K-content
Netflix is on the hunt for its next Squid Game, announcing plans this week to pump a further $2.5 billion into South Korean content over the next 4 years after the streamer’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos met with President Yoon Suk Yeol on Monday.
South Korea’s leader hailed the investment as a “large opportunity” for its entertainment sector, with Netflix clearly keen to keep mining the nation’s creative efforts after revealing that more than 60% of subscribers watched Korean titles in 2022.
Giant squidFrom 2019’s Parasite, the first Oscar-winning movie to come from the nation, to the wildly-successful K-pop boyband BTS and their legions of loyal devotees, Hallyu — or the Korean wave — has swept across the western world in recent years. Indeed, sales of cultural products rose to $1.7 billion in 2022, according to the Bank Of Korea, up 48%year-over-year.
But for Netflix specifically, nothing has yet matched up to global hit Squid Game. Indeed, with the exception of Spanish crime drama Money Heist, our analysis of Netflix’s Top 10 data reveals that no non-English shows (or English shows for that matter) have even come close to making the same global splash. Netflix execs will be hoping the $2.5 billion investment in K-content helps change that.
