21 pieces, newest first. Every one of them names its sources, says what we cross-checked, and states what we could not measure and left out.
Screen 8 · Music 5 · Industry 3 · People 3 · Esports 2 · first published 6 August 2026
5 of these carry a correction. We keep the old value beside the new one on the corrections page.
204 of 405 titles never reached a global Top 10, so Netflix's language label — the only thing that separates a Korean work from a foreign one with the same name — cannot be applied to them. They are also the small ones.
Built from /titles · /reach · /staying-power
Korean titles have drawn between 74 and 79 million hours a week from Netflix's global chart in every year that did not carry a Squid Game release. Over the same span, music and broadcast exports went from $1.88bn to $3.06bn.
Built from /watched · /exports · /tv-exports
Europe West's challengers average 921 ranked games to Korea's 770 and Southeast Asia's 410. In five of six regions you play more to reach the top tier. In Vietnam you play less, on all four days measured.
Built from /esports · /ladder-gap · /ladder-churn
In 2012 the two were the same size to within half a percent. Broadcast was ahead again as recently as 2022. In 2024 music pulled to $1.80bn against $1.26bn, the widest gap in thirteen years.
Built from /exports · /tv-exports
Terrestrial broadcasters were 81.5% of Korea's TV exports in 2012 and 7.2% in 2024. Their staff average 10.3 years of service — the longest in Korean content. The producers who took the trade average 5.4 to 7.3.
Built from /tv-exports · /industry
One Netflix title is 21.3% of all Korean viewing. The most looked-up Korean actor is 3.1% of all attention. And within the fifty most-searched, appearing in more charting titles does not predict being looked up more.
Actors in six to nine charting Korean titles are looked up seven times as often as those in one. But the busiest are not the most looked-up: Lee Byung-hun has 19 charting titles and 54,309 views; Steven Yeun has one and 106,201.
Built from /actors
Of 660 Korean titles with a recorded cast, 639 form a single connected body through shared actors. We expected a few very busy people to be holding it together. Take out the 100 busiest and 93.5% is still one piece.
Among the 232 Korean titles Netflix has verifiably filed as Non-English, the median series charted in 35 countries and the median film in 11. Series also last longer — but the country gap is the one runtime cannot explain.
Of 405 Korean titles that reached a Netflix Top 10 in Southeast Asia since 2021, 44.4% charted in all six countries and 31.9% in exactly one. Series average 4.6 countries; films average 2.6.
For the typical act, the biggest single day is 5.5% of a 30-day month. For the ten largest names the median is 11.0%. BTS sits at 25.1%, and all six of its measurable members peaked on the same date.
Built from /kpop-attention
154 of the 1,545 individuals in our K-pop panel also appear in Korean titles that reached a Netflix Top 10. They are 10% of the names and 32.6% of the attention. Removing them does not correct the list. It produces a second one.
Built from /kpop-attention · /actors
Across 86 groups whose full membership can be measured, the members' pages were opened 3.88 times as often as the group's. Newer groups looked like the opposite until we checked why: Wikidata lists two members for Fromis 9.
Built from /kpop-attention
The weekly charts carry nine columns and none is country of production. Match titles by name, as everyone must, and 17% of Korean viewing sits on names another country also uses. We measured the gap and publish its size.
Built from /watched · /screen-split · /corrections
Our Korean Netflix catalogue was 294 titles and 27.7 billion hours. It is 236 and 23.7 billion. Here is the mistake, how it spread, why counting alone would never have caught it, and what we changed so it cannot happen the same way twice.
Built from /watched · /titles · /staying-power
Across 297 Korean productions with five or more recorded cast, the median has 16.7% of its cast appearing in nothing else that charted. The spread runs from 0% to 100%, and it separates prestige work from reality and youth casting.
Korea's top 300 League of Legends players win 53.65% of their ranked games — the lowest of six regions, on all four days we have measured. A win rate at the top is set by who you have to play, and in Korea that is everybody else.
Built from /esports · /ladder-gap
396 webtoon businesses were surveyed in 2024. The 28 platforms average ₩94.5bn each; the 368 content providers average ₩1.5bn. The average describes almost nobody, and the studios that draw the comics sit at the bottom of it.
Built from /webtoon
Korean music exports went from $22m in 2005 to $1.80bn in 2024. Japan's share more than halved — but Japanese sales grew 1.7× since 2018 while North America grew 39×. The concentration broke because everywhere else caught up.
Built from /exports
Five years of Netflix's global Top 10 hold 23.7 billion hours of Korean viewing. Squid Game is 21.3% of it, the 50 biggest titles are nearly three-quarters, and reaching number one multiplies a show's hours without lengthening its run.
Built from /watched · /staying-power · /screen-split
Netflix's Korean catalogue has been watched 23.7 billion hours. The listed companies in that business keep staff 5.5 years against 11.3 across Korea's listed market — and their two halves are mirror-image workforces.
Built from /workforce · /industry · /watched