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Although they have not yet arrived in the mainstream As they have done, for example, The Turkish soapsKorean fictions are followed by millions of people worldwide and have transcended the borders of Asian countries. Netflix is to blameand has led to South Korea to be known for much more diverse and varied productions than the one that remains its greatest success, ‘the squid game’. However, Netflix machinery He also has his dark side and has been about to crack the solid bases of the genre.
Korean explosion. In recent years, Korean or K-Drams fictions have experienced unprecedented growth. Netflix has been a key actor in this phenomenon, positioning the South Korean content as The second most watched globallyonly behind American productions. Since 2023, K-Drams are between 8% and 9% of the total visualization hours in Netflix, highlighting titles such as ‘The Squid’s game’, but also ‘The Queen of Tears’, ‘Crash Landing on You’ or ‘Love at the door next door.’
Cloud expenses. Netflix investment in Korean products It is very important: More than half of the popular Korean titles on the platform are originals of Netflix herself, and about a third are exclusive, many of them made in collaboration with local studies. However, The costs have shot: At present, the average price per episode is about $ 700,000, arriving in some cases, such as ‘the squid game’, to exceed two million dollars per episode, more than double what they cost in 2020, and much more than they cost before the arrival of Netflix (about 200,000 dollars). Success series such as ‘If life gives you mandarins’ cost more than 40 million dollars per season.
Fall in production. The consequences that Netflix, a powerful platform and with financial muscle, has multiplied costs to generate luxurious and interesting productions for the international public are multiple. On the one hand, production has fallen, especially the one that comes from medium -sized companies and produced by traditional Korean channels: From 141 in 2022 to 123 in 2023 already just 100 in 2024. A pressure has also been generated so that the series are more expensive, which has multiplied the number of blockbustersbut it has reduced the average productions.
The superstars. The architects of the Korean series know that the deals are often the authentic causing causes a series to succeed, which leads to a good part of the budgets to be invested in the protagonists, which can come to charge around 500,000 dollars per episode. One of the decisions that Netflix has taken to stop is climbing in the series budgets that can make the industry crackimitate the salaries of the actorswhich has set 400 million WON (just under $ 300,000) per episode.
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Goodbye to risk. The Korean fiction industry is at a key moment, where it is continually discussed between profitability and quality. The increase in budgets has raised expectations on the series, but has also increased financial risk, to the point that, unlike the situation before the arrival of Netflix, The series need to be global successes To recover the investment. This entails an added danger: to greater financial risk, less taste for risk, more will tend to be conservative, to embrace proven success formulas. What can make the Korean series lose one of their indisputable strengths for the global public: the ability to surprise.
Has Netflix charged the Korean fiction industry? Of course, it has immersed it in a dynamic of inflated budgets and the need for show that at the moment, it is affecting medium, authentic mortar productions that give solidity to the industry with volume and stability. Korea has a clear benchmark to not look for mistakes: Hollywood, plunged into a creative crisis and an elephantiasis in the productions that question its near future. For now, the South Korean industry has a margin to react. If Netflix allows it.
Header | Netflix
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The news
Netflix has left the fever by the Korean series: they are drowning in their own money
It was originally posted in
Xataka
by
John Tones
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