#measurement

Sat Aug 15 — 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.

Fri Aug 14 — 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.

Fri Aug 14 — 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.

Fri Aug 14 — 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.

Fri Aug 14 — 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.

Thu Aug 13 — 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.

Thu Aug 13 — 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.

Thu Aug 13 — 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.

Thu Aug 13 — 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.

Thu Aug 13 — 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.

Thu Aug 13 — 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.

Thu Aug 13 — 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.

Thu Aug 13 — 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.

Mon Aug 10 — 289 Korean titles charted somewhere in 2022 and 216 in 2025, while the places they held rose 7.9%. Remove each year's biggest title and the ten largest gained just 3.6 points — most of the concentration is one show returning.

Mon Aug 10 — 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.

Mon Aug 10 — 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.

Mon Aug 10 — 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.

Mon Aug 10 — 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.

Mon Aug 10 — 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.

Mon Aug 10 — 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%.

Mon Aug 10 — 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.

Sun Aug 09 — 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.

Sun Aug 09 — 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.

Sun Aug 09 — Korean titles hold 7.9% of the world's Netflix top 10 places — 39,612 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.

Sun Aug 09 — Between 2022 and 2025 Korean share fell in all ten Asian markets we track, a mean of 9.68 points, and rose in 68 of the other 83. Japan went from 32.6% to 11.2%, and its distinct Korean titles from 62 to 38.

Sun Aug 09 — Among 165 Korean titles that reached 20 countries or more, the first week already holds a median 39.1% of the countries they ever reach. But 57 of them started under 25% and 33 were nearly everywhere at once.

Sun Aug 09 — 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%.

Sun Aug 09 — Korean titles hold 7.9% of Netflix country chart places. Spread evenly that would put at least one on 56.3% of country-weeks; the real figure is 42.0%. Empty weeks run 58.0% against 43.7%, and crowded weeks 4.0% against 0.6%.

Sun Aug 09 — 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.

Sun Aug 09 — Across 812 Korean actors joined to Netflix's country charts, those with a title in 20+ countries draw 2.91× the median Wikipedia lookups. Match on how many titles they have and how recently they charted, and only one group keeps the gap.

Sun Aug 09 — 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.

Sun Aug 09 — The case that Netflix gained leverage over Korean drama runs through cost: $360,000 an episode in 2015 against $9.8m in 2024. We hold no budgets. We do hold the charts, and from 2022 to 2025 concentration fell rather than rose.

Sun Aug 09 — Of 957 gaps of four weeks or more that end with a Korean title back on a country chart, 45.5% carry a different season label — not a return at all. Of the 316 genuine returns, 94.3% happen with no other season nearby.

Sun Aug 09 — 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.

Sun Aug 09 — 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.

Sun Aug 09 — Of 129 companies credited on the 332 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 99, on a thinner base of 151 series.

Sun Aug 09 — 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.

Sat Aug 08 — Across 493,600 country-chart rows, 18,586 weekly lists put one title in two or more places. Seasons explain 26,068 of the 26,093 extra rows. The 25 that are left are two different films sharing one name inside a single top ten.

Sat Aug 08 — 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.

Sat Aug 08 — We tagged every changed figure with the kind of mistake that produced it. One kind accounts for eight of the thirty-three. Four kinds still have no test, and this piece names them rather than reporting the coverage.

Sat Aug 08 — 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 165 — and never charted 151 of them at all. Series enter together; films scatter.

Sat Aug 08 — Across 93 markets, 57.4% 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.

Sat Aug 08 — 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.

Sat Aug 08 — Riot flags a player on a winning run. Across Korea, Vietnam, Europe West, Japan and Southeast Asia the share sits between 18.7% and 20.0%. North America is 30.8%, on all four days — and the obvious explanation fails.

Sat Aug 08 — 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.

Sat Aug 08 — We asked Wikidata which countries made something with each of our 397 chart titles. Films come back ambiguous 58.1% of the time, series 23.6%. Short names are the reason, and Korean films get short names — but that is not the whole gap.

Sat Aug 08 — 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.

Sat Aug 08 — 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.

Sat Aug 08 — 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.

Sat Aug 08 — 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.

Sat Aug 08 — Month by month, Korean titles hold between 6.6% and 9.1% of the world's top-10 places. Remove each month's biggest title and the band gets wider, not narrower. What moves this number is releases, not the calendar.

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.

Sat Aug 08 — Our panel never had a denominator. Wikidata records 784 Korean series and 1,122 Korean films from the chart era; 248 series and 173 films reached a Top 10. Series are twice as likely to be seen at all.

Sat Aug 08 — 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.

Fri Aug 07 — 214 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 — 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.

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 — 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.

Fri Aug 07 — 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.