#korean-drama

Thu Sep 10 — 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.

Mon Sep 07 — 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.

Tue Sep 01 — 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.

Tue Sep 01 — 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.

Tue Sep 01 — 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.

Tue Sep 01 — 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.

Tue Sep 01 — 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.

Tue Sep 01 — 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.

Mon Aug 31 — 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.

Mon Aug 31 — 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.

Mon Aug 24 — 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%.

Sat Aug 15 — 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.

Sat Aug 15 — 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.

Sat Aug 08 — 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.

Sat Aug 08 — 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.

Sat Aug 08 — 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.

Sat Aug 08 — 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.

Fri Aug 07 — 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.

Fri Aug 07 — 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.

Fri Aug 07 — 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.

Fri Aug 07 — 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.

Fri Aug 07 — 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.

Fri Aug 07 — 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.

Fri Aug 07 — 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.

Fri Aug 07 — 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.

Fri Aug 07 — 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.

Fri Aug 07 — 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.

Fri Aug 07 — 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.

Thu Aug 06 — 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.

Thu Aug 06 — 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.