We continue with our examination of the Netflix Engagement Report. This fourth report covers on the second half of 2024. Its format is the same as the preceding report, so what follows is a comparable analysis of engagement with Korean series and films on the platform.
Of the 6,883 series titles with over 100,000 viewing hours on Netflix between July and December 2024 that made the cut for inclusion in the report, 516 (7.5%) were Korean. Together, they racked up a grand total of 7,801,700,000 viewing hours, representing a moderate increase in terms of raw numbers for Korean series viewing hours compared with the first half of 2024. In total 242,400,000 hours (a little over 3%) more Korean content was viewed in the second half of 2024.
Of the total number of shows available on the platform, 203 Korean titles were among the 2596 series made available globally (i.e., approaching 8% of global releases). The total combined number of viewing hours for these global releases was 5,616,400,000. This also represents a slight increase of 196,300,000 viewing hours compared with the first half of 2024.
Looking across all titles released across the platform, the most viewed series was Korean: the second season of Squid Game. While we continue to use the metric of hours viewed, for now, as we have done since our first attempt at looking at Neflix’s Engagement Reports, it is worth noting that Squid Game was also the most watched show according to the metric of views (that is, total hours viewed divided by runtime). Also to feature in the top ten was Love Next Door (엄마친구아들), which was was fourth most viewed across all titles and third most of those released globally. Further down the list, a total of 18 Korean titles appeared in the top 100, and 132 in the top 1,000, meaning that the Korean offering continues to be disproportionately well represented among the most watched titles to feature in the report at roughly the same rate as they have been over 2023 and the first half of 2024. 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 second 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 8,680 film titles with over 100,000 viewing hours on Netflix between July and December 2024 that made the cut for inclusion in the report, 429 (around 5%) were Korean. Together, they racked up a grand total of 453,300,000 viewing hours. Of those, a scant 39 were among the 1685 titles made available globally (very slightly over 2.3% of those titles), watched for a total of 284,000,000 hours. The difference in availability of series and films as a proportion of globally available content remains striking. While in excess of five times as many Korean series were available globally, compared to films, they racked up just under 20 times as many viewing hours as Korean films over the second half of 2024. It must be borne in mind, though, that a large difference in viewing hours is an unsurprising consequence of the relative lengths of series and films. When we compare the number of views accrued by the top 39 globally released series titles (333,700,000) with the number of views accrued by the globally released films (156,100,000), however, we find that despite their longer runtime Korean series enjoy disproportionately greater global engagement than Korean films. This is very much of a piece with not only earlier examinations of Netflix Engagement Reports, but also the lack of box office success enjoyed by Korean films internationally.
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 and 33 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. Where they appear in both visualisations, languages are represented by the same colours.
From a high-level, aggregated perspective perspective, very little has changed between the first half of 2024 and the second half of the year with regard to global engagement with Korean media on Netflix. On a more granular scale, different titles or new releases have been more globally popular, but the overall picture remains the same. Namely, Korean series appear to enjoy an disproportionately high level of global engagement in comparison to both the global population of Korean speakers and their availability on the platform. Korean films, though, are much less watched in terms of both viewing hours and even the metric of views. It appears that the Korean Wave, if findings of this report can be taken as representative of its status, has yet to subside. Indeed, engagement with Korean series even rose very slightly in the second half of 2024 in comparison to the first half. While we may speculate that this was largely due to the release of the second season of the international breakout Squid Game, even if this is the case such engagement may well be sustained with the release of the third season. In order to determine this, and the status of the K-Wave for the foreseeable future, we will continue to monitor engagement with Korean media on the streaming platform as these reports become available.
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)