- Nearly three in ten Korean titles that reached a Netflix top 10 never left home
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%.
- Korean film and television share actors freely — but less freely than chance alone would produce
Sat Aug 08 — Of 700 actors with two or more charting Korean titles, 61.6% have worked in both film and series. If format meant nothing, the figure would be 73.2%. The gap is the size of the wall, and it is smaller than reputation suggests.
- Lee Byung-hun, Ma Dong-seok and Ha Jung-woo: the busiest names on Netflix Korea are film actors
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.
- Two hops from Squid Game reaches 79% of every Korean title Netflix has charted
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.
- Everything we can say about Korean casting rests on a median of five recorded names per title
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 people and the median film four. Here is what that does to every figure we publish from it.
- Remove Ma Dong-seok, Hwang Jung-min and 98 more, and Korean Netflix is still one connected body
Fri Aug 07 — Of 668 Korean titles with a recorded cast, 651 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 94.6% is still one piece.
- Korean series reach three times as many countries as Korean films, and the gap is not about runtime
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.
- In Southeast Asia a Korean title charts in all six countries or in one. There is little in between.
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.
- Every credited name in Parasite appears in another charting Korean title. In The Influencer, one does.
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.