South Korea pop culture machine boosts growth of Netflix

Content of South Korea on Netflix has become the biggest source of growth in international markets. Netflix said 46% of its net new global paid customers in the third quarter came from the Asia Pacific region; where revenue rose 66% from last year, primarily Japan and South Korea.

Investments of Netflix in South Korea:

The company is eager to demonstrate its big investments in South Korea. It also wants to demonstrate its role in making Korean pop culture popular more accessible outside of South Korea. Netflix’s South Korean business has played a major role in third-quarter growth. The world’s largest paid streaming video service now serves 3.3 million paid members in the region as of Sept. 30. Overall, Netflix now serves more than 195 million paid subscribers. Since 2015, the world’s largest subscription streaming video platform has invested nearly $700 million in financing partnerships and co-productions.

Since late 2019, it has boosted up investments and landed multi-year content partnerships with major studios of South Korea ; including CJ ENM/Studio Dragon and JTBC for access to their Korean shows. More than 70 Korean-made shows from local creators released as Netflix-branded originals around the world. They are available in 31 subtitled languages and more than 20 dubbed languages.

Black Pink:

In October, Netflix released the original documentary BlackPink: Light Up the Sky about the highest charted female Korean act on the Billboard 100. The group’s recent music video for ‘How You Like That’ broke an all-time YouTube record as the most-watched video in a 24-hour period with 86.3 million views.

South Korea in May passed the revision to the country’s telecommunications business act, dubbed as “Netflix law,” to require all content providers including foreign companies to share network cost burden with local internet service providers.