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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%.

Sun Aug 16 — Korean actors with five or more charting titles are read seven times as often as actors with one, across four Southeast Asian Wikipedias. Pick one from each group at random and the busier one wins 82% of the time — a long way from a rule.

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 — 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.

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 — 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 — Across 801 matched pairs, a Korean series sits at rank 5.73 on the weeks a stablemate shares the chart and 5.2 on the weeks it is alone. The direction is the one schedulers fear. The size is half of one place out of ten.

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 — They are a different kind of title: 2.21 markets on average against 4.67, and one in seven reaches #1 against one in two. Netflix's Korean chart is not a smaller version of the regional one — it is a different chart.

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 — 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.

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 — 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.

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 — 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 — 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 — 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 — 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.

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 — Korean titles have drawn between 74 and 79 million hours a week from Netflix's global chart in every year that did not carry a Squid Game release. Over the same span, music and broadcast exports went from $1.88bn to $3.06bn.

Fri Aug 07 — 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.

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 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.

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 — 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.

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. Squid Game is 21.3% of it, the 50 biggest titles are nearly three-quarters, and reaching number one multiplies a show's hours without lengthening its run.

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.