The people — actors, idols and the audiences that look them up.
9 articles.
Across 979 Korean actors joined to Netflix's country charts, those with a title in 20+ countries draw 3.09× the median Wikipedia lookups. Match on how many titles they have and how recently they charted, and only one group keeps the gap.
Across 1,008 Korean actors and 2,361 K-pop acts, the biggest single day is about 5% of a 30-day month for both. The raw gap of 5.5% against 6.2% disappears once the two groups are compared at the same size.
Across 635 charting Korean titles there are 13,558 pairs of actors who have shared a production. 250 of them have done it more than once. Shuffle the same casts at random and you get about 208. The repertory company is mostly not there.
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.
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.
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.
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 six to nine charting Korean titles are looked up seven times as often as those in one. But the busiest are not the most looked-up: Lee Byung-hun has 19 charting titles and 54,309 views; Steven Yeun has one and 106,201.
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.