How Netflix succeeded in South Korea, including by developing ideas considered too risky for broadcasters and licensing local content overseas
viewers who devoured ‘Squid Game’ started watching more shows in Korean.” @shirleyZhaoXY @Lucas_Shaw @business https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Netflix's Korea playbook has been building for months: Squid Game topped Netflix charts in 90 countries, an internal document pegged its value at nearly $900M with 87M finishers in 23 days (per Bloomberg), and the show powered the company's only subscriber bright spot in Asia Pacific. This piece explains the mechanism behind those numbers — greenlighting concepts local broadcasters deemed too risky, then licensing the resulting shows abroad.
The strategy matters because it converts a single hit into a catalog flywheel: viewers who came for Squid Game kept watching more Korean titles, deepening demand that Netflix is now reinforcing with better dubbing and translations for Korean reality TV.
First-order effects
- Korean titles that broadcasters passed on become Netflix originals, giving the service a differentiated local slate while Korean producers gain a buyer willing to fund riskier concepts.
- Licensing that same Korean content to overseas markets turns domestic productions into global revenue lines, with Squid Game's 90-country chart run proving the export model works.
Second-order effects
- Local broadcasters and rival streamers in a crowded Asian field face a competitor whose willingness to fund risky ideas and pay for overseas rights raises the price of winning Korean content.
- Sustained international appetite for Korean shows forces investment in localization infrastructure — the dubbing and translation work Netflix is already prioritizing for Korean reality TV — making non-English catalogs viable at scale.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, national content industries reorganize around global platforms rather than domestic broadcasters as the primary financiers of prestige local production, with platforms owning both the commissioning decision and the international distribution rights.
- Success measured in cross-border franchises rather than home-market ratings shifts commissioning logic industry-wide toward concepts with global legibility — a structural change for how 'risky' gets priced in television.
The trend: Streaming economics are shifting prestige local content from broadcaster-funded domestic programming to platform-funded global franchises, with South Korea as the template case.