K-Dramas Face Crisis

Over the past few years, several Korean dramas such as "Squid Game" and "When Life Gives You Tangerines" have been released on Netflix and achieved massive global success, generating widespread buzz. The combination of the capabilities accumulated by Korean production teams and Netflix's enormous financial investment seemed more than enough to inflate the media's and viewers' optimistic expectations for the continued rise of the Korean Wave.

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Unfortunately, behind this applause and celebration lies a long, dark shadow. The game has been overturned under Netflix's leadership. The speed at which the drama scheduling and production environment of Korean TV channels has deteriorated is so rapid that it is almost hard to believe, even as one witnesses it. Netflix monopolized top-tier Korean writers, directors, and A-list stars with enormous fees, loading its platform with big-budget productions and expanding its market share. As a result, it successfully absorbed nearly half of the domestic viewers as subscribers. Soon after, ratings for Korean TV channels plummeted, followed by a sharp decline in advertising revenue. Coupled with production costs that have more than doubled due to Netflix's aggressive spending, broadcasters found themselves losing more money the more dramas they scheduled, leading to a wave of cutbacks and outright abandonment of drama production.

Ultimately, the number of Korean dramas produced fell from 141 titles in 2022 to an estimated 84 this year. Next year, that figure is expected to plunge further, to around 50 titles, even after combining commission-based productions from U.S. OTT platforms such as Netflix and Disney+ with daily dramas and large-scale historical series produced merely to save face for public broadcasters. The very foundation of domestic-oriented drama production is collapsing. Nearly half of production companies have either shut down or are barely operating, struggling to cover basic expenses, and there are no signs anywhere that this situation will improve.

Could this eventually affect the sustainability of the Korean drama wave itself? If only a handful of Netflix-backed dramas perform well, can the Korean Wave in dramas truly remain intact? The truly serious problem lies in what may happen if this situation continues for a few more years: a mass exodus of creators from drama production and a complete halt in the influx of new talent. Signs of this are already appearing in many places. Writers, from veterans to newcomers, are being sued by shuttered production companies for the return of advance payments. Directors are considering career changes or barely making ends meet by taking part-time directing jobs for fledgling companies producing low-quality short-form content modeled after sensational Chinese formats. Some broadcasters have reduced their staff, including producers and directors, by more than half and are no longer hiring new directors. Even drama classes at broadcasting writers' academies, which for decades had been flooded with applicants, are now beginning to see vacant seats.

The most serious issue is that the governance needed to actively respond to this crisis has collapsed. As broadcasters face severe losses from drama production, production companies, writers, and directors have no one left to discuss solutions with except the government. Yet looking at the composition of the culture, arts, and content-related committees established under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, it is hard to see them as independent bodies capable of devising effective countermeasures. The disaster has already begun, but no emergency alarm is sounding, and here and there one can glimpse tragic scenes of people leaping out the window. The current situation is bleak. This is not the time to fall into easy optimism just because a handful of Netflix dramas are doing well. The government must step in as soon as possible to establish an effective emergency task force and begin responding to this rapidly changing situation with a long-term perspective. The Korean drama wave, an emergency alarm is ringing!