Korean pop culture, in numbers

The Silent Sea

A Korean series that reached a Netflix weekly top 10 in 76 of 93 countries, holding 124 chart places across 5 weeks between 2021-12-26 and 2022-01-23. Its best position anywhere was number 1.

It reached 76 of the 93 countries — further than 96% of the Korean series in this data. It reached number one in 6 of them — Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and 2 more. Its longest presence was in South Korea, where it held 5 chart places. Its widest single week was 2022-01-02, when it sat on 76 country charts at once.

The Silent Sea on Netflix, country by country — all 76 markets

MarketPlacesBest positionFirst weekLast week
Australia152022-01-022022-01-02
Austria172022-01-022022-01-02
Bahamas162022-01-022022-01-02
Bahrain242022-01-022022-01-09
Bangladesh432021-12-262022-01-16
Belgium162022-01-022022-01-02
Brazil182022-01-022022-01-02
Bulgaria352021-12-262022-01-09
Canada172022-01-022022-01-02
Chile1102022-01-022022-01-02
Croatia262021-12-262022-01-02
Czech Republic272021-12-262022-01-02
Denmark192022-01-022022-01-02
Egypt242022-01-022022-01-09
Estonia152022-01-022022-01-02
Finland252021-12-262022-01-02
France152022-01-022022-01-02
Germany162022-01-022022-01-02
Greece262021-12-262022-01-02
Guadeloupe172022-01-022022-01-02
Hong Kong342021-12-262022-01-09
Hungary192022-01-022022-01-02
Iceland182022-01-022022-01-02
India372022-01-022022-01-16
Indonesia412021-12-262022-01-16
Israel1102022-01-022022-01-02
Italy182022-01-022022-01-02
Jamaica192022-01-022022-01-02
Japan132022-01-022022-01-02
Jordan152022-01-022022-01-02
Kenya1102022-01-022022-01-02
Kuwait342021-12-262022-01-09
Latvia182022-01-022022-01-02
Lebanon192022-01-022022-01-02
Lithuania162022-01-022022-01-02
Luxembourg172022-01-022022-01-02
Malaysia312021-12-262022-01-09
Maldives232021-12-262022-01-02
Martinique182022-01-022022-01-02
Mauritius142022-01-022022-01-02
Mexico182022-01-022022-01-02
Morocco152022-01-022022-01-02
New Caledonia172022-01-022022-01-02
New Zealand152022-01-022022-01-02
Nigeria182022-01-022022-01-02
Norway182022-01-022022-01-02
Oman152022-01-022022-01-02
Pakistan152022-01-022022-01-02
Peru1102022-01-022022-01-02
Philippines312021-12-262022-01-09
Poland262021-12-262022-01-02
Portugal1102022-01-022022-01-02
Qatar332021-12-262022-01-09
Réunion152022-01-022022-01-02
Romania252021-12-262022-01-02
Saudi Arabia252022-01-022022-01-09
Serbia162022-01-022022-01-02
Singapore312021-12-262022-01-09
Slovakia172022-01-022022-01-02
Slovenia172022-01-022022-01-02
South Africa1102022-01-022022-01-02
South Korea512021-12-262022-01-23
Spain192022-01-022022-01-02
Sri Lanka242021-12-262022-01-02
Sweden292021-12-262022-01-02
Switzerland182022-01-022022-01-02
Taiwan322021-12-262022-01-09
Thailand412021-12-262022-01-16
Trinidad and Tobago172022-01-022022-01-02
Turkey252021-12-262022-01-02
Ukraine1102022-01-022022-01-02
United Arab Emirates342021-12-262022-01-09
United Kingdom172022-01-022022-01-02
United States152022-01-022022-01-02
Uruguay192022-01-022022-01-02
Vietnam322021-12-262022-01-09

Markets are in alphabetical order, not in order of size. A market name is a link only where that country has a page of its own; the rest are plain text rather than a link that goes nowhere.

What a place is. A place is one appearance in one country's weekly top 10. A title that sat at number 4 in Vietnam for three weeks holds three places there. Reach counts the countries a title appeared in at least once, out of 93.

Charted here is not the same as available here. A chart place does show the title was on Netflix in that country that week — that much follows. The reverse does not: a country missing from this list may still have carried the title without it reaching a top 10. We hold chart lists, not catalogue listings, and we do not guess the difference.

The Silent Sea — hit or flop?

We will not say, and neither can the chart. Netflix's country lists record that a title held a top-ten place in a country in a week. They do not record how many people watched it, what it cost, or what anyone expected of it — and those are the three things the words hit and flop are actually about.

What we can tell you is where it sits. Of the 546 Korean titles with a page here, 22 reached more markets than The Silent Sea and 522 reached fewer. It travelled further than the typical Korean title that charted at all, which reached 2.

That is a position, not a verdict. A title can hold a hundred chart places in small markets and a title can hold four in the largest ones; the file does not say which of those a person means by success. You have the shape — the judgement is yours.

Beside the median charting Korean title

The Silent SeaMedian Korean title that charted
Markets reached762
Weeks on a chart somewhere54
Chart places held1245

The median is taken across all 974 Korean titles that reached any country top 10, most of which charted in one or two markets. This is a comparison, not a ranking — we do not publish a league of titles, and a title well above the median is a title that travelled, not a title that is better.

All at once, or one country at a time

It reached 76 markets in all. The most that held it in the same week was 76 — the week of 2022-01-02.

Every market it ever reached held it at the same time, which is what a simultaneous opening looks like in this data.

How it left. Counting each country separately, it ended 76 runs on a chart. The middle one ended from position 7, and 33 of 76 ended from positions 8 to 10. Across all Korean titles that figure is 56.8%, and it would be 30% if leaving had nothing to do with position — how a title leaves has the whole table.

Chart places by year

YearPlaces
202124
2022100

⚠ 2021 and 2026 are part years — Netflix's weekly country lists start 2021-07-04 and our copy ends 2026-08-23, so those two rows cover fewer weeks than the others and cannot be compared with them.

Where to walk from here

Other Korean titles on this site that share a named person or a credited company with The Silent Sea. The reason is given beside each one, because a shared name is the only claim being made — not that the two are alike.

Put this title in context

The same weekly files, cut five other ways. Each of these answers a question this page cannot: not what happened to The Silent Sea, but what happened around it.

The Silent Sea cast

10 names recorded as Korean, alphabetically. Wikidata cast lists are incomplete and skew toward better-known names, so this is not a full cast list and a short one does not mean a small production.

Bae Doona · Gong Yoo · Heo Sung-tae · Jeong Soon-won · Kang Mal-Geum · Kil Hae-yeon · Kim Si-a · Kim Sun-young · Lee Joon · Lee Moo-saeng

10 of these 10 names have pages of their own here, showing every other charting title they appear in and how far each one travelled. The rest do not, because we hold fewer than two charting titles for them.

Was The Silent Sea a hit or a flop?

We are not going to rule on that, and neither can anyone else working from this data. Netflix publishes no budget, no revenue and no viewing hours by country, so a chart position cannot be turned into a verdict. Several Korean titles opened in cinemas first, and that run is not in this data at all.

What we can give you is the thing the word “flop” is really reaching for: somewhere to stand. Of the 974 Korean titles that entered any country’s Netflix weekly top 10 between 2021-07-04 and 2026-08-23, here is where The Silent Sea sits.

MeasureThe Silent SeaWhere that puts it
Countries that charted it76wider than 950 of 974 titles; 1 others reached exactly as many
Weeks on any chart5longer than 563 of 974 titles
Best position reached1number one somewhere — so were 304 of 974 titles

“Number one on Netflix” is not the rare part. 304 of 974 titles — 31% — have been number one in some country in some week, and 65 of those 304 were number one in the only country that ever charted them. Read a rank next to the reach, not on its own. The full distribution, and what it can and cannot say.

What to watch after The Silent Sea

We are not recommending anything. We have no idea what you like, and Netflix publishes nothing about who watched what. What we can tell you is which other Korean titles were on the same country’s top 10, in the same week as The Silent Sea — the list you saw it on. That is a fact about a published chart, and it is the whole of what we are claiming.

TitleCountry-weeks shared
Squid Game40
Our Beloved Summer37
Bulgasal: Immortal Souls21
The King's Affection19
Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha11
The Devil Judge11
The Penthouse: War in Life6
Guardian: The Lonely and Great God5
Miracle: Letters to the President5

The Silent Sea shared a country’s weekly top 10 with 41 other Korean titles across 225 country-weeks in total. The table shows the 9 it sat beside most often, and only those with a page here.

A big number here mostly means the title lasted. A show that held a country’s top 10 for a year sits beside almost everything; a show that charted for one week in one country can sit beside at most nine other titles ever. It does not mean the same people watched both, and it does not mean the two are similar. How we counted this, across every title.

Where these numbers come from, and what they cannot answer

Every Korean title that has charted · Looking for one particular week? · How far a company's catalogue travels · How we count