249 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 123 · Titles 75 · Industry 48 · Tradition 3 · first published 6 August 2026
20 of these carry a correction. We keep the old value beside the new one on the corrections page.
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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).
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
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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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading
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.
Built from /what-moves-english-reading · /member-vs-group
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.
Built from /member-vs-group
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.
Built from /member-vs-group
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.
Built from /netflix-top10-data · /hit-or-flop
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.
Built from /member-vs-group
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.
Built from /member-vs-group · /kpop-attention
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.
Built from /fictional-vs-real
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.
Built from /member-vs-group
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.
Built from /kpop-attention
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.
Built from /age-in-headlines
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.
Built from /kpop-attention
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.
Built from /age-in-headlines · /kpop-attention
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.
Built from /read-vs-visited
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.
Built from /group-afterlife · /kpop-attention · /attention-share
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.
Built from /age-in-headlines
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.
Built from /member-vs-group
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.
Built from /newsdesk-abroad · /member-vs-group
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.
Built from /brand-kinds
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.
Built from /fictional-vs-real
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.
Built from /label-accounts · /cap-per-artist
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.
Built from /member-vs-group
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.
Built from /service-years
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.
Built from /read-in
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.
Built from /read-in
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.
Built from /kpop-birthdays
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.
Built from /read-in
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.
Built from /group-mix
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.
Built from /desktop-or-phone
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.
Built from /member-vs-group
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.
Built from /label-reach
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.
Built from /generations
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%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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%.
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%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Built from /workforce · /industry · /watched