Fans watch the idols and the games. Almost nobody counts the people who run the companies behind them. These are 14 listed Korean firms, from their own filings — how long staff stay, how many there are, and who they are.
How long people stay
Company-reported average tenure across all employees, in years, from the latest annual filing. Shown in two groups because they are different kinds of business — not as one ranking.
Entertainment agencies and producers
Cube Entertainment2.2 yr avg · 170 employees · founded 13 yr ago
HYBE3.0 yr avg · 893 employees · founded 22 yr ago
YG Entertainment4.0 yr avg · 438 employees · founded 29 yr ago
SM Entertainment4.1 yr avg · 765 employees · founded 32 yr ago
JYP Entertainment4.2 yr avg · 496 employees · founded 30 yr ago
Studio Dragon4.8 yr avg · 179 employees · founded 10 yr ago
Contentree JoongAng5.2 yr avg · 140 employees · founded 39 yr ago
CJ ENM6.9 yr avg · 3,105 employees · founded 32 yr ago
K-pop labels, drama studios and broadcasters. These are younger businesses with high project turnover, and the average time an employee stays is correspondingly short.
Game studios
Krafton3.2 yr avg · 2,118 employees · founded 20 yr ago
Pearl Abyss4.5 yr avg · 733 employees · founded 16 yr ago
Com2uS5.1 yr avg · 1,505 employees · founded 28 yr ago
Kakao Games5.3 yr avg · 473 employees · founded 13 yr ago
Netmarble5.9 yr avg · 795 employees · founded 15 yr ago
NCsoft7.5 yr avg · 3,262 employees · founded 30 yr ago
Game publishers and developers. They are larger and, on this measure, keep staff longer than the agencies do.
A workforce split by gender
Women as a share of total headcount, from the same filings. The two groups sit on opposite sides of the halfway line, and it is not close.
SM Entertainment71.8% women
JYP Entertainment70.6% women
HYBE68.3% women
YG Entertainment65.8% women
Cube Entertainment65.3% women
CJ ENM63% women
Studio Dragon60.3% women
Kakao Games38.5% women
Contentree JoongAng37.9% women
Netmarble36.1% women
Krafton34.9% women
Com2uS34.8% women
NCsoft32.8% women
Pearl Abyss28.9% women
The entertainment agencies are majority-women workforces; the game studios are majority-men. A 50% line is the reference — this is a composition, not a score.
Broadcasting holds staff 10.3 years, film 7.3, publishing and games 5.4. Pay runs the other way from what that suggests: film pays ₩63.1m against publishing's ₩77.4m while keeping people longer.
Film, video and audio production is 56.9% women. Publishing and games is 34.1%. Both sit above the whole listed market. The 22.8-point gap inside one sector is the larger fact and the filings do not explain it.
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.
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.
6 August 2026
Where these numbers come from
DART electronic disclosure (Financial Supervisory Service) — the employee and officer sections of each company’s annual report. Tenure, headcount and gender share are as the company filed them; we do not estimate any of them.
This is not a ranking, and not a judgement. A short average tenure at a young company is not a worse number than a long one at an old company — it is a different one. We put the figures side by side and name the reason they differ.
Not included: privately held agencies and studios, which file no comparable disclosure. One company on our first list — DAEA TI (045390) — was dropped after checking its filing: it makes railway signalling equipment, not music or games.
Company filings via DART. Figures reflect the latest annual report on file.