those are unmeasured, not zero, and a Korean title could be hiding in them.
Built from /most-read · /titles
We rank 300 Korean names by Wikipedia reads. Nine of the top twelve — V, Jennie, Jungkook, Jisoo, ROSÉ — have fewer than two Netflix charting titles, so our own panel cannot see them. That is 38.8% of the reading.
Reads are English Wikipedia only, for one 30-day window. A different window or a different edition would move individual names, though not the shape.
Built from /most-read · /how-many-languages
Seven BTS members, four Southeast Asian Wikipedias, twenty-eight checks. The group page wins every one. Six other acts lose to their own members in every country we could measure — and Mark Lee does both at once.
Built from /member-vs-group · /kpop-attention
In August, Korean Wikipedia opened the article on Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey 119,356 times. Every Korean film released in 2026 that has a Korean Wikipedia article, added together, drew 19,822. That is six to one, at home.
The panel is 14 Korean films — those released in 2026 that Wikidata records and that carry a Korean Wikipedia article. A 2026 Korean film with no article cannot appear here, and its absence is a fact about the encyclopedia, not about the film.
Built from /titles · /most-read
We took the cast of thirteen Korean titles that broke out on English Wikipedia — 119 actors with their own article. Sixteen of them appear in two of those titles. Nobody appears in three.
Only cast members with their own English Wikipedia article are in the 119. An actor without one cannot be matched across titles and is absent by construction, so the true overlap is at least what we report and possibly more.
Thirteen of Squid Game's cast have a second Korean title that charted. For five of them it reached five countries or fewer — Jung Ho-yeon's reached one. For seven it reached fifty or more. The same show did both.
Countries means countries where the title entered a weekly top 10, not where it was available. Netflix publishes no availability data anywhere.
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.
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.
Built from /by-country · /who-is-first
Of the sixteen groups with more than 20,000 English Wikipedia opens in our window, exactly two rose by more than a third. NCT 127 multiplied further; BigBang added more readers. We do not know why either happened.
Only acts with at least 20,000 opens across the window are ranked by movement, so a page going from 30 opens to 90 does not top the list on a rounding difference.
Built from /kpop-attention
We built a K-pop readership panel from Wikidata: 2,372 Korean acts with a music occupation. The single most-read person on it is an actor. 232 names — 9.8% — also act, and they take 29.3% of every read.
Built from /kpop-attention
His English Wikipedia page drew 4,613 opens yesterday against 1,411 a day the week before. My Demon, Sweet Home and Forecasting Love and Weather each hit number one somewhere — true of only 33 of the 389 actors we can measure.
Only names above a floor of 80 opens a day are ranked by movement, so a page going from 3 opens to 30 does not top the list.
Built from /person
Netflix publishes one ranking of Korean shows: hours viewed. Count countries instead and 11 of the top 15 move at least three places. Extraordinary Attorney Woo goes from 2nd to 49th.
Titles in the hours top 15 that are not in our own table of Korean titles are left out rather than scored zero, and the count of those is printed on the page.
Built from /which-ranking
We counted every country-week of the Netflix top 10 in which a Korean title appeared — 16,408 of them — and asked which other Korean titles were on that same list. Only six titles went their whole run without ever meeting another.
Sharing a list is not similarity. A horror series and a family romance can share a country's top 10 for a year
Built from /what-to-watch-after · /clumping · /hit-or-flop
Vietnam twice in August 2021, then Indonesia and Malaysia in the same week of July 2022. We checked all 20,581 country-weeks in which any Korean title charted; these four are the only ones outside Korea where nothing else got in.
Films and series are published as two separate top 10s in each country, so a country has 20 places a week, not 10. Every case here is the TV list; no country's film top 10 has ever been entirely Korean
Built from /clumping · /by-country · /what-to-watch-after
In the five years of country top 10s Netflix has published, 93 countries have put a Korean title in a weekly top 10. All 93 did so within the first twelve weeks of the record. Six of the last eight doors were opened by Squid Game.
The record starts on 2021-07-04, because that is when Netflix began publishing a weekly top 10 per country. A country's first appearance here is its first in the published record, not its first ever — Korean titles were watched in these countries long before, and none of that is in any public file
Built from /by-country · /reach · /world-share
Eight months without the top place leaving Korean television, and it changed hands thirteen times inside that run. Malaysia and Singapore then did seventeen weeks each, starting and ending on exactly the same dates.
This measures the number-one slot, not a title. No single Korean series held Vietnam's top place for 34 weeks; eleven of them did, one after another
Built from /staying-power · /by-country · /clumping
Seoul Institute of the Arts has 352 people in our roster, more than any school. Twenty-eight are in a group. School of Performing Arts Seoul has 102.
Seoul Institute of the Arts has more alumni in our Netflix set than any school. Their titles reach a median of 16 countries. Dongguk's reach 41.5.
Every school figure is a median, not a mean. One title in this data holds 3,228 chart places; a mean would let that single title decide a school's number
Built from /school · /person · /by-country
Kim Sang-sik's Vietnam beat Thailand 4-2 on aggregate in Hanoi. We do not count football. What we count is 268 weeks of Netflix country lists — and by that ruler the two finalists are not the same country at all.
Every share below is counted the same way: places taken on a country's weekly Netflix top 10, divided by the 5,360 places that country handed out over 268 weeks. The denominator is identical for all six countries, so the percentages are directly comparable.
Built from /market/vietnam · /market/thailand
We counted which of the ten day stems each of 9,249 Korean entertainers was born on. The spread runs 832 to 984, and a chi-square just crosses the usual threshold. We print that number even though it argues against us.
The ten stems are counted from the full date of birth. People for whom Wikidata holds only a birth year cannot have a day stem and are not in the 9,249
Built from /day-pillar · /stem/jeong · /stem/sin · /stem/im
976 Korean titles have reached a weekly top 10 somewhere. 438 did it in exactly one country, and for 274 of those the country was South Korea itself. Films stay home far more than series — 37% against 15%.
Countries count distinct markets in which a title appeared in at least one weekly top 10. South Korea is one of the 93 markets Netflix publishes a list for, so a title charting only there is counted as one country, not as zero
Built from /titles · /by-country · /reach
KLifeMap ran IU's chart from the public birth date, 16 May 1993, with no birth hour. Its engine returns water in all twelve possible hours. Strength comes out five strong, seven weak. We report the reading and what it cannot settle.
We read the reading at the KLifeMap link above rather than working from a summary of it. Its day pillar for 16 May 1993 is 丁酉, and our own sixty-cycle table returns 丁酉 for that date independently.
Built from /community · /star-signs
KLifeMap ran Jungkook's chart from the public birth date, 1 September 1997, with no birth hour. Strength and the governing element come out identical in all twelve possible hours. Only the structure splits, five ways.
We read the reading at the KLifeMap link above rather than working from a summary of it. Its day pillar for 1 September 1997 is 丙午, and our own sixty-cycle table returns 丙午 for that date independently.
Built from /community · /star-signs
KLifeMap ran Karina's chart from the public birth date, 11 April 2000, with no birth hour. Strength and the governing element hold across all twelve possible hours. The structure comes out five ways, and the most common one covers six.
We read the reading at the KLifeMap link above rather than working from a summary of it. Its day pillar for 11 April 2000 is 己亥, and our own sixty-cycle table returns 己亥 for that date independently.
Built from /community · /star-signs
Jimin and Jungkook were born in Busan, Suga and V in Daegu, and not one of the seven in Seoul. Busan gave nine of the 123 most-read Korean stars, Daegu four, Seoul fifty.
Whether a birthplace is in Korea is decided by its coordinates (P625), not by its country field (P17). P17 records involvement as well as location, which is how a battle in Vietnam once entered our list of Korean places.
Built from /hometowns · /bts-hometowns
English saju sites read one chart at a time, so nobody has a denominator. We built one: 9,249 Korean entertainers with a birth date on record to the day. One of our four tests crossed the chance line; here is what we did to kill it.
The day-pillar table was anchored twice, on two dates whose day pillars are widely published: 2000-01-01 returns 戊午 and 1949-10-01 returns 甲子. KLifeMap's independent saju engine returns the same day pillar as ours for every date we compared.
Built from /day-pillar · /born-on
We sorted 1,047 Korean stars into twelve rooms by birth year — IU with 91 other Roosters, Bae Suzy with 102 other Dogs. Then we tested whether the zodiac picks out who ends up on a chart. Chi-square 7.77 against a threshold of 19.68.
The twelve rooms hold 1,047 names between them; the smallest is 76 and the largest 103, so no room is thin enough for one person to move it.
Built from /community · /zodiac · /star-signs
KLifeMap read the charts of IU, Jungkook and Karina without their birth hours. Trying all twelve hour branches moved one reading a day earlier. The cause was a 32-minute clock correction, not astrology. We say what stays unknowable.
Every day pillar here was derived twice, by two separate programs written on different sides of the company: KLifeMap's engine and our own sixty-cycle table. 1993-05-16 returns 丁酉, 1997-09-01 returns 丙午, 2000-04-11 returns 己亥 in both.
Built from /star-signs · /born-on
We counted the language editions holding an article about each of 9,249 Korean entertainers. Psy leads at 97, ROSÉ of BLACKPINK is at 86, IU at 69. The median is 1, and 365 people have no article in any language.
The obvious objection — that older people have simply had longer to be written up — was tested by splitting all 9,249 people on birth decade. The oldest cohorts are the narrowest, not the widest.
Built from /how-many-languages
Wikidata records 691 Korean musical groups with a formation year. The 2023-25 average is 31% of the 2015-17 average. Then we ran the same count for Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom — and all three fell too.
Only 67 of the 691 Korean groups carry a dissolution date — 9.7% coverage — so the lifespan question cannot be answered from this source either.
Built from /what-actually-fell
Of 1,023 Korean actors and 1,701 music acts, 1,249 appear on exactly one of the four Southeast Asian Wikipedias. The Indonesian edition holds 1,155 of them — while the larger Vietnamese edition holds 31.
Edition coverage was counted twice from two different fields — the recorded edition count and the number of editions returning a reading figure. They agree for all 2,724 people.
Built from /only-one-wikipedia
Korean stars are born in the first quarter 1.31 times as often as in the third. The test clears its threshold by 0.24, and removing any one of those 385 people puts it back below. Here is the finding we did not publish, and why.
The leave-one-out test was run on all 1,303 people individually, not on a sample; the 385 removals that break the result are exactly the January-to-March births.
Built from /star-signs · /zodiac · /born-on · /born-in/january
Across 374 Korean stars with an article on all four Southeast Asian Wikipedias, three editions share first place. The Malay edition is last for 310 of them — and there is an explanation we cannot rule out.
Built from /who-reads-least
Across 584 Korean stars on four Southeast Asian Wikipedias, those who debuted before 18 are read almost five times as often as those who started at 26. It is not that they have had longer — the median career is 20 to 22 years in every band.
The obvious explanation — that an earlier start means more years to collect readers — was tested directly: the median career length is 20 to 22 years in all four bands.
Built from /debut-age
Of 214 Korean stars with an article on all four Southeast Asian Wikipedias, 86.6% of the reading about JAY B sits in Thailand alone. An evenly read star would score 25%. Kim Jong-kook of Turbo scores 27.5%.
Built from /own-star
We put 23 K-pop soloists beside their own group on four Southeast Asian Wikipedias. Six are read more everywhere, thirteen less everywhere, and four disagree from one country to the next — T.O.P clears BigBang only in Vietnam.
Built from /member-vs-group
We sorted 1,047 Korean actors and singers into the twelve zodiac signs. Go Youn-jung leads the Rat, Kim Seon-ho the Tiger, Im Yoon-ah the Horse. The spread across the twelve is indistinguishable from chance, and we counted that ourselves.
The chi-square figure on this page is the one we published earlier from an independent build of the same birth dates, and both give 7.77 against a threshold of 19.68.
Built from /community · /star-signs · /zodiac
Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia each keep their own Korean reading list. BTS leads three of them, and is the only name on all four. Cha Eun-woo, IU, Im Yoon-ah and Stray Kids are each in some and not others.
Built from /who-is-first
Four Southeast Asian Wikipedias, four lists of Korean actors, three different names at the top. Byeon Woo-seok, Kim Seon-ho and Cha Eun-woo appear on every list — and not one of them is first anywhere.
Built from /actors-first · /who-is-first
We published 2,238 Korean places. Nineteen are not in Korea, including the one leading the Vietnamese column. The field we selected on records who was involved, not only where a thing is — and our first check reused it and found nothing.
All 2,238 places were re-tested against their coordinates, not a sample. Every one returned a coordinate, so nothing was left unmeasured.
Built from /places
Korean actors with five or more charting titles are read seven times as often as actors with one, across four Southeast Asian Wikipedias. Pick one from each group at random and the busier one wins 82% of the time — a long way from a rule.
The ladder was recomputed on a single Wikipedia edition, which holds article coverage constant, and it survives: 0.81 to 5.75 reads per million, rising at every step.
Built from /works-and-readers
Reads of Korean language, hangul, hanbok and taekwondo fell 25.5% across four Southeast Asian Wikipedias in a year. The Japanese equivalents fell 28.2%. Two other genres we measured could not be used at all, and we say why.
Built from /what-kind-fell
Reads of Korean travel articles in four Southeast Asian Wikipedias peak in December; flights on the Asia routes peak in January. The steadier signal is the other end — both fall to their lowest point in the same month.
Built from /look-vs-fly · /read-vs-visited
Twenty-six Korean titles could be timed from their peak across four Southeast Asian Wikipedias. The median fell below half in two months, nine of them in a single month, and nineteen later rose above half again.
The 59 titles were chosen as ones we expected to have had a wave, not the most-read Korean titles and not a random sample. A set chosen that way leans toward titles that travelled far enough to have a peak worth measuring
Built from /half-life · /wave-and-floor
Across 25 Korean titles with an article on all four Southeast Asian Wikipedias, the Indonesian edition was first or joint-first 24 times and last not once. The Vietnamese edition is larger on every measure we checked.
It covers 25 titles, not 59. A title with no article on one of the four editions is left out completely rather than counted as arriving late, because counting it would make an edition look slow for a title it never covered at all
Built from /written-down-first
Removing a single title left one of our medians exactly where it was and moved the other by 89% of itself. The interquartile range rated the two almost identically. We ran neither before publishing.
This does not tell you a finding is wrong. It tells you the sample is not yet large enough for that median to be reported as a finding — our -15.1% was not a false number, it was a real median of five real values that happened not to be stable
Built from /one-out · /half-life · /wave-and-floor
Of 59 Korean titles fetched across four Southeast Asian Wikipedias, nine could be measured before and after their peak. Twenty-two were disqualified because their article did not exist before the title arrived.
Built from /wave-and-floor · /half-life
Reads of Korean travel articles in four Southeast Asian Wikipedias fell 30% in a year. Korean culture articles fell 14%, Japanese and Taiwanese culture articles rose, and air passengers on the Asia routes barely moved.
Built from /what-actually-fell · /look-vs-fly
We tried to set what Southeast Asia reads about Seoul beside where foreign visitors walk. In 16 of 24 districts the admissions table counts no tourist site at all — Jung, which holds Myeongdong, among them. It maps where counting stops.
Korea's public tourist table counts paid admissions, so a district whose draw is a street, a market or a shopping block has nothing to sell a ticket to. Jongno takes 1,683,727 foreign admissions because the palaces sell tickets; Nowon, read almost as often, records 136. That distance is about ticket gates, not about interest
Built from /read-vs-visited · /places
We measured 2,238 places in Korea against four Southeast Asian Wikipedias. YG Entertainment scores 111.47 and Seoul 106.54. Twelve companies out-read 520 cities and districts on the median. What this cannot see is a single restaurant.
Of the places with an article in at least one of these editions, 2,238 could be measured and 49 could not. Those 49 are left out rather than counted as zero
Built from /places · /fame-compare
Split 22 brands by kind and the four Southeast Asian countries swap places. Indonesia is first among car makers on 53.79 reads per million and last among luxury houses on 38.45. A single ranking hides that.
Built from /brand-kinds · /fame-compare
We measured concentration — the share of a name's four-country reading that sits in its biggest country. K-pop groups come closest to even at 41.7%. The most concentrated row turned out to be an artefact of Wikipedia, not of attention.
Where a name has an article in only one edition, its concentration is fixed at 100% by that fact alone. That is the trap the esports row fell into, and it is worth checking for in any row near the extreme
Built from /spread · /fame-compare
Groups, solo musicians, actors, athletes — the Malay Wikipedia takes 7.6% to 8.6% of the four-country reading for each. For luxury and car brands it takes 23%. Four categories in a narrow band, one well outside it.
The English Wikipedia alone drew 82 billion reads in this window and cannot be split by country. Every figure here is a floor, not a measure
Built from /malaysia · /fame-compare
Median reads of a Korean actor's own Wikipedia article, by how many of their titles reached a Netflix chart: 1.21, 2.15, 4.72, 11.94. Yesterday the same panel gave us nothing, because we were measuring the wrong thing.
Built from /titles-to-name · /one-title
Split Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai and Malay Wikipedia reads by month. All eleven esports players in the panel peak in the same month, and they agree in three of the four years we measured. The footballers never once agree.
Narrowed after publication: splitting these players by game shows 85.7% of the ones we could measure play League of Legends, so the honest scope is League of Legends players rather than esports players. Too few Korean players of the other games are read in these editions to test them
Built from /one-month · /sea-athletes
We said Korean esports players in the Southeast Asian Wikipedias all peak in one month. Split by game, 85.7% of them play League of Legends. Korea has more StarCraft II players, and four of them have an article in those editions.
It does not retract the earlier piece. The eleven players in it peak in November 2025 and they still do. What changes is the name of the group they belong to
Built from /esports-games · /one-month
Chinese, Swedish and American esports players have articles in the Southeast Asian Wikipedias at roughly the rate Korean players do. 9.1% of theirs draw enough reads to measure, against 71.4% of the Korean ones.
Built from /esports-nations · /one-month
We put 2,511 Korean entertainers, 900 athletes and 22 luxury and car brands on one scale. BTS clears the footballer. Of everyone else measured, nobody does — and the most-read brand sits at a sixth of the leaders.
Readers in all four countries also use the English Wikipedia, 82 billion reads in this window and not splittable by country, so every figure here is a floor rather than a measure
Built from /fame-compare · /sea-athletes
We tried to test whether debuting younger buys a wider career. The answer did not come out in one direction, so we went looking for why — and found that for 658 of 1,329 actors, the chart only ever lit them once.
For 658 of the 1,329 actors the chart lights them exactly once, so every figure we could attribute to that person — countries, weeks, peak — is a fact about the single title, read twice. No arithmetic separates the person from the work when the work is a sample of one
Built from /one-title
We measured 1,972 Koreans with one instrument. Son Heung-min sits above all 1,023 actors. But 22 actors clear 100 against two athletes, and the two groups are read in different countries. Musicians who never acted are not in this panel.
Built from /fame-compare · /sea-athletes
A Korean player is read across Southeast Asia; a Korean manager is read in the one country that hired him. Median concentration in a single country: 50.55% for the players, 81.35% for the managers.
Wikidata records both roles for anyone who played before managing, so this cannot say which role a reader came for. Park Hang-seo played in the 1980s, and a Vietnamese reader opening his article in 2026 is almost certainly not there for that
Built from /sea-athletes
Four Southeast Asian Wikipedias, twelve months, 926 Korean athletes. Three of the four read almost only football. In the fourth, esports takes 60.6% of the reads and the most-read Korean athlete is not a footballer.
Readers in Southeast Asia also use the English Wikipedia, 82 billion reads in this window and not splittable by country. Every number here is a floor on interest, not a measure of it
Built from /sea-athletes · /esports-nations
288 Korean titles charted somewhere in 2022 and 215 in 2025, while the places they held rose 9.7%. Remove each year's biggest title and the ten largest gained 3.1 points — much of the concentration is one show returning.
2021 and 2026 are part years and are shown as such rather than folded into the comparison
Built from /fewer-titles
Two works can carry the same English title, and a chart row does not say which one it is. Thirteen titles in our Korean panel turned out to be foreign works. The test that found them is not the name — it is where they charted.
Absence from Korea's own chart was tested as a rule on its own and rejected, because 381 of 975 Korean titles never chart in Korea at all
Built from /provenance
Across 210,355 finished runs, a Korean film holds a country chart for 1.96 weeks on average and every other film for 2.02. Korean series run 3.7 weeks against 2.71 — and removing each group's biggest title barely moves it.
Netflix publishes films and series as two separate top 10s, so each has exactly one place at every position and neither crowds the other
Built from /run-length
When a Korean title reaches a market's top three, the other Korean titles there fall by 0.403. Non-Korean arrivals cost 0.013. That looks decisive until you notice the two groups start from different heights.
Built from /crowding
The animal year and saju are two different things, and Koreans use both. We counted the animal years of 1,047 Korean actors who reached a Netflix chart: chance would put 87.3 in each sign, and the count runs 76 to 103.
Wikidata records a year-only birth date as 1 January, which put 34 people on that single day — nine times the daily average — so those dates are treated as unknown rather than as January births
Built from /community · /zodiac
Opening position is the only fact anyone has on the first Monday. Across 8,324 Korean series runs it moves expected length by 0.56 weeks a step — against 0.44 for other series, 0.33 for Korean films and 0.22 for other films.
Built from /opening
Hold run length fixed and most of that gap closes — among titles that lasted five to eight weeks it is 26.6% against 28.6%. Among those that lasted nine weeks or more it does not close: 9.7% against 24%.
Built from /time-to-peak
For each of 93 markets we took the median breadth of the Korean titles that reached it. Korea's own chart: 2. Estonia, Slovenia, Switzerland: 77, 76, 72. Most of that gap is how often a market plays Korean titles at all — but not all of it.
Only markets with at least 10 charting Korean titles are measured, because below that a median moves on one title
Built from /hard-markets
Across 801 matched pairs, a Korean series sits at rank 5.73 on the weeks a stablemate shares the chart and 5.2 on the weeks it is alone. The direction is the one schedulers fear. The size is half of one place out of ten.
Weeks are matched inside age bands using Netflix's own weeks-in-top-10 column, because a title's rank falls as its run goes on and a company's second title usually arrives later
Built from /siblings
Titles with six to ten weeks on Korea's own Netflix chart reached ten countries 56.5% of the time, against 11.4% for those with one or two. But 29 reached twenty countries without ever charting in Korea.
First-week medians are reported per band to test whether long home runs simply belong to older titles; they do not — the 6-10 band is the most recent of the four
Built from /home-abroad
Everything written about a chart is about getting on it. We measured 11,722 departures instead — the position a Korean title held the week before it vanished, against the 10.0% each rank would take if position did not matter.
Every rank from 1 to 10 holds exactly one place per country-week-chart, so the collector refuses to write unless the positions it read come out at 10.0% each — that check caught a real error before publication
Built from /exit
Korean titles hold 7.9% of the world's Netflix top 10 places — 39,139 of 498,480. Of those, 82.3% carry the label we use to exclude same-name foreign works. 16.4% carry no label at all, and we keep them because we cannot check them.
The confirmation counts are summed over exactly the 93 complete markets the headline figure uses, and the collector refuses to write if the three groups do not add to the total
Built from /world-share
Between 2022 and 2025 Korean share fell in nine of the ten Asian markets we track, a mean of 8.56 points, and rose in 69 of the other 83. Japan went from 32.8% to 11.9%. The one Asian market that rose is Korea's own.
Only whole years are compared — our window opens in July 2021 and closes in July 2026, so both partial years are left out of every figure
Built from /where-it-moved
Among 170 Korean titles that reached 20 countries or more, the first week already holds a median 40% of the countries they ever reach. But 58 of them started under 25% and 38 were nearly everywhere at once.
The archive carries the same 93 markets in every one of the 265 weeks — minimum 93, maximum 93 — so a title showing up in one country in its first week is a fact about the title and not about thinner early coverage
Built from /arrival
Across 93 Netflix markets Korean titles hold 7.9% of chart places. In the 20 markets where their share runs 5–10%, they hold only 5.4% of number-one places. In the ten where they are strongest it inverts: 36.6% at number one against 27.4%.
Every band reports how many distinct Korean titles reached number one and what share the largest of them took, because a tenth as many places at rank 1 means one long-running title can make the whole shape
Built from /rank-shape
Korean titles hold 7.9% of Netflix country chart places. Spread evenly that would put at least one on 55.9% of country-weeks; the real figure is 41.3%. Empty weeks run 58.7% against 44.1%, and crowded weeks 4.6% against 0.5%.
Korean titles are counted with the same single rule the rest of this publication uses, so the 39,139 places here are the same places reported as 7.9% elsewhere on the site
Built from /clumping
Of 135,036 times a Korean series reached two countries charts, 58.1% arrived in both the same week. Where one did come first, only 1 of 8,333 country triples contradict each other — the markets form one stable order.
A pair is only measured when at least 20 titles arrived in different weeks, and the number of pairs dropped by that threshold is reported
Built from /lead-lag
Across 808 Korean actors joined to Netflix's country charts, those with a title in 20+ countries draw 2.99× the median Wikipedia lookups. Match on titles and recency and the gap holds everywhere but one band, where it reverses.
Each band is then split again by whether the actor last charted after 2025-08-01, which is what removes the largest remaining ratio
Built from /actor-reach
Of 287 charting Korean series with a company credit, the 238 that aired on a Korean network reach a median 4 markets. The 49 with no broadcaster on record reach 39. They are 17.1% of the titles and 39.4% of the chart places.
The list of no-broadcaster titles reaching 60 markets or more is printed in full and alphabetically, so the proxy can be judged rather than taken on trust
Built from /two-pipelines
The leverage argument runs through cost — $360,000 an episode in 2015 against far more now. We tested what it predicts on the charts. It did not appear.
2021 and 2026 are part-years and are shown as such rather than folded into the trend
Built from /leverage
Of 924 gaps of four weeks or more that end with a Korean title back on a country chart, 43.6% carry a different season label — not a return at all. Of the 315 genuine returns, 94.3% happen with no other season nearby.
Built from /returns
A series charts in 32.9% of countries where its company had already charted and 8.6% where it had not. Comparing each series against itself removes age, strength and size, and the gap widens. It reverses in seven markets, five English.
Every market with at least 30 chances on each side is reported, and the five where the pattern reverses are named rather than dropped
Built from /foothold
Across 220 companies with a charting Korean title, catalogue size tracks total reach (r = 0.516) and not reach per title (r = −0.118). Firms with 20 or more titles get 11.1 markets from the median title; firms with two get 13.5.
Every figure is measured on the 59.4% of titles that carry a company credit at all, and that share is printed beside the result rather than in a footnote
Built from /catalogue-reach
Of 131 companies credited on the 345 Korean series that reached a Netflix country top 10, three account for half. Counting production credits alone — the answer to the obvious objection — it is 5 of 101, on a thinner base of 156 series.
Films are excluded and the coverage figures for both formats are printed, because companies attach to 92.2% of series and 44.5% of films
Built from /who-makes-it
Netflix attaches hours viewed to 10,720 global chart rows and to 0 of its 499,180 country rows. Knowing a rank narrows the possible hours by 47.3% on the non-English series chart — least of the four, and the one Korean titles sit on.
The count of country rows carrying hours viewed was measured rather than assumed, by reading all 499,180 rows and counting non-null viewing fields
Built from /rank-tells
They are a different kind of title: 2.20 markets on average against 4.63, and one in seven reaches #1 against one in two. Netflix's Korean chart is not a smaller version of the regional one — it is a different chart.
Both sides of the comparison are the same instrument over the same 265 weeks: Netflix's own country lists. Nothing here mixes a Netflix figure with a broadcaster figure
Across 493,600 country-chart rows, 18,586 weekly lists put one title in two or more places. One show has held seven of the ten. Seasons explain some of it.
Every (country, week, list, rank) slot in the file holds exactly one title: 493,600 rows, 493,600 distinct slots, no rank claimed twice
Across 1,113 Korean actors and 2,372 K-pop acts, the biggest single day is about 5% of a 30-day month for both. The raw gap of 5.0% against 6.1% disappears once the two groups are compared at the same size.
Both groups are measured with the same statistic — one person's biggest single day divided by their own 30-day total — so nothing about the method differs between them
Built from /kpop-attention
We tagged every changed figure with the kind of mistake that produced it. One kind accounts for nine of the thirty-six. Four kinds still have no test, and this piece names them rather than reporting the coverage.
Built from /corrections · /data
Of 718 actors with two or more charting Korean titles, 62.4% have worked in both film and series. If format meant nothing, the figure would be 73.8%. The gap is the size of the wall, and it is smaller than reputation suggests.
Restricted to the 700 people with two or more titles here, because someone with one title cannot be shown to cross anything
Of the 421 Korean titles that reached Southeast Asia's top 10, Korea's own chart got there first for 51 and in the same week for 166 — and never charted 150 of them at all. Series enter together; films scatter.
Each of the seven countries publishes exactly 5,300 rows over the same 265 weeks, so Korea is not being read against a longer or shorter record — the collector refuses to run if those counts differ
Built from /home-first · /titles · /reach
Across 666 charting Korean titles there are 14,144 pairs of actors who have shared a production. 268 of them have done it more than once. Shuffle the same casts at random and you get about 214. The repertory company is mostly not there.
The null was run 30 times; the median is quoted and the range is given rather than a single draw
Across 93 markets, 57.1% of Korean chart runs reach a higher rank than their opening week against 40.5% for everything else. Longer runs give more chances to climb — and the gap holds inside every run-length band.
Built from /climb
In ten of thirteen years the two are within 20% of each other. Their year-on-year growth correlates at −0.13. Two industries arriving at the same number by unrelated routes, until 2024 pulled them apart.
The overlap is thirteen years, 2012 to 2024. The music series runs longer but we compare only the years both cover
Built from /exports · /tv-exports
One title takes 21.3% of all Korean viewing hours on Netflix; the biggest K-pop act takes 3.9% of English Wikipedia lookups. But half of all music attention sits on 4.5% of acts against 7.3% of titles on screen. No giant, steeper slope.
Both distributions are computed the same way from the full panel, not from a published top-N list. The screen figures are recomputed from the raw weekly rows rather than read from our own top-50 table
Built from /kpop-attention · /watched
Hold the number of titles fixed and the gap is still there: 1,926 English Wikipedia lookups against 1,111. Hold how far the title travelled fixed and it survives that too. Korea's own chart predicts foreign curiosity.
Measured on all 246 Korean titles instead of the fifty largest, the number-one group runs five weeks to everyone else's two. Hold length fixed and the gap that is left is 1.3× among titles that lasted six to ten weeks.
The 232 titles and 23.68bn hours are the same panel the page has always used; only the grouping changed, so the correction cannot be an artefact of a different title list
Built from /staying-power · /watched
We asked Wikidata which country made each of our 421 chart titles. Films come back ambiguous 54.1% of the time, series 22.5%. Short names are why.
The three verdicts are produced by the build and sum to the panel: 267 names only Korean works carry, 149 shared with a foreign work, 5 that Wikidata gives no country for
Built from /titles · /screen-split
Across 93 markets the typical Asian one has charted 247 different Korean titles and the typical market elsewhere 85. Matching markets by how many Korean places they hold removes a third of that gap. Two-thirds of it survives.
All 93 markets publish exactly 5,300 rows over the same 265 weeks, so no market enters this comparison with a longer or shorter record — the collector refuses to run if any two differ
Built from /catalogue-depth · /world-share
Wikidata holds 2,128 Korean musical groups. Our attention panel sees the 816 with an English Wikipedia article. Among singers the gap is wider — 5,408 exist, we measure 1,421, and 3,572 of the missing ones have a Korean article.
The 816 groups with an English article is exactly the group count in our own panel, which is built by the same class and citizenship filters — the two queries agree without being told to
Built from /kpop-attention · /data
Korean series account for more casting slots than films here — 1,804 against 1,611. But among the 30 actors with ten or more charting titles, film outnumbers series 263 to 109.
A casting slot is one person in one title. The panel holds 3,579 of them across 666 titles and 1,391 people
Built from /actors
Four countries, one identical decline: new group debuts look 69% down since 2017 in Korea, and just as far down in Japan, America and Britain. What we had measured was not the industry but how fast Wikidata records a new group.
The two comparison windows are three years each and fixed before the control countries were run — 2015 to 2017 against 2023 to 2025
Built from /debut-age · /arrival · /who-makes-it
Across 93 countries and 265 weeks the global share has not moved since 2022. That average hides nine Asian markets where Korean titles held 30.3% of places and now hold 19.5% — all nine fell, and Korea's own chart did not.
All 93 markets publish exactly 5,300 rows over the same 265 weeks, so no country enters this comparison with a longer or shorter record — the collector refuses to run if any two differ
Built from /world-share
The Korean share moves 2.1 points across twelve months — and 14.3 in a week. Month by month it sits between 6.5% and 8.6% of the world's top-10 places. Remove each month's biggest title and the band gets wider, not narrower.
Built from /world-share
Broadcasting holds staff 10.3 years, film 7.3, publishing and games 5.4. Pay runs the other way from what that suggests: film pays ₩63.1m against publishing's ₩77.4m while keeping people longer.
Every group figure is weighted by headcount, so a 3,000-person studio and a 170-person label each count for their own staff rather than one company one vote
Built from /industry · /workforce
Platforms average ₩94.5bn in revenue; content providers average ₩1.5bn. Three-quarters of all webtoon businesses take less than ₩1bn a year, and 214 of them have fewer than ten staff.
The revenue bands and the staff bands are separate cuts of the same 396 businesses, so their counts each sum to 396 and are not additive with each other
Built from /webtoon
Sixty-nine titles share an actor with Squid Game directly. Another 432 are one further step away. Out of 635 Korean titles with a recorded cast, 502 sit within two shared actors of one show.
A hop means two titles share at least one credited actor. Distance is the fewest hops from Squid Game, computed by breadth-first search over all 666 titles with a recorded cast
Wikidata records no cast at all for 266 of 901 Korean titles. Of the 635 that have any, the median series lists five names. What that limits.
The 266 titles with no cast are those matched to a Korean Wikidata item that carries no P161 statement at all. They are absent from the join rather than present with an empty cast
Our panel never had a denominator. Wikidata records 785 Korean series and 1,126 Korean films from the chart era; 249 series and 172 films reached a Top 10. Series are twice as likely to be seen at all.
The first version of this count used publication date alone and returned 84 chart-era series, fewer than the 249 in our own panel. A coverage share above 100% is impossible, which is how we found that series carry start time instead
Built from /titles · /screen-split
Film, video and audio production is 56.9% women. Publishing and games is 34.1%. Both sit above the whole listed market. The 22.8-point gap inside one sector is the larger fact and the filings do not explain it.
Shares are weighted by headcount, not averaged across companies, so a 3,000-person studio counts for its own staff rather than one company one vote
Built from /industry · /workforce
Content firms average 23.9 years old against 44.3 for the rest of the listed market, and you cannot have long tenure at a young firm. Band companies by their own age and the tenure gap narrows from 1.86× to 1.32× — it never closes.
Only companies disclosing tenure, headcount and incorporation year are used — 2,753 of them — so the same rows feed every figure here
Built from /industry · /workforce
215 of 421 titles never reached a global Top 10, so Netflix's language label — the only thing that separates a Korean work from a foreign one with the same name — cannot be applied to them. They are also the small ones.
Nine titles were removed by hand after being read one at a time; 36 were removed because Netflix files them on its English charts. Both counts are printed on the pages
Built from /titles · /reach · /staying-power
Korean titles drew between 74 and 79 million hours a week from Netflix's global chart in every year we hold. Exports rose 63% in the same two years.
Viewing is divided by the number of distinct weeks in each year, so a part-year is not compared against a full one. 2021 holds 26 weeks because Netflix began publishing in July, and 2026 holds 30
Built from /watched · /exports · /tv-exports
In 2012 the two were the same size to within half a percent, and broadcast was ahead again as recently as 2022. Both series, year by year.
Both series come from the same survey family, are published by the same agency in the same unit (thousands of US dollars), and are compared only over the 13 years both cover — 2012 to 2024
Built from /exports · /tv-exports
Terrestrial broadcasters were 81.5% of Korea's TV exports in 2012 and 7.2% in 2024. Their staff average 10.3 years of service — the longest in Korean content. The producers who took the trade average 5.4 to 7.3.
Export figures are summed from the survey's own export-form breakdown for each company type. Terrestrial exports peaked at $278.5m in 2016 and were $91.0m in 2024; independent producers went from $16.8m in 2012 to $645.6m in 2024, against a total that went from $233.8m to $1,257.2m
Built from /tv-exports · /industry
One Netflix title is 21.3% of all Korean viewing. The most looked-up Korean actor is 3.1% of all attention. And within the fifty most-searched, appearing in more charting titles does not predict being looked up more.
The roster is 1,344 Korean performers drawn from the cast lists of charting titles. 1,008 of them — 75.0% — have an English Wikipedia article that returns pageviews; the other 336 cannot be measured at all and are not counted as zero
Actors in ten or more charting Korean titles are looked up eight times as often as those in one. We said in August that the rise stops at ten. It does not. The busiest are still not the most read: 21 titles against Steven Yeun's one.
The roster is a rule, not a list we typed: everyone Wikidata records as a cast member of a Korean title that reached a Netflix Top 10, and who has an English Wikipedia article. 1,113 were measured
Built from /actors
Of 666 Korean titles with a recorded cast, 649 form a single connected body through shared actors. We expected a few very busy people to be holding it together. Take out the 100 busiest and 94.5% is still one piece.
Titles and people are joined on Wikidata Q-numbers, not on title text. Matching by text put cast on only 317 of 1,005 titles because article names differ from chart names; matching on Q-numbers reaches 666 of 943
Among the 232 Korean titles Netflix has verifiably filed as Non-English, the median series charted in 35 countries and the median film in 11. Series also last longer — but the country gap is the one runtime cannot explain.
This piece uses only the 232 Korean titles that have appeared in a global Top 10 at least once, because Netflix labels the global chart by a title's primary language and the label is what verifies a title is the Korean work rather than a foreign one with the same name. Country charts carry no language field
Of 397 Korean titles that reached a Netflix Top 10 in Southeast Asia since 2021, 45.1% charted in all six countries and 30.7% in exactly one. Series average 4.6 countries; films average 2.6.
The six country-count buckets sum to the total: 179 + 19 + 22 + 22 + 33 + 122 is 397, the full set of Korean titles that charted anywhere in the six markets
For the typical act, the biggest single day is 5.5% of a 30-day month. For the ten largest names the median is 11.0%. BTS sits at 25.1%, and all six of its measurable members peaked on the same date.
The measure is one act's largest single day divided by its 30-day total. Under a perfectly even month every act would sit at 3.33%, and that baseline is quoted beside every figure so the numbers are readable without our commentary
Built from /kpop-attention
232 of the 1,550 individuals in our K-pop panel also appear in Korean titles that reached a Netflix Top 10. They are 15% of the names and 41% of the attention. Removing them does not correct the list. It produces a second one.
Every view figure in this piece comes from the music panel's own 30-day window, 2026-07-24 to 2026-08-22. The screen roster is used for membership only — to decide who is flagged — and never for its view totals, and it covers the same 30-day window (2026-07-24 to 2026-08-22)
Built from /kpop-attention · /actors
Across 86 groups whose full membership can be measured, the members' pages were opened 3.88 times as often as the group's. Newer groups looked like the opposite until we checked why: Wikidata lists two members for Fromis 9.
The roster is built by query, not typed by hand. 2,362 acts were selected and 2,361 measured; one name the pageviews API would not answer for after three tries is left out rather than written as zero
Built from /kpop-attention
The weekly charts carry nine columns and none is country of production. Match titles by name, as everyone must, and 17% of Korean viewing sits on names another country also uses. We measured the gap and publish its size.
The global table's nine columns are week, category, weekly_rank, show_title, season_title, weekly_hours_viewed, runtime, weekly_views and cumulative_weeks_in_top_10. The country table's eight are country_name, country_iso2, week, category, weekly_rank, show_title, season_title and cumulative_weeks_in_top_10. Neither carries a country of production
Built from /watched · /screen-split · /corrections
Our Korean Netflix catalogue was 294 titles and 27.7 billion hours. It is 236 and 23.7 billion. Here is the mistake, how it spread, why counting alone would never have caught it, and what we changed so it cannot happen the same way twice.
Built from /watched · /titles · /staying-power
Across 312 Korean productions with five or more recorded cast, the median has 16.7% of its cast appearing in nothing else that charted. The spread runs from 0% to 89%, and it separates prestige work from reality and youth casting.
Titles and people are joined on Wikidata Q-numbers. Matching by title text attached cast to only 317 of 1,005 titles because article names differ from chart names; Q-numbers reach 666 of 943
396 webtoon businesses were surveyed in 2024. The 28 platforms average ₩94.5bn each; the 368 content providers average ₩1.5bn. The average describes almost nobody, and the studios that draw the comics sit at the bottom of it.
Both tables come from the same survey and the same 396 responding businesses, so the revenue split and the webtoon-share split describe one population, not two
Built from /webtoon
Korean music exports went from $22m in 2005 to $1.80bn in 2024. Japan's share more than halved — but Japanese sales grew 1.7× since 2018 while North America grew 39×. The concentration broke because everywhere else caught up.
The regional figures sum to the published total in 17 of the 20 years exactly, and in 2017, 2021 and 2022 they differ by one thousand dollars — rounding in the source table, at most 0.0002% of the year's total. 2024 is 1,801,449 thousand dollars from the parts and 1,801,449 as published. No share quoted here rests on a residual we invented
Built from /exports
Five years of Netflix's global Top 10 hold 23.7 billion hours of Korean viewing across 236 titles. One of them is a fifth of it. Every title listed.
236 distinct Korean titles appear across the 265 weekly global Non-English lists, for 23,729,840,000 hours viewed in total. Both figures are counted from the published weekly rows, not modelled — a title's total is the sum of the weeks it actually charted
Built from /watched · /staying-power · /screen-split
Netflix's Korean catalogue has been watched 23.7 billion hours. The listed companies in that business keep staff 5.5 years against 11.3 across Korea's listed market — and their two halves are mirror-image workforces.
The 14 companies are the listed entertainment and game firms in the DART filing set, split by their own reported industry code: eight file as film, video and audio production or broadcasting, six as publishing (which is where Korean game companies file). A fifteenth company that screens as an entertainment holding, Daea TI, files as electrical equipment — it makes rail signalling gear — and is left out
Built from /workforce · /industry · /watched