Korean drama

Korean drama (Korean: 한국 드라마; RR: Hanguk deurama), also known as K-drama or Koreanovela, refers to Korean-language television shows made in South Korea. These shows began to be produced around the early 1960s, but were mostly consumed domestically until the rise of the Korean Wave in the 1990s. They have since achieved significant international popularity, with millions of viewers across the world.

Beginning around the 1970s, more and more households in South Korea owned televisions. Programs were often produced on low budgets and were mostly consumed domestically. The industry significantly developed in the 1980s, after the spread of color television. Beginning in the early 1990s, several Korean dramas began achieving significant international popularity, primarily in China and Japan. In addition, South Korean popular music ("K-pop") and films began seeing similar successes, which gave rise to rapid international adoption of South Korean media in a phenomenon commonly called the Korean Wave. In the following decades, viewership spread throughout the globe. Rapid growth continued into the 2010s, with the rise in online streaming. Around this period, the American video streaming company Netflix took interest in the phenomenon, and began releasing Korean dramas on its platform, as well as creating and funding ones. This culminated in the release of the 2021 Squid Game, which was watched by more than 142 million households in its first four weeks.^[1] In 2022, Netflix reported that six in ten of its 221 million subscribers had watched a Korean program in the last year,^[2][3] and in April 2023, it announced that it would invest US$2.5 billion in the industry.^[4]

The success of Korean dramas has had a significant economic impact on South Korea. In 2022, US$561.3 million of Korean television content was sold abroad, which was a 29.6% increase from the previous year,^[5] surpassing those of South Korea's major export items such as secondary batteries and electric vehicles.^[6] The industry also employs tens of thousands of people.^[7] Korean dramas have also been cited as a motivation for tourists to visit the country.