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Korean drama breaks into the world, the "glory and darkness" behind Netflix's magic

"Dark Glory" can't solve Netflix's dilemma

Author|Qingcheng

Cover source|"Dark Glory 2" stills

Moon Dong-eun, a victim who sacrificed his life for revenge, Joo Ru-jung, the "executioner" who danced the sword for his lover, and Park Yeon-jin, the evil daughter Park Yeon-jin who paid a heavy price for her crime - this spring, the Korean "cool drama" "Dark Glory" stirred the nerves of audiences around the world.

Following "Squid Game", another blockbuster Korean drama that aroused great repercussions around the world was born.

According to streaming statistics website FlixPatrol data, on March 13, "Dark Glory" topped the Netflix (hereinafter referred to as "Netflix") TV program list, ranking first in South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and other 38 places, and ranking second in 21 places including France, Switzerland, Canada, and India. On Douban, more than 180,000 people gave "Dark Glory 2" a high score of 9.2, and various "hot terriers" related to it are popular all over Chinese Internet.

After K-pop and K-movie, K-drama is on the rise. Netflix + Korean dramas, what kind of "magic" has collided?

K-drama takes the world by storm

"The bad guys have been punished, the protagonist has started a happy life, and this deserved ending has finally waited for once, and it is finally no longer a bad drama where the protagonist forgives and puts down the bad guy's own repentance." On Douban, this comment has received nearly 8,000 likes.

The revenge story told by "Dark Glory" is gaining global resonance.

"Dark Glory 2" stills

After its launch on December 30 last year, the first part of "Dark Glory" set a record of 82.48 million viewers for two consecutive weeks, topping the world's first non-English drama. In March, the second installment of "Dark Glory" was launched, and in just three days, it topped Netflix's global ratings list, reaching a staggering 124.4 million hours of viewership worldwide, far surpassing the fourth season of the most popular English-language drama "You" in the same period (75.8 million hours).

The last time a non-English drama was so exaggerated to crush an English drama also came from a Korean drama - "Squid Game" launched by Netflix in 2021.

The drama topped the "Today's Ratings List" in 94 countries, with a global audience of 111 million, and was called the most successful drama ever by Netflix, and its influence is almost comparable to the top film and television works in Europe and the United States such as "Game of Thrones".

In addition to high ratings, the show also won 6 Emmy Awards including Best Director and Best Actor, creating Korean drama history. According to Bloomberg, "Squid Game" brought nearly $900 million in value to Netflix, almost 40 times the cost of production.

A still from "Squid Game"

Time goes further, in 2019, Netflix's self-made Korean drama "Kingdom" with a costume zombie theme was launched in 190 countries and regions around the world, and the first season was selected by the New York Times as the top ten international dramas of the year, and after the second season was launched, it entered the top ten hit dramas in various regions.

"The fact that South Korea is in an important position in global entertainment has been taken for granted." The Associated Press said with admiration.

In the list of "Top 10 Highlights in 2022" announced by Netflix's official website GlobalNews, the Korean drama "Very Lawyer Woo Young-woo" and "Zombie Campus" ranked first and second respectively, and "Blind Date in the Company" ranked eighth.

A still from "Zombie Campus"

"The wave of K-contents is sweeping the globe, more intense than ever." According to Netflix, about 60% of members in more than 190 countries and regions around the world have watched at least one Korean film and television production in 2022.

This is a surprising and even upending cultural phenomenon. For many years, although Korean dramas have been popular in Asia, they have always been difficult to break into the European and American markets.

South Korean scholar Kim Hye-won believes that the Korean Wave is a successful example of total Westernization: South Korean popular culture is popular in Asian countries because it portrays the Westernization that other Asian countries generally aspire to, but it is not attractive to Western audiences.

Canada's "Edmonton Globe" analyzed the reasons for the cold of "You from the Star" in Europe and the United States, saying, "This kind of love story between aliens and earthlings is not new to European and American audiences who have a history of more than 60 years of TV drama development." ”

Netflix's intrusion has changed this dilemma faced by Korean dramas.

"You from the Star" poster

Netflix "magic": big data + banknote capabilities

The fires of "Dark Glory", "Squid Game" and "Kingdom" are both a benchmark for Korean cultural export and a victory for Netflix's globalization strategy.

Korean dramas have transformed from the story of "not new at all" in the mouths of European and American media into today's "trendy sharp goods", which is inseparable from Netflix's reshaping of the Korean film and television industry.

In 2016, due to the sluggish growth and intensified competition in the US domestic market, Netflix officially entered South Korea to find new overseas incremental markets. From the purchase of copyrights to the co-production of dramas with Korean pay TV stations, Netflix spent 3 years gradually understanding and mastering the laws of Korean film and television production, and began to make efforts to make its own Korean dramas.

"Kingdom" in 2019 is the first successful landing of "Netflix Experience" in South Korea, and it also opens the prelude to a new round of globalization of Korean dramas.

Unlike traditional Korean television, Netflix has a powerful data analysis system specifically designed to accurately understand viewers' preferences. The streaming giant has integrated each user's viewing preferences into databaselogic, combing out about 2,000 "TasteClusters".

Netflix's project decisions are inseparable from these "taste clusters," the most famous example being House of Cards.

The filming plan for "House of Cards" has been submitted to HBO, Showtime, AMC and other American television networks, but the senior producers of these first-line TV stations generally believe that a political thriller adapted from the United Kingdom does not have a high success rate in the US market.

But when the Netflix team analyzed the data on the viewing habits of users on their own website, they found three facts: the British version of "House of Cards" has a large audience; A large number of users watch and very much like David Fincher's "Rejuvenation" and "The Social Network"; People who watch the British version of "House of Cards" also like to watch Kevin Spacey movies or movies directed by David Fincher.

Based on these insights, Netflix decisively spent $100 million to book the production of two seasons of "House of Cards", and finally became a hit.

In South Korea, Netflix copied this proven style of play. Through market research and data analysis, combined with the taste cluster data of its own platform, "Kingdom" combines the local history of Korea with the zombie culture popular in East Asia at that time, and adopts an internationally influential cast and a first-line Korean creative team.

"Kingdom" stills

Find the genre that the audience likes the most, and extract the elements that the audience is most familiar with - Netflix's data analysis method builds a bridge between film and television practitioners in different countries and the expectations of global audiences. The combination of the globally popular narrative type and the historical and cultural elements of various countries, the differences in history and culture of different regions and the connection and innovation of different cultural elements can also bring users uninterrupted freshness and excitement.

In terms of production, like "House of Cards", Netflix also threw a lot of money at "Kingdom". The shooting cost of a single episode in the first season was equivalent to 12 million yuan, and in the second season, this figure increased to 18 million yuan. With a front-line team, top-tier investment and a localized story, Kingdom has enjoyed Netflix's global success.

Since then, Netflix has increased its investment in Korean dramas.

In February 2021, Netflix announced that it would invest US$500 million (about 3.443 billion yuan) in South Korea for content production. From 2015 to 2022, Netflix invested about $1.2 billion in local Korean movies and TV series.

Before Netflix entered, the average production cost of Korean domestic TV dramas was 400 million ~ 500 million won per episode, equivalent to 2.1 million ~ 2.63 million yuan. Netflix raised this figure to 2 billion ~ 3 billion won (about 10.52 million ~ 15.78 million yuan), making up for the shortcomings of the short cycle and small investment of Korean film and television, and also greatly improving the texture of Korean dramas. The production cost of "Squid Game 2" under production is 100 billion won (about 526 million yuan), which has once again pushed up the ceiling.

In addition to direct investment in content production, Netflix is also working to improve the level of South Korea's film and television industry. In 2021, it invested in the construction of two large-scale filming bases in South Korea. In May 2022, Netflix announced that its special effects company, ScanlineVFX, would invest $100 million in South Korea by 2027 to build a special effects production company.

The combination of big data and "banknote capabilities" has allowed Netflix to embark on a unique path of "glocalization" (the integration of globalization and localization, a concept proposed by American cultural sociologist Roland Robertson).

Korean dramas are on fire, and there are more people picking fruits

After setting up the successful benchmark of Korean dramas, will Netflix's road of "ball soilization" definitely go faster and smoother?

I'm afraid the answer is no.

After the Asian financial turmoil in 1997, the South Korean economy was hit hard, the then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung proposed the "culture nation" development strategy, South Korea began to vigorously support film and television, music, tourism and other industries, South Korea's cultural industry export scale ushered in rapid growth. Under the strategy of "building a nation through culture" for many years, South Korea's film and television industry has a good foundation, active talents, and similar to the production concept of American dramas. Therefore, the Netflix model can be successfully implemented in South Korea.

But outside of Korean dramas, Netflix's "magic" is always out of time in other countries and regions.

A still from "Alice in the Land of Death"

When the Japanese drama "Alice in the Land of Death" was launched in 2020, it had 18 million viewers worldwide, setting the largest viewership in the history of Japanese live-action original works. But the second season of the show not only had no splash in ratings, but also suffered a waterloo in word of mouth, with a Douban score of only 6.3.

It is worth mentioning that Netflix entered Japan a year earlier than South Korea. Since 2022, Netflix's self-made Japanese dramas such as "First Love" and "Maiki's Cook" have not only not rushed out of Japan, but also are not as popular as other dramas in Japan.

In overseas markets such as Italy, Spain, and Germany, Netflix faces the same dilemma: although it can occasionally appear one or two high-reputation dramas, it cannot be sustained and cannot achieve high ratings worldwide like "Squid Game" and "Dark Glory".

American communication expert Paolo Sigismondi believes that to be truly international, Netflix must also promote the development of local creativity. In other words, to replicate the success of Korean dramas, Netflix will have to spend a lot of money in more regional markets, just like in South Korea.

With global user growth slowing, does Netflix still have the financial strength?

Financial report data shows that in Q4 2022, Netflix's global paid users increased by 7.66 million, far exceeding expectations, but the revenue was not optimistic. Revenue increased 1.9% year-on-year to RMB7.852 billion, the lowest growth rate since Netflix's listing, and net profit was US$55 million, down 91% from US$607 million in the same period last year.

"Dark Glory 2" poster

Even in South Korea, which handed over traffic passwords such as "Squid Game" and "Dark Glory", Netflix faced the siege of many opponents.

Overseas streaming platforms such as Disney+, AppleTV+, and HBOMax are accelerating the pace of entering the Korean market, and massive funds are pouring in, and South Korea is becoming the second content battlefield in the global streaming war. "Markets like South Korea will soon become global content production hubs for the media and entertainment industry. ”

Increased competition has further pushed up content production costs. StudioDragonCorp., a South Korean production company with content production agreements with Netflix and AppleTV+, disclosed that in the third quarter of 2021, the company's average content price for streaming services on global platforms increased by 24% year-on-year.

User loyalty to the platform is also being tested. In August 2022, Disney's total users, including Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, were 221 million, surpassing Netflix's 220.7 million. Netflix subscription service data provider Antenna said that in Q4 2022, Netflix canceled an average of 1.3 million subscriptions per month, and the user churn rate reached 3.1% in December.

Currently, Netflix shares are stable at around $300, down more than half from the highest $700. "Dark Glory", which received a double harvest of word-of-mouth ratings, did not give Netflix much a boost in stock prices. A blockbuster drama obviously cannot solve all the problems, and Netflix's road to "spherical soilization" still faces many challenges.

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