Netflix Engagement Report January-June 2023

With an extended Winter break approaching for many, one question looms large for those with an opportunity to relax and a Netflix subscription: what are we going to watch? This is not a question I can answer for you, but with the release of What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report on 12/12/2023 we can certainly gain some insight into what we have all been watching. Perhaps it will also be possible to uncover some hidden gems, missed over the first half of this year.

The Korean Wave

By now, it should come as no surprise that Korean titles are well represented in the list. The Korean Wave (or K-Wave) is a longstanding and still current, global, cultural phenomenon that has been the subject of research, journalistic investigation, and a recent exhibition at London’s V&A Museum. The dedicated global fanbase of bands such as BTS, and shows such as Squid Game, among many, many other South Korean cultural products, has been estimated at almost 179 million people as of 2022 by the Korea Foundation.

How many Korean titles make the list, then? Of the 18,214 titles with over 50,000 viewing hours on Netflix between January and June 2023 that made the cut for inclusion in the report, 1,115 (around 6%) were Korean. Together, they racked up a grand total of 7,857,100,000 viewing hours.
Of those, 234 were among the 4,514 titles (around 5%) made available globally, watched for a total of 5,531,400,000 hours. This suggests a sustained global demand for Korean screen media. After all, the almost four fifths of Korean titles to be included in the data-drop that were not made available globally contributed only 2,325,700,000 viewing hours, or just under a third of the reported total. In other words, there is an enormous global audience that seems to be voraciously consuming the limited quantity of Korean media that is available to them, while each of the much larger number of titles that are not released globally is comparatively little viewed, presumably only in South Korea.

Given Netflix’s vast numbers of subscribers, including millions in the internet infrastructure rich South Korea, it may be helpful to know a little bit more about how these titles stack up in terms of the whole list. Looking again just at those titles made available globally, one Korean title was in the top ten most viewed, 17 in the top 100, and 105 in the top 1,000 making the Korean offering disproportionately well represented among the most watched titles to feature in the list. In the graph below, you can see the titles in the top 100 arranged is descending order of hours viewed with the Korean titles highlighted in purple.

As well as the general pattern of a small number of intensely popular shows and a long tail of less popular shows being evident, the sheer prevalence of Korean titles in the context Netflix’s diverse media ecosystem is striking.

This is brought home by a visualisation of the top 100 globally distributed titles broken down by original language. The relative size of the boxes represents the number of viewing hours for each title over the first half of 2023 and you can see the title and number of viewing hours if you mouse over each box. You can also click on each language for a zoomed in view.

Despite having one of the smaller populations of speakers of the languages to feature in the visualisation, Korean-language titles are second only to English-language titles in their total hours watched.

Sadly, data breaking down Netflix subscribers’ viewing habits by region has not been made available, so it is difficult to know where in the world particularly high concentrations of K-Wave viewers can be found. For those curious enough and prepared to break through Bong Jun-ho’s “one-inch tall barrier of subtitles”, the following were the ten most watched Korean titles made available globally through Netflix in the first half of 2023:

  1. The Glory: Season 1 // 더 글로리: 시즌 1 (2022) – An entry into the revenge genre with the protagonist seeking retribution for their experiences of being bullied while at school. Draws inspiration from real incidents in South Korean schools. Followed by a second part released in March 2023, which did not make the list.
  2. Physical: 100: Season 1 // 피지컬: 100: 시즌 1 (2023) – A reality competition show in which athletes, dancers, and others with remarkable physical prowess are pitted against one another in individual and team challenges.
  3. Crash Course in Romance: Limited Series // 일타 스캔들: 리미티드 시리즈 (2023) – A drama following the lives and nascent relationship between a shopkeeper and a maths tutor.
  4. Doctor Cha: Limited Series // 닥터 차정숙: 리미티드 시리즈 (2023) – A drama charting the challenges, mishaps, and triumphs of a longtime homemaker’s transition back into work as a doctor.
  5. Alchemy of Souls: Part 1 // 환혼: 파트 1 (2022) – A fantasy series that tells the epic and personal stories of magic-users in the fictional land of Daeho
  6. Alchemy of Souls: Part 2 // 환혼: 파트 2 (2022) – More of that sort of thing
  7. The Good Bad Mother: Limited Series // 나쁜엄마: 리미티드 시리즈 (2023) – A drama that follows the relationship between a mother and her son who comes to need her care after life, and personality, altering head injury
  8. Bloodhounds: Season 1 // 사냥개들: 시즌 1 (2023) – An action series focused on the adventures of a pair of boxers in Korea’s murky world of private moneylending
  9. Extraordinary Attorney Woo: Season 1 // 이상한 변호사 우영우: 시즌 1 (2022) – A young woman living with autism proves herself as a lawyer working at a large firm while managing relationships with neurotypical colleagues and clients
  10. Business Proposal: Season 1 // 사내맞선: 시즌 1 (2022) – A comedy that arises from a mistaken identity and a CEO proposing to one of their employees

These reports from Netflix should be regular, twice yearly releases with planning for the report covering July to December 2023 already underway. It will certainly be interesting to see how Korean titles have done over the second half of 2023, and hopefully track global viewing habits with respect to Korean titles over the longer term.

Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the Core University Program for Korean Studies of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and Korean Studies Promotion Service at the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2021-OLU-2250004)