How Netflix made us fall in love with Korean dramas?

What would you get if you took a bunch of ripped male K-Pop stars wearing boxing gloves and made them spar in the ring until they sweated? For Netflix: another global success.

Broadcaster’s Korean drama Houndsnow in its second season, is currently tearing up the global viewership charts. The second season attracted 7.4 million viewers last week, making it the most-watched non-English TV show worldwide on the service, and the third most popular show overall.

Hounds Netflix is ​​no exception. Last week, three of the 10 most-watched non-English programs on the service were Korean. The week before that, the percentage was four out of ten, and the week before that, it was three. What are the three most-watched TV seasons on Netflix of all time, and in what language? All Korean.

Those three seasons are seasons 1-3 of Squid game. The life-or-death competition drama broke audience records when it debuted in 2021, becoming a huge hit. 1.65 billion hours watched In his first four weeks. “It was probably the biggest show in the history of television,” said Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos He claimed In 2022. Since its launch, total Squid game Viewing exceeded 4.5 billion hours.

But here’s the thing Squid game: Despite its unparalleled success, it has only been responsible for a small percentage of total viewing of Korean content on Netflix, with viewers around the world embracing Korean storytelling wholeheartedly. From 2023 to 2025, Netflix subscribers streamed more than 51 billion hours of Korean movies and TV shows, according to Netflix data I recently analyzed for them. New special Low corridor a report.

From small pockets of interest to a global phenomenon

Netflix’s success with Korean dramas didn’t come out of nowhere, as Sarandos himself admitted in 2021. “It’s not like we have to go in and teach anyone in South Korea how to create great content.” He said Netflix investors that year. “It’s a great market for it. And there’s always been curiosity around the world. The K-drama market has always had a little chance of success everywhere.”

This includes the United States, where services like DramaFever, Viki, and KDrama have tried to bring Korean storytelling to Western audiences long before it existed. Squid game It became a huge hit for Netflix. DramaFever executives in particular quickly realized that there were untapped audiences for Korean content in the United States. “We (serve) mostly middle-aged women in the Midwest, as well as Latino teens,” says Hyun Park, co-founder of DramaFever.

DramaFever and other services specializing in Korean entertainment have also taken advantage of Hollywood’s blind spots: While major studios have been betting on ever-bigger franchises with huge budgets and well-known stars, Korean shows and movies have been largely ignored. This has reduced licensing costs, and made it possible for these services to purchase overseas rights to Korean TV shows and movies for a bargain.

However, DramaFever was at the end too early. The service was reportedly bundled directly above 400,000 paid subscribers – Not enough for Warner Bros., which shut down DramaFever In 2018just two years after being acquired from SoftBank.

One of the challenges DramaFever faced was trying to build an audience for offbeat shows from scratch. Netflix, on the other hand, has a built-in audience, a massive dubbing process, and recommendation algorithms that help viewers around the world discover titles they might like — whether it’s an action-packed dystopian show like Squid gameheartwarming drama like Extraordinary lawyer Wuor a high school zombie thriller like All of us are dead.

What unites many of these shows and movies, aside from big budgets and stylish productions, are big, emotionally charged storylines about friendship, love, and loss. At the same time, Squid game A take on late-stage capitalism, like a cop show strange Explores the impotence of the separation of state powers, and the agitation Glory It seeks accountability for bullying and emotional abuse—all things that speak to a universal desire to right wrongs.

In addition to its audience and algorithms, Netflix also has deep pockets, and has been willing to spend big on what works, even if it goes against traditional Hollywood ideas about the importance of Western stars and directors. Netflix has committed to investing $500 million in Korean content in 2021. By 2023, Netflix has pledged to spend another $2.5 billion on Korean movies and TV shows. More investments could come as early as this year.

Will all this success spoil the Korean drama?

Netflix’s strategy in Korea has also benefited from some other trends: The COVID-19 pandemic has not only fueled the move to streaming, but also prompted Hollywood studios to halt production on many popular shows — and with it, viewers eager to find something new.

All of this coincided with a growing interest in K-beauty and K-pop, contributing to a virtuous cycle: many K-pop stars work as actors, and their music becomes inspiration for new movies and TV shows. Example: Demon hunters in kpopwhich is now the most streamed movie of all time on Netflix. And yes, it’s made in the USA, but its story will attract more people interested in Korean entertainment.

The K-drama streaming boom hasn’t been without its downsides. Some critics fear that the global success of K-dramas will lead the country’s film industry to dilute its productions, for example abandoning the exploration of issues related to class differences that many K-dramas touch upon today. Here’s how Georgetown University assistant professor Jining Choi puts it In an interview last month:

“When the lights get that bright, the logic of production can change: bigger budgets, tighter timelines, higher expectations, more stakeholders. And when risks start to seem too expensive, projects can drift toward what’s already been proven—familiar beats, familiar acting, familiar pacing. The worry you hear is whether you’ll end up with a set of reliable templates, while the weirder, more obvious, less algorithm-friendly stories have a harder time making them.”

There are also concerns that the global boom in K-drama will shift the focus of the Korean entertainment industry towards international audiences to compensate for the faltering domestic market. Box office sales in South Korea declined 16 percent During the first 11 months of 2025. While theaters have rebounded from the pandemic in many European markets, reaching 80% of their 2019 total in the United States last year, Korean ticket sales are still about half of what they were before the pandemic.

Park believes that one of the problems plaguing the country’s film and television industry is its short-term thinking that prevents it from building lasting franchises. “Korean companies have been bad at maintaining and preserving intellectual property,” he says. “We give our intellectual property away to whoever pays for it, we do one season of our story, and then we move on to the next season. I think that has destroyed our market.” Instead of building long-term franchises, Korean studios have traditionally treated shows as short-term projects, selling all rights to local broadcast stations. He worries that streaming companies like Netflix, which want global rights to their projects, could make the trend worse.

But there is a warning. “My disclaimer is: Thanks to Netflix, Korean content is here,” Park says.

This goes both ways: Thanks to the success it’s had with Korean content, Netflix is ​​also feeling emboldened to invest more in other markets that haven’t traditionally been seen as promising hunting grounds for global TV successes. The company now produces originals in 50 countries and is making significant investments in markets such as Japan and India.

Or as Sarandos said, speaking of success Squid game In 2021: “It proves that great storytelling from anywhere in the world can entertain the world.”

For more data and insights into Netflix’s success with Korean dramas, Check out my free report: The K-Flix Phenomenon.