111 million: Squid Game viewers, September/October 2021
70 million: World Series viewers, October/November 2021
Korea-made drama Squid Game, which premiered Sept. 17 on Netflix, centers on a contest in which 456 impoverished and debt-ridden players compete for a ₩45.6 billion prize (~$38 million) in a series of children’s games. The losing players are ruthlessly executed. (Shot, stabbed, thrown off a bridge, etc.; more variety presumably in Season 2.) The show’s 9-episode Season 1 run logged over 111 million views, a count not only well above Netflix’s earlier 82-million-viewer record (the 2020 scheming-18th century-Brit-aristocrat series Bridgerton), but outpacing the Atlanta-v.-Houston World Series. Americans weren’t alone in their enthusiasm: Squid Game was also Netflix’s top show in Denmark, Bolivia, Kuwait and Bahrain, India, Bulgaria, and 44 other countries.
Not a unique triumph for Korean arts, Squid Game is an especially visible example of the much larger “Hallyu Wave” phenomenon. Hallyu, translated as “Korean Wave,” is shorthand for the international appeal of South Korean pop culture, first in Japan, China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia and more recently in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. At the cultural high end, last year’s Parasite — a satire on class disparity and wealth inequality, pitting scheming low-income moochers against a greedy and clueless rich family — was the first Asian and first non-English-language film to win a Best Picture Oscar. At the somewhat less-high end, five of Billboard’s 10 non-English No. 1 albums since 1958 have come since 2018 from K-Pop boy-band groups BTS and SuperM. In between are clothing styles, video games, cosmetics, band and artist merchandise, and other cultural and lifestyle products.
Korean government economists calculate the value of Hallyu exports at $12 billion in 2020. This would still be well below the $36 billion in exports from Korea’s mighty auto factories, but within sight and growing by 22 percent per year. More is presumably ahead; as one 2021 indicator, Netflix invested nearly $500 million in the Korean entertainment industry and opened two studio facilities in South Korea.
What explains Hallyu’s success? Some analysis credits Korean government support and organization. The Korea Herald, reporting on the creation of a “Hallyu Department” in the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism last year scoffs at this idea: “it is not the first time that the government is attempting to play a role in the promotion of the Korean wave, each time against resistance from the industry who feared government meddling in what is essentially a private sector initiative may have the opposite effect”. Rather, the success of Korean culture looks organic, matching (a) appealing plotting, cliffhanger endings, and striking visuals with (b) new forms of access as widespread Internet use, secure financial services, and open data flow enable online streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu to compete to offer their subscribers an array of films, music, and TV, and (c) devoted and highly organized international fan bases using social media to evangelize and market to one another.
Read Squid Game ratings and rankings by country from Netflix, here.Read more background about Hallyu Wave, here.
Policy or not?
The Carnegie Endowment looks at Korean government support for cultural industry and Hallyu as soft-power policy, read more here.
The Korea Herald is skeptical, read more here.
The Korea Economic Institute sides with the Herald, viewing government promotion Hallyu as largely “mistargeted,” “ineffectual,” and annoying to fans, read more here.
Fans and artists
Time on U.S. K-pop fans as a 2020 political force, read here.
Navigating through K-pop fandom with fan clubs and fan cafes, read here.
For insight on Korean filmmaking and its international appeal, read here.
And for the Korean Cultural Center/DC’s October Hallyu & K-Pop demo, click here.
Special note: Research and drafting for this Trade Fact by Lisa Ly, Social Policy Intern for the Progressive Policy Institute. Lisa is currently a Master of Public Policy candidate at The George Washington University.
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
