This month, we continue with our examination of the Netflix Engagement Reports. This fifth report covers on the first half of 2025. 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 7508 series titles with over 100,000 viewing hours on Netflix between July and December 2024 that made the cut for inclusion in the report, 591 (just under 8%) were Korean. Together, they racked up a grand total of 9,686,800,000 viewing hours, representing a staggeringly large increase in terms of raw numbers for Korean series viewing hours compared with the second half of 2024. In total 1,885,100,000 hours more Korean content (a little over 24%) was viewed in the first half of 2025 than the second half of 2024. Indeed, this represents the highest total number of hours viewed for Korean series reported in any of the Netflix viewer engagement reports published so far by a considerable margin.
Of the total number of shows available on the platform, 223 Korean titles were among the 2784 series made available globally (i.e., around 8% of global releases). The total combined number of viewing hours for these global releases was 7,227,300,000. This also represents a substantial increase of 1,610,900,000 viewing hours compared with the second half of 2024.
Looking across all titles released across the platform, the most viewed series was Korean: the second season of Squid Game. While the third season was only the sixth most watched series title, the scale of the engagement with the third season can be highlighted by considering its release date of the twenty seventh of June 2025. In other words, it took only four days for the series to become the sixth most watched during the entire surveyed period (the first of January 2025 to the thirtieth of June 2025), in terms of hours viewed, on the entire platform. 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 seasons two and three Squid Game were also the second and third most watched shows, respectively according to the metric of views (that is, total hours viewed divided by runtime). Also to feature in the top ten global releases in terms of hours viewed was the first season of Squid Game (eighth most watched), and When Life Gives You Tangerines (폭싹 속았수다), the nostalgic slice-of-life drama set in Jeju that was the second most viewed series among global releases.
Further down the list, a total of 25 Korean titles appeared in the top 100 global releases, and 137 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 a very slightly higher rate in the top 100 and roughly the same rate in the top 1,000 as they have been over 2023 and the 2024. In the graph below, you can see the distribution of the titles in the top 1,000 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, title, 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 2025 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 8,674 film titles with over 100,000 viewing hours on Netflix between January and June 2025 that made the cut for inclusion in the report, 428 (just under 5%) were Korean. Together, they racked up a grand total of 413,400,000 viewing hours. Of those, a scant 42 were among the 1,843 titles made available globally (very slightly over 2% of those titles), watched for a total of 234,200,000 hours. The difference in availability of series and films as a proportion of globally available content remains striking. The disproportionate lack of engagement with Korean cinema (in comparison to Korean series, at least) 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 2 Korean titles appeared in the top 100 and 36 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 film titles released globally over 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 to 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, we see quite an increase in engagement with Korean series on Netflix in comparison to the second half of 2024 while engagement with film titles remains roughly the same. If findings of this report can be taken as representative of its status, it appears that the Korean Wave, has yet to subside.
While it remains a matter of speculation, much of the increased engagement with Korean evident in this report may be attributable to the phenomenal success of Squid Game, due to the release of its third, concluding season and the rewatching of prior seasons it caused. It seems unlikely that engagement on the scale observed in this report could be sustained without a similar international breakout series title on the horizon. It will, however, be interesting to see how the much-reported success of K-Pop Demon Hunters will be reflected in the report for the second half of 2025.
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)