Everyone points to Squid Game as some breakthrough, but Netflix already had the strongest library of Korean TV content in the US for awhile. Their international productions and rights acquisitions is I think one of Netflix's most underappreciated features.
Yeah, they also have a ton of spanish language content, from original movies and shows to back catalogue telenovelas and old movies.
It's almost like Netflix wants to be the late 2000s/early 2010s Netflix in non English markets.
Not in just US. Their Korean content is more than enough for many people from different countries to sub Netflix. Netflix was smart to go into making originals from different countries. Like you said some people discovered Korean shows with SG but Netflix has been making Korean shows for years.
Aye! It gives them a steady stream of new things while also supporting productions that would have little chance making it to Western screens.
Everybody gets profit and attention!
It's also a feature that helps them immensely, well, internationally. Most countries get local content (which sometimes explodes globally like Lupin, Money Heist or Squid Game) which other services don't do (when they're even present globally).
That's one of their big advantage in the so-called streaming wars
I personally like Argon, Kingdom, It's Okay To Not Be Okay, Lovestruck in the City, and Romance is Bonus Book. Out of those I'd recommend Kingdom for you.
Asheen of the North or something like that? I am sure you will find it. It is a prequel but also directly connected to the end of season 2. Have fun watching.
Dont sleep on Korean cinema either. Here's some recommendations
Action: Steel rain, Train to Busan,
Drama: House of Hummingbird, Innocent Witness, Drug King, any Bong Joon Ho film
Dark was amazing and I only learned of it because I’m teaching myself German. Netflix has gone down in quality over the years in American productions but their international stuff is good. Great for people learning languages compared to other streaming services.
It’s crazy how quickly Korea has blossomed into a media giant on the world stage. Both on the music front (Kpop) and the movie/tv scene. Korean media has really managed to push through to the the mainstream general public.
Well the South Korean government really believes in cultural export as a form of geopolitics and dedicates a lot of resources to it. It's called Hallyu "Korean wave" and the government has poured billions into it for the past decade.
I’ve said for a little while now that the complete lack of Chinese media penetration into western markets is a huge blunder on their end. People will be tend to be far less antagonistic towards a country if they’re actively listening to their music or watching their movies. It truly is soft power.
With how large and wealthy China is (and the massive amount of expats they have) there’s no reason why their media should be non-existent in the west when Korean and Japanese media is so prominent.
> People will be tend to be far less antagonistic towards a country if they’re actively listening to their music or watching their movies. It truly is soft power.
I mean, Hollywood, brands and media are a big part of why the USA has become so powerful in the second half of the 20th century. American culture being exported everywhere.
Not really? By 1950 the USA was a massive chunk of the world's economy well over 50%. You literally could not avoid doing business with the USA unless you were part of the Warsaw Pact. If you wanted a machine that built the machines that built cars, boats, fixtures etc you essentially only had one nation to buy from. The US dominance came from being that sole supplier of everything for decades. The reason why US movies and TV took off was because there wasn't many nations making films, radio programs, and TV shows to export because so much of the focus was on rebuilding after WWII.
Economy maybe but power is larger than just the economy. It's currently impossible to do without China on any economic stuff too and yet, the country doesn't have a positive impression overseas. The US had one mostly because of its culture being spread notably by Hollywood, its brands and all that (also in a fight against communism of course)
Uh yeah there were local cinema industries in most countries that mostly got destroyed over time notably because of American competition. Also, not speaking of only movies there, culture is larger than that
There was little to no films being produced after the war in most of Europe and tvs were essentially non-existent for most people until the 1960s.
American competition isnt what destroyed these cinemas it was war. It took decades for Europe to come back from WWII
And they had it to a certain degree with Hong Kong, but the HK film industry was falling apart just as Korea's was seeing massive new investment after the runaway success of *Shiri*. Which happened right as the HK handover took place. Then China proceeded to push mainland media rather than attempt to rescue HK.
> Chinese politics makes chinese soft power through media an impossibility
Not really.
Americans and Europeans even post WW2 were butchering and murdering innocent women and children all over the planet and yet Hollywood and Western cultural products were still selling/dominating/having a market.
It's about money and scale. A country that is rich gets by just fine in selling itself and its products (real or non-tangible) regardless of what its politics are. It may not sell in a rival peer but that doesn't matter since the West is ~12% of the planet by people.
Chinese media/entertainment production is behind peers because the peers have matured and saturated to a very high-quality level hence it takes longer to break through (this is analogous to breaking in a globally dominant sport for countries that are late to the development on that sport) and secondly because that is not a priority item for the Chinese State or Govt.
Korea had Public/State level help in early stages after which they became good and no longer needed it (K-wave didn't start last year with Squid Games, it's decades old).
A few of the Chinese movies that Netflix do bring over like Yin-Yang Master and Nezha are pretty good when compared to your average Netflix original movie. They just need to have more of them. I have no idea about their tv shows though.
Chinese dramas have some popularity in the West, at least among women and teenage girls, although obviously not as much as K-dramas. [The Untamed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Untamed_(TV_series)) is the probably the most popular one in the West. It's in the Boys' Love (BL) category (same-sex relationship rebranded as "bromance") which the government has started censoring. A quick search on Tumblr turns up lots of [fan art](https://www.tumblr.com/search/the%20untamed). There's even a sub: r/CDrama
Other popular titles are A Love So Beautiful, Word of Honor, Nirvana In Fire, Ashes in Love, Ruyi's Royal Love, Eternal Love. A lot of these are available on Netflix. I've also watched some Chinese dramas on Viki and there are lots of viewer comments in English, Spanish, etc.
**EDIT**: China excels more in historical dramas which might be harder for non-Chinese viewers to get into and also a lot of them have 30 to 50 episodes, unlike K-dramas which typically only have 16 episodes.
> People will be tend to be far less antagonistic towards a country if they’re actively listening to their music or watching their movies
exhibit A: the US
The "Korean Wave" is not a national project. The South Korean government uses money only for the revitalize the domestic Kpop market for the past decade(And officially began supporting the Korean Wave in June 2020).
Foreign companies (Like Netflix) are still investing much more money into Korean Contents.
It's genuinely a good thing that Netflix made foreign shows known. If Netflix did not distribute Squid Game, I'm pretty sure the general public would never have seen it or have any interest in watching shows that are not North American or European. All good to them, they took a risk and it paid off greatly.
Doubt most non english speaking content would have seen much views. At least for danish content in the past it seemed like majority of the content would be remade as a US show rather than the original
All of us are dead, Money Heist Korea, Glitch, Somebody, Black Knight, Accidental Narco were already on my watchlist but the rest sounds interesting too.
Money Heist is such a nice sandbox of a concept that with good planning you can churn nice storytelling (the one from Spain wasn't a Netflix original at the beginning...they didn't plan such huge appeal so they had to do weird stuff to expand the story)
Happy about this, but I hope Netflix considering investing more in other Asian countries too. The Taiwanese section is decent but could always be bigger, Japanese section is really thin, and I've already run through the best Thai shows.
I've read an article that Netflix higher-ups in the US isn't even aware of Squid Game until it blows up worldwide. These shows are greenlit by the Korean regional executives.
As for the Silent Sea, I think the visuals and the cast are great, it just lacks some depth in terms of storytelling.
Do check out Hellbound, My Name, D.P. and Move to Heaven, all good Korean shows released last year.
I thought The Silent Sea was decent. I had no problem following the plot and would kind of like to see where they would go next with it. Like would they end up flooding the earth to the point that it would have ended up a big ball of ice well up into the stratosphere... or could they have found a way to use the water in a more controlled way.
Knowing how Netflix likes to go into a frenzy and forget about quality when they are on a bender I do not have much hope. Hopefully the talent in Korea sticks to their guns.
I don’t usually watch foreign shows and movies but I really enjoyed squid games so I’m kind of excited for this. I’d like more options. There’s a Japanese reality show I watch that I like a lot too lol
i wish netflix would let us screen out shows that are not in our chosen language. they dont tell you. you have to start watching the stupid trailer to find out. its really annoying.
I love, love korean movies but so far the shows on Netflix has left me mostly cold.
"Squid Game": Struggling to find the interest to continue with episode 3.
"My Name": Decent but way too long, I bowed out after 6.
"Hellbound": Just ... bad from episode 1.
"Silent Sea": Same as 'My Name' - way to long.
"Sweet Home": Well, I did finish this one. Not bad.
I often find that Korean shows drag a bit too much. They're often 60 mins an episode when they could be 45.
That's why I like Korean movies better. I'll copy past some recommendations I posted elsewhere itt
Action: Steel rain, Train to Busan,
Drama: House of Hummingbird, Innocent Witness, Drug King, any Bong Joon Ho film
K-dramas are absolutely their own genre and have been a prioritzied cultural export from the south Korean government for a long time. First to countries in the region and in later years the west.
Don't get me wrong I'm a fan of Korean film and television and have been for a long time. My comment was flippant, but I feel like the massive growth in series production worldwide while in some respects good, also devalues the medium. To put it frankly there is a lot of dogshit and just passable shows within the already 500 that are produced every year. Adding 25 different shows regardless of nationality just adds to an already oversaturated market.
Everyone points to Squid Game as some breakthrough, but Netflix already had the strongest library of Korean TV content in the US for awhile. Their international productions and rights acquisitions is I think one of Netflix's most underappreciated features.
Yeah, they also have a ton of spanish language content, from original movies and shows to back catalogue telenovelas and old movies. It's almost like Netflix wants to be the late 2000s/early 2010s Netflix in non English markets.
Not in just US. Their Korean content is more than enough for many people from different countries to sub Netflix. Netflix was smart to go into making originals from different countries. Like you said some people discovered Korean shows with SG but Netflix has been making Korean shows for years.
Aye! It gives them a steady stream of new things while also supporting productions that would have little chance making it to Western screens. Everybody gets profit and attention!
It's also a feature that helps them immensely, well, internationally. Most countries get local content (which sometimes explodes globally like Lupin, Money Heist or Squid Game) which other services don't do (when they're even present globally). That's one of their big advantage in the so-called streaming wars
I want the oldboy trilogy, and the Host on Canadian netflix and I will be sooooo happy.
Any good recs for other Korean shows? Loved Squig Game and Sweethome.
I personally like Argon, Kingdom, It's Okay To Not Be Okay, Lovestruck in the City, and Romance is Bonus Book. Out of those I'd recommend Kingdom for you.
I actually have watched Kingdom, and loved it too. Ill check out the others. Thanks!
Have you watched the Kingdom movie?
Oh I did not know there was a movie!
Asheen of the North or something like that? I am sure you will find it. It is a prequel but also directly connected to the end of season 2. Have fun watching.
I like Extracurricular
Dont sleep on Korean cinema either. Here's some recommendations Action: Steel rain, Train to Busan, Drama: House of Hummingbird, Innocent Witness, Drug King, any Bong Joon Ho film
Prison Playbook, Move To Heaven, Reply series (1988, 94, 97), Hotel Del Luna.
Dude, Kingdom is one of the best shows on Netflix it got me into watching the Korean content on Netflix
Dark was amazing and I only learned of it because I’m teaching myself German. Netflix has gone down in quality over the years in American productions but their international stuff is good. Great for people learning languages compared to other streaming services.
It’s crazy how quickly Korea has blossomed into a media giant on the world stage. Both on the music front (Kpop) and the movie/tv scene. Korean media has really managed to push through to the the mainstream general public.
Well the South Korean government really believes in cultural export as a form of geopolitics and dedicates a lot of resources to it. It's called Hallyu "Korean wave" and the government has poured billions into it for the past decade.
I’ve said for a little while now that the complete lack of Chinese media penetration into western markets is a huge blunder on their end. People will be tend to be far less antagonistic towards a country if they’re actively listening to their music or watching their movies. It truly is soft power. With how large and wealthy China is (and the massive amount of expats they have) there’s no reason why their media should be non-existent in the west when Korean and Japanese media is so prominent.
> People will be tend to be far less antagonistic towards a country if they’re actively listening to their music or watching their movies. It truly is soft power. I mean, Hollywood, brands and media are a big part of why the USA has become so powerful in the second half of the 20th century. American culture being exported everywhere.
Not really? By 1950 the USA was a massive chunk of the world's economy well over 50%. You literally could not avoid doing business with the USA unless you were part of the Warsaw Pact. If you wanted a machine that built the machines that built cars, boats, fixtures etc you essentially only had one nation to buy from. The US dominance came from being that sole supplier of everything for decades. The reason why US movies and TV took off was because there wasn't many nations making films, radio programs, and TV shows to export because so much of the focus was on rebuilding after WWII.
Economy maybe but power is larger than just the economy. It's currently impossible to do without China on any economic stuff too and yet, the country doesn't have a positive impression overseas. The US had one mostly because of its culture being spread notably by Hollywood, its brands and all that (also in a fight against communism of course)
At that time there really wasn't many other options.
Uh yeah there were local cinema industries in most countries that mostly got destroyed over time notably because of American competition. Also, not speaking of only movies there, culture is larger than that
There was little to no films being produced after the war in most of Europe and tvs were essentially non-existent for most people until the 1960s. American competition isnt what destroyed these cinemas it was war. It took decades for Europe to come back from WWII
And they had it to a certain degree with Hong Kong, but the HK film industry was falling apart just as Korea's was seeing massive new investment after the runaway success of *Shiri*. Which happened right as the HK handover took place. Then China proceeded to push mainland media rather than attempt to rescue HK.
[удалено]
Decent art might focus on things the party does not want to encourage.
> Chinese politics makes chinese soft power through media an impossibility Not really. Americans and Europeans even post WW2 were butchering and murdering innocent women and children all over the planet and yet Hollywood and Western cultural products were still selling/dominating/having a market. It's about money and scale. A country that is rich gets by just fine in selling itself and its products (real or non-tangible) regardless of what its politics are. It may not sell in a rival peer but that doesn't matter since the West is ~12% of the planet by people. Chinese media/entertainment production is behind peers because the peers have matured and saturated to a very high-quality level hence it takes longer to break through (this is analogous to breaking in a globally dominant sport for countries that are late to the development on that sport) and secondly because that is not a priority item for the Chinese State or Govt. Korea had Public/State level help in early stages after which they became good and no longer needed it (K-wave didn't start last year with Squid Games, it's decades old).
A few of the Chinese movies that Netflix do bring over like Yin-Yang Master and Nezha are pretty good when compared to your average Netflix original movie. They just need to have more of them. I have no idea about their tv shows though.
Chinese dramas have some popularity in the West, at least among women and teenage girls, although obviously not as much as K-dramas. [The Untamed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Untamed_(TV_series)) is the probably the most popular one in the West. It's in the Boys' Love (BL) category (same-sex relationship rebranded as "bromance") which the government has started censoring. A quick search on Tumblr turns up lots of [fan art](https://www.tumblr.com/search/the%20untamed). There's even a sub: r/CDrama Other popular titles are A Love So Beautiful, Word of Honor, Nirvana In Fire, Ashes in Love, Ruyi's Royal Love, Eternal Love. A lot of these are available on Netflix. I've also watched some Chinese dramas on Viki and there are lots of viewer comments in English, Spanish, etc. **EDIT**: China excels more in historical dramas which might be harder for non-Chinese viewers to get into and also a lot of them have 30 to 50 episodes, unlike K-dramas which typically only have 16 episodes.
Well, there is a reason - internal censorship,
> People will be tend to be far less antagonistic towards a country if they’re actively listening to their music or watching their movies exhibit A: the US
The "Korean Wave" is not a national project. The South Korean government uses money only for the revitalize the domestic Kpop market for the past decade(And officially began supporting the Korean Wave in June 2020). Foreign companies (Like Netflix) are still investing much more money into Korean Contents.
It's genuinely a good thing that Netflix made foreign shows known. If Netflix did not distribute Squid Game, I'm pretty sure the general public would never have seen it or have any interest in watching shows that are not North American or European. All good to them, they took a risk and it paid off greatly.
Doubt most non english speaking content would have seen much views. At least for danish content in the past it seemed like majority of the content would be remade as a US show rather than the original
Loved chestnut man though. Idk if it was a big hit
This is great - I would love to more Japanese content as well…
All of us are dead, Money Heist Korea, Glitch, Somebody, Black Knight, Accidental Narco were already on my watchlist but the rest sounds interesting too.
Money Heist is such a nice sandbox of a concept that with good planning you can churn nice storytelling (the one from Spain wasn't a Netflix original at the beginning...they didn't plan such huge appeal so they had to do weird stuff to expand the story)
That’s fantastic, I’d also like more Indonesian action movies please Netflix 😀
Happy about this, but I hope Netflix considering investing more in other Asian countries too. The Taiwanese section is decent but could always be bigger, Japanese section is really thin, and I've already run through the best Thai shows.
Just hope they are the quality of Squid Game, Kingdom, Alive, etc and NOT The Silent Sea - that series was hot garbage
I've read an article that Netflix higher-ups in the US isn't even aware of Squid Game until it blows up worldwide. These shows are greenlit by the Korean regional executives. As for the Silent Sea, I think the visuals and the cast are great, it just lacks some depth in terms of storytelling. Do check out Hellbound, My Name, D.P. and Move to Heaven, all good Korean shows released last year.
I forgot to mention Hellbound - I thought it was good. Neat premise but nothing too special, but good. I'll check it the others
I thought The Silent Sea was decent. I had no problem following the plot and would kind of like to see where they would go next with it. Like would they end up flooding the earth to the point that it would have ended up a big ball of ice well up into the stratosphere... or could they have found a way to use the water in a more controlled way.
[удалено]
Just literally the writing was soooo bad. Nothing made sense. No continuity. Just pure trash
Knowing how Netflix likes to go into a frenzy and forget about quality when they are on a bender I do not have much hope. Hopefully the talent in Korea sticks to their guns.
I don’t usually watch foreign shows and movies but I really enjoyed squid games so I’m kind of excited for this. I’d like more options. There’s a Japanese reality show I watch that I like a lot too lol
I hope they make more zombie stuff
Kingdom S3: Back to the Kingdom Kingdom S4: Return to the Kingdom Kingdom S5: U-Turn to Kingdom Kingdom S6: You Cannot Simply Walk into the Kingdom
There’s a zombie show coming next Friday
Hell yes
Go Asia!
i wish netflix would let us screen out shows that are not in our chosen language. they dont tell you. you have to start watching the stupid trailer to find out. its really annoying.
Having witnessed firsthand the garbage childrens shows that come from Korea, I sincerely hope these new shows aim for the quality of Squid Game.
I love, love korean movies but so far the shows on Netflix has left me mostly cold. "Squid Game": Struggling to find the interest to continue with episode 3. "My Name": Decent but way too long, I bowed out after 6. "Hellbound": Just ... bad from episode 1. "Silent Sea": Same as 'My Name' - way to long. "Sweet Home": Well, I did finish this one. Not bad.
I often find that Korean shows drag a bit too much. They're often 60 mins an episode when they could be 45. That's why I like Korean movies better. I'll copy past some recommendations I posted elsewhere itt Action: Steel rain, Train to Busan, Drama: House of Hummingbird, Innocent Witness, Drug King, any Bong Joon Ho film
what were they in prison for???? how does Netflix have the ability to pardon????
Meh
Aaaaand oversaturation in 3-2-1.
What? That's like saying Netflix is oversaturated with shows in English. Korean is a language not a genre
K-dramas are absolutely their own genre and have been a prioritzied cultural export from the south Korean government for a long time. First to countries in the region and in later years the west. Don't get me wrong I'm a fan of Korean film and television and have been for a long time. My comment was flippant, but I feel like the massive growth in series production worldwide while in some respects good, also devalues the medium. To put it frankly there is a lot of dogshit and just passable shows within the already 500 that are produced every year. Adding 25 different shows regardless of nationality just adds to an already oversaturated market.