K Culture WireKorean pop culture, in numbers

Who exports Korean television

Name: Who exports Korean television, 2012–2024
Creator: K Culture Wire

Export value of Korean broadcast programmes by the kind of company that sold them, every year from 2012 to 2024. Thousands of US dollars, as published.

The business grew. The broadcasters did not.

Total exports went from $233.8m in 2012 to $1,257.2m in 2024 — 5.4×.

Terrestrial broadcasters81.5% → 7.2%$190.5m → $91m · peaked at $267.8m in 2014

Independent production companies7.2% → 51.4%$16.8m → $645.6m · now the largest single category

The companies in that second row are the ones that make the drama series the world streams — several of them are listed, and we count their staff on the workforce page.

Every year, by kind of company

Thousands of US dollars. Share is of that year's published total, not of the four categories added together — they do not add up, and the gap is shown.

Year	Total	Terrestrial broadcasters	Cable and satellite channels	IPTV content providers	Independent production companies	Unattributed
2024	1,257,183	91,0117.2%	294,75223.4%	225,82218.0%	645,59851.4%	00.0%
2023	1,047,219	95,2149.1%	286,01827.3%	286,08227.3%	379,90536.3%	00.0%
2022	948,045	271,24128.6%	290,04830.6%	00.0%	386,75740.8%	-1-0.0%
2021	717,997	213,32729.7%	219,90530.6%	00.0%	284,76739.7%	-2-0.0%
2020	692,790	208,54530.1%	282,99440.8%	00.0%	201,25129.0%	00.0%
2019	539,214	176,46332.7%	190,67935.4%	00.0%	172,07331.9%	-1-0.0%
2018	478,447	171,28935.8%	155,50932.5%	00.0%	151,65131.7%	-2-0.0%
2017	362,403	174,37348.1%	111,20930.7%	00.0%	76,82121.2%	00.0%
2016	411,212	278,51867.7%	68,78916.7%	00.0%	63,90615.5%	-1-0.0%
2015	320,434	245,72776.7%	56,26717.6%	00.0%	18,4405.8%	00.0%
2014	336,019	267,84579.7%	45,96213.7%	00.0%	22,2116.6%	10.0%
2013	309,399	238,91377.2%	48,84215.8%	00.0%	21,6447.0%	00.0%
2012	233,821	190,46681.5%	26,51911.3%	00.0%	16,8357.2%	10.0%

What we wrote from this data

Korea’s music and broadcast exports: same size, 13 years
In ten of thirteen years the two are within 20% of each other. Their year-on-year growth correlates at −0.13. Two industries arriving at the same number by unrelated routes, until 2024 pulled them apart.
8 August 2026
Korea's exports grew 63%. Netflix viewing did not move
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.
7 August 2026
Korea exports more music than television — but only just
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.
7 August 2026
Korea’s TV exports moved to firms where people stay half
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.
7 August 2026 · corrected

Where these numbers come from

Korea Creative Content Agency — Content Industry Survey (한국콘텐츠진흥원 콘텐츠산업조사), via KOSIS table DT_113_STBL_1025706. Each company type is the sum of every export form the survey publishes for it — finished programmes, format sales, video and DVD, time blocks, overseas Korean-broadcast support and other. (국가데이터처 KOSIS, 한국콘텐츠진흥원 「콘텐츠산업조사」). Unit: thousand USD.
The categories add to the total. In 2024 the four kinds of company account for 1,257,183 of a published 1,257,183, exactly. Across all 13 years the largest gap is $2,000, which is rounding.
🔴 Corrected 2026-08-07. This page previously showed a 7.6% residual it could not attribute. There was no residual. The source classifies exports on two levels — the form of export above, the type of company below — and returns only the lower name, so several rows a year read “terrestrial broadcasters” and differ by code alone. We had taken the finished-programme row for three of the four types while the fourth entered whole. Each type is now the sum of every export form published for it, checked against the survey’s own subtotal in the 8 cells where it publishes one — agreeing to within $1,000.
Missing years. IPTV content providers appear only from 2023, which is when the survey began reporting them separately. Blank means the survey published no value, not zero.
What this does not say. The source also breaks terrestrial exports down by individual broadcaster. We do not reproduce that — it turns a structural picture into a league table of companies, and this page is about the shape of the industry, not a ranking of firms.

Sources: KOSIS (국가데이터처) and the Content Industry Survey (한국콘텐츠진흥원 「콘텐츠산업조사」), figures to 2024.

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