For the foreseeable future, while Netflix publish this dataset, I will keep looking at it! We continue on from the first and second half of 2023 with a look at global streaming habits for the first half of 2024.
Of the 6,801 series titles with over 100,000 viewing hours on Netflix between January and June 2024 that made the cut for inclusion in the report, 466 (around 6.9%) were Korean. Together, they racked up a grand total of 7,559,300,000 viewing hours a broadly comparable to the number of Korean series viewing hours for the second half of 2023, but for the sake of precision 38,000,000 hours more Korean content were viewed in the first half of 2024). Of those, 189 were among the 2,572 titles made available globally (i.e., around 7.3% of global releases), watched for a total of 5,420,100,000 hours, which represents a slight decrease of 231,800,000 viewing hours compared with the second half of 2023.
Looking again just at those titles made available globally, the third most viewed series globally was Korean. While no other Korean show appeared in the top ten, just outside of it, the title with the eleventh most hours viewed was also Korean. Further down the list, a total of 21 Korean titles appeared in the top 100, and 128 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. This graph is interactive. Mousing over the bar brings up a tool-tip showing rank, hours viewed, and whether the language was Korean or not. Individual categories can be highlighted by double clicking on the legend to the right of the plot.
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 2024 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.
Of the 9,360 film titles with over 100,000 viewing hours on Netflix between January and June 2024 that made the cut for inclusion in the report, 467 (just under 5%) were Korean. Together, they racked up a grand total of 437,900,000 viewing hours. Of those, a scant 37 were among the 1,704 titles made available globally (very slightly over 2% of those titles), watched for a total of 251,400,000 hours. The difference in availability of series and films as a proportion of globally available content remains striking. Korean series racked up just over 21 times as many viewing hours as Korean films over the first half of 2024. As a film of 100 minutes has a run time 12 times shorter than a 20 hour series, a large difference in viewing hours is not surprising. That is should be so disproportionate, however, is telling of the relative global popularity of Korean series in comparison to 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, although the film with th eleventh largest number of viewing hours was Korean. Further down the list, a total of 2 Korean titles appeared in the top 100 and 29 titles appeared in the top 1,000, making the appearance of Korean films in these sections of the list broadly representative of their proportional appearance among the entire set of titles released globally during this period.
The difference between the reception of Korean films and series can be clearly seen by comparing the graph below with the bar chart above. Below, we see the distribution of the film titles in the top 1000 arranged in descending order of hours viewed with the Korean titles highlighted in purple. Like the above graph for series, it is interactive
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 brown below.
As these pieces concentrate on conveying the empirical content of the reports, there is little to add by way of conclusion. We can, however briefly recapitulate our key findings and draw attention to some particular points of interest. Both Korean series and Korean films to be globally released on Netflix drew large audiences and racked up an enormous combined number of viewing hours. Despite the large headline figure for viewing hours, only a relatively small number of Korean films were distributed globally and they did not receive a particularly disproportionate amount of interest on the platform in terms of viewing hours. Korean series, however, are received both a wider global distributed and disproportionately large number of viewing hours. As an example of this, at the top of the distribution, i.e., in the top hundred most viewed series, Korean remains second only to English, being more viewed than Spanish-language and Chinese-language series. We further note that this situation, with regard to both Korean films and Korean series, represents a minimal change from the second half of 2023. What this stability means for the Korean Wave, whether it is an inflection point, a plateau, or simply the new normal, remains to be seen. Only time and continuing analysis of these reports as they become available will tell!
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)