Preamble

Remember how all this started? With this look at Netflix’s very first data drop? Well, on the very same day as last month’s deep dive into what sort of topics The Guardian has been talking about in relation to South Korea over the first twenty years of the twenty first century, Netflix released their data for the second half of 2023. You can read through their brief overview and get a copy of the original data for yourself here. It seems, though, that they have been taking feedback and listening to online chatter about what their report on the first half of 2023 was missing and responded to it by giving the people what they want!

What’s New?

The big changes are as follows:

As such, we’re going to follow the company’s lead and deal with series and films separately. This makes comparisons with our analysis of the first half of 2023 a little problematic. We will still make some comparisons, though, and caveat them appropriately as we do. For the time being, we’ll stick with what we know and look through the data in terms of hours viewed, but it is likely that we will revisit this data after a bit more exploration to see whether there is anything to be learned about (engagement with) the K-Wave from the new metrics of views and runtime.

The K-Wave in Hours Viewed: Series

Of the 6,599 series titles with over 100,000 viewing hours on Netflix between July and December 2023 that made the cut for inclusion in the report, 467 (just over 7%) were Korean. Together, they racked up a grand total of 7,521,300,000 viewing hours (only slightly less that than the 7,857,100,000 hours for which the more than twice the number of both Korean series and film titles included in the 2023 January to June report were viewed). Of those, 212 were among the 3,137 titles (around 6.75%) made available globally, watched for a total of 5,651,900,000 hours. This represents a proportional increase in Korean content and an increase in total hours viewed for Korean content compared to the titles released globally that were included in the report for the first half of 2023. This is especially striking as, again, this is a comparison made with the earlier report which the combined viewing hours of both series and films.

Looking again just at those titles made available globally, the title among series to accrue the largest number of hours viewed was Korean. While no other Korean show appeared in the top ten, it is worth noting that the title with the tenth most hours viewed was Squid Game: The Challenge, a reality competition show based on the internationally popular 2021 Korean series. Further down the list, a total of 22 Korean titles appeared in the top 100, and 122 in the top 1,000 making the Korean offering disproportionately well represented among the most watched titles to feature in the report. In the graph below, you can see the distribution of the titles in the top 1000 arranged in descending order of hours viewed with the Korean titles highlighted in purple.

Turning to the languages represented in the top 100 globally distributed series, the below visualisation breaks them 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.

The K-Wave in Hours Viewed: Films

Of the 9,395 film titles with over 100,000 viewing hours on Netflix between July and December 2023 that made the cut for inclusion in the report, 462 (just under 5%) were Korean. Together, they racked up a grand total of 419,700,000 viewing hours. Of those, a scant 38 were among the 1,643 titles (around 2.3%) made available globally, watched for a total of 135,200,000 hours. The difference in availability of series and films as a proportion of globally available content is striking. This is likely to be one of the factors in Korean series being viewed for over forty times as many hours as Korean films.

Looking again just at those titles made available globally, the difference in engagement on the part of Netflix subscribers is stark. There is no Korean film in the top ten films with the most hours viewed. Further down the list, a total of 3 Korean titles appeared in the top 100, with the highest position being 28th most viewed, and 31 titles appeared in the top 1,000. While, again, the Korean offering is well represented among the most watched film titles to feature in the report, Korean cinema does not yet appear to command the devoted following of Korean series. The reasons for this are not yet clear, but the difference in global availability seems likely to be a factor. Just under half of all Korean series titles available on Netflix were distributed globally in comparison to less than ten percent of all Korean film titles.

This difference is highlighted in the graph below. It shows the distribution of the film titles in the top 1000 arranged in descending order of hours viewed with the Korean titles highlighted in purple.

Turning to the languages represented in the top 100 globally distributed films, the below visualisation breaks them down by original language with similar interactivity the one for series found above. Note, though, that the colours representing each language do not correspond (except by chance) between this treemap and the one above. For example, Korean series appear in orange above, but Korean films appear in red below.

Conclusion

As this is largely an empirical account of the contents of the report, there is little to add by way of conclusion. Rather, we can briefly recapitulate the key findings from the foregoing. Korean titles of both series and films rack up an enormous number of viewing hours. This is more the case for series than films, and Korean series titles are second only to English series titles in terms of numbers of hours viewed on Netflix over the second half of 2023. While the contrast between Korean series and films is striking, it is worth bearing in mind that the number of viewing hours accrued by Korean films is still disproportionate. For example, the three films in the top 100 globally distributed films have a larger combined total of viewing hours than the four Spanish-language films which appear in that list despite the very different sizes of their respective native speaker and second-language speaker populations. Nevertheless, Korean films are less represented than Korean series in the parts of this report we have examined here in depth. While the relatively restricted global distribution of Korean films, at least compared to Korean series, may be a factor in this, such conclusions must remain speculative for the time being. In any event, we will continue to monitor Netflix’s reports and consider what that may tell us about the state of the K-Wave.

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)