Korean pop culture, in numbers

Our headline 7.7% is not one place a week — it is nothing, then several at once

We publish one figure more than any other: Korean titles hold 7.7% of the top-10 places Netflix lists around the world. This page is about what that average hides.

Our headline figure is an average. Is a Korean title on a country chart most weeks, or absent most weeks and several at once when it is there?

Ten places cannot hold 0.77 of a title

How this is counted. A cell is one country-week-chart. "Any" means at least one Korean title held a place in that cell. The even comparison is what the same overall share would produce if places fell independently.

Ten places cannot hold 0.77 of a title. To say a share is clumped you need to know what unclumped would look like, so each country is compared against a binomial with that country's own share.

Country-weeks with at least one Korean titleShare
If the same 7.7% fell independently54.9%
Actually observed40.9% — 20,157 country-weeks
Shortfall against independence25.5% fewer weeks

The same share, sitting in far fewer weeks. A reader who takes 7.7% to mean "usually about one" would be wrong about 14.0 points of the calendar.

How many Korean titles a chart holds in one week

Korean titles in that country-weekCountry-weeksObservedIf independent
029,13359.1%45.1%
111,45923.2%37.4%
24,5859.3%14%
31,9474%3.1%
48831.8%0.4%
55251.1%0%
63720.8%0%
72440.5%0%
81000.2%0%
9370.1%0%
1050%0%

Read the two right-hand columns against each other. Empty weeks are commoner than chance allows — 59.1% against 45.1% — and so are crowded ones: four or more Korean titles in a single country-week happen 4.5% of the time, where independence would give 0.4%. The middle is what goes missing.

It is not one or two markets doing it

Countries differ in how much Korean content they take. Pooling them would let a difference between countries be read as clumping inside one.

Markets measured (at least 50 country-weeks)93
Markets where places are more clumped than independence80
Chart rows read493,600
Country-weeks read49,290
Korean places37,750
All places492,900

Every market is compared against a binomial built from its own Korean share, so a country that takes very few Korean titles is not counted as clumped merely for being small. 80 of 93 still come out more clumped than chance.

How clumped a market isMarkets
Less clumped than independence12
Up to 10% fewer weeks than independence55
10–25% fewer25
25–40% fewer1
40% or more fewer0

No market is named here on purpose. Ranking 93 countries by how lopsided their Korean weeks are would be a league table, and a league table invites the reader to treat position as merit — when what is being measured is release timing, chart volatility and catalogue size mixed together. Which end a given market sits at belongs in that market's own sheet.

What we wrote from this data

Where these numbers come from, and what they cannot answer

What share of chart places Korean titles hold · What a position does not say · How we count