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There was a valedictory undercurrent to Netflix VP Don Kang’s keynote appearance Wednesday at the Apos media and entertainment summit in Bali, Indonesia. The streamer’s head of Korean content arrived armed with third-party research underscoring the company’s instrumental role in fueling the global K-content boom — and he spoke just days ahead of the launch of Squid Game Season 3, the final installment in what remains Netflix’s most-watched series of all time.

“We’re all very excited about the Squid Game launch on Friday,” Kang said. “And I’m very confident about the health and the growth of Korean content,” he added.

In past years, Netflix founders Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos have used the Apos keynote stage to outline the company’s Asia strategy. But this year, it was Kang who received top billing — yet another marker of how far both Netflix and Korean content have come in the last decade.

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Weak Hero is a South Korean action revenge thriller drama series co-written by Yoo Soo-min and Kim Jin-seok. Based on the Naver webtoon of the same name by Seopass and Kim Jin-seok, the Netflix series follows Yeon Si-eun, a highly intelligent student who refuses to back down to bullies and soon decides to take them down by using his intelligence. Weak Hero stars Park Ji-hoon, Choi Hyun-wook, Hong Kyung, Ryeoun, Choi Min-young, Lee Min-jae, Yoo Su-bin, Bae Na-ra, and Lee Jun-young. So, if you loved the thrilling story, bloody action, and compelling characters in Weak Hero, here are some similar shows you should check out next.

Revenge of Others (Hulu) Credit – Disney+

Revenge of Others is a South Korean mystery, revenge, thriller, drama series written by Lee Hee-myung. The Disney+ series follows Ok Chanmi, a Shooting champion who...

While The Glory is certainly unique as a K-drama, there are some other great TV shows in that genre with a similar appeal. The Glory follows Moon Dong-eun, a young woman who was mercilessly bullied by a group of students led by Park Yeon-jin when she was a high school student. After dropping out of school, Dong-eun makes it her dream to make the people who tormented her pay for what they did.

Although The Glory has a basis in reality, the show's creator, Kim Eun-sook, added some fictional elements to the series. With its thrilling plotline and engaging characters, The Glory quickly became one of Netflix's best K-dramas and even won the Baeksang Arts Awards for Best Drama. There are several K-dramas that were released before and after The Glory that have similar themes as the psychological thriller. K-dramas that are about retribution, bullying, or have a high...

Netflix gave a sneak peek at its 2025 line-up of non-English programming yesterday with shows such as The Leopard (Italy), Last Samurai Standing (Japan), The Empress S2 (Germany), El Refugio Atómico (Spain), Senna (Brazil), Alice in Borderland S3 (Japan), and even this year’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (Colombia).

“People like the authenticity of local stories,” Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria said.

“When you try to make something that appeals to everyone, you just end up making something that appeals to no one.” It’s why Bajaria encourages her teams to be ambitious and support the vision of creators with the “goal to make shows and films that resonate in their home country first.”

Netflix shouted out the stat that they dub in 36 languages and subtitle shows in 33 languages. Bajaria also said that 80% of Netflix subs watch Korean content.

Bajaria at Netflix’s International Showcase

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If you were craving more South Korean content after brilliant shows like Squid Games, All Of Us Are Dead, Hellbound, and Sweet Home, then I’m sure that you found Netflix’s latest teen thriller drama series, Hierarchy, to your liking. Directed by Bae Hyeon-jin from a screenplay by Chu Hye-mi, the Netflix series is set at an elite South Korean high school, and it follows the story of a transfer student who seems to have a hidden motive behind enrolling in the school. So, if you loved the teen drama, revenge, love, and friendships in Hierarchy, here are some similar shows you could watch next.

Revenge of Others (Hulu) Credit – Disney+

Revenge of Others is a South Korean teen thriller drama series directed by Kim Yoo-jin from a screenplay by Lee Hee-myung. The Disney+ series follows the story of Ok Chan-mi, a shooting champion, as she transfers to a...

Kim Woo-bin, Suzy Reunite for a Netflix Romcom by The Glory Writer - Main Image

K-drama fans, rejoice! Netflix has confirmed the production of the reunion project of top Korean stars Kim Woo-bin and Suzy, drumming up the anticipation with photos from the first script reading.

All the Love You Wish For (working title) is a romantic comedy series about a wish-granting genie named Jinn (Kim), awakened from a thousand years of slumber by Ka-young (Suzy).

The two last appeared in a series together in 2016 as star-crossed lovers in Uncontrollably Fond. This was Kim’s first lead TV actor role; soon after, he went on a hiatus to seek cancer treatment. He successfully returned in 2022 with projects Our Blues and Black Knight.

All-rounder Bae Suzy was first introduced to audiences as a girl group member of Miss A. She cements her status as a pillar of the Korean wave by headlining widely loved TV shows,...

The South Korean TV phenomenon goes way beyond Squid Game, as revealed by Netflix’s newly-released landmark viewing data report.

Series from the Asian country such as The Glory, Physical: 100 and Extraordinary Attorney Woo feature consistently at the summit of the 18,200+ title viewership data report that the streamer released this week, our analysis of the chart reveals. The data dump covers 99% of the Netflix catalog, as our extensive breakdown noted yesterday.

Deadline has calculated that content from South Korea accounted for a combined 3.71 billion hours in the top 100 titles in Netflix’s chart. The table reveals viewing data from the first six months of 2023.

It should be noted that South Korean series tend to run longer than many other countries — 17 hours on average compared with nine for those from the U.S.

Squid Game, the drama series that sparked the global interest in Korean streaming programs, clocked up 87.2 million hours,...

Korean dramas have become a staple of the Asian television industry thanks to their ever-growing coverage of various genres such as romance, fantasy, action, thriller, and melodrama. Over the past two decades, many successful dramas, including The Legend of the Blue Sea, Healer, and Crash Landing on You, have all made significant contributions in elevating these dramas to new heights, resulting in many more stories being adapted to the television screens.

Goblin, otherwise known as Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, is one such pioneering K-drama that set the standard exceptionally high for the subsequent dramas released throughout the years. Nevertheless, only a scant few have managed to provide a similar experience to Goblin, making it one of its kind. So, what differentiates this drama from several other Korean dramas recently airing on streaming platforms? And why does it get better with each rewatch?

A Story of Love, Loss, and...

Disney’s Korean superhero thriller Moving heads the nominations for this year’s Asia Content Awards at Busan International Film Festival with nods in six categories, followed by Tencent Video’s The Long Season with five nods.

Moving picked up nominations for best creative, best writer (Kang Full), three acting categories and best visual effects. Crime thriller The Long Season was also nominated for best creative, along with best director (Xin Shuang), two acting categories and best visual effects.

Netflix’s The Glory and Delete, from Thailand’s Gdh 559 Company, also scored highly, racking up four nominations apiece (see full list below).

Busan’s awards to recognise streaming and TV content, now known as the Asia Content Awards and Global Ott Awards, recently joined forces with the International Ott Festival, hosted by Korea’s Ministry of Science and Ict and Busan Metropolitan City, to open up its nominations to global content.

Netflix's Korean thriller series The Glory tells a compelling story of abuse and revenge, and it does have some real-life inspirations. The Glory part 1 dropped on Netflix in December 2022 and rapidly rose up the charts. A mere two days after its premiere, the series ranked 9th globally among Netflix's TV shows, thanks to its intriguing storyline, compelling characters, and high stakes. The story only recently reached its conclusion when the final eight episodes hit Netflix on March 10th, and its bombastic conclusion didn't disappoint. As of now, The Glory is one of the top 10 all-time Non-English TV series.

One of the best TV shows on Netflix, The Glory jumps around in its timeline, but there are mainly two, comprising of when main character Moon Dong-eun is in high school and is being relentlessly harassed by a group of bullies led by sadist Park Yeon-jin. The second timeline takes place...

Chris Rock’s “Selective Outrage” comedy special, Netflix’s first foray into live programming, debuted at No. 7 on Netflix’s U.S. TV Chart with just a day and change of availability. On Days 2-9, “Selective Outrage” made its debut on Netflix’s Global Top 10 English TV list, coming in at No. 8 for the week of March 6-12 with 17.79 million hours viewed.

Do not confuse the U.S. ranking with Netflix’s publicly-available and regularly-reported Global Top 10 — “Selective Outrage” did not rank there in its first week. Netflix does not provide viewership numbers or hours watched for shows on its U.S. TV Chart, in contrast to the hours viewed metric it provides for its global charts.

As a live special, “Selective Outrage” was initially only available in English, and only for accounts with English set as their default language. The special began rolling out to other territories following its...

As a story about revenge, The Glory on Netflix offers familiar comforts. There’s intricate plotting and dramatic irony, plenty of violence. This is a Korean production, after all, whose film industry was practically founded on revenge, making for masterpieces like Lady Vengeance and I Saw the Devil. In the very first scene of The Glory, our lead Moon Dong-eun (Song Hye-kyo) hits her nemesis Park Yeon-jin (Lim Ji-yeon) with the broad side of a staple gun and then holds the business end up to her bloody face, which erupts in cackling laughter. Already, it’s a pair of performances that recalls Choi Min-sik’s madness in Oldboy. So the question arises: how does a Korean revenge story in 2022 (with a second batch of episodes coming in March) stand out? At first glance, it doesn’t seem to, with a voice-over narration like Emily Thorne’s in the ABC show Revenge,...

Leading Korean actor Song Hye-kyo leads the cast of “The Glory,” a Netflix drama delivering a female-led tale of delicate and long-gestating vengeance, that uploads from the end of the month.

Song portrays a woman who was bullied at school, but who has carefully nurtured her grudges deep into adulthood. Her schemes for revenge against the perpetrators include exposing and turning the daily life of one of her newly-married classmates into a constant nightmare.

The show is directed by An Gil-ho and written by Kim Eun-sook, whose previous credits include the gentler “Heirs” and the Song-starring hit romantic drama “Descendants of the Sun.” “There is no logic behind Yeon-jin’s evil-doing, nor any romanticization of her actions,” said Kim in supplied quotes. “I want ‘The Glory’ to be remembered like a breath-taking sword dance.”

Song, who is known in Korea for a string of romantic and light drama roles, says...

Netflix has confirmed production of documentary, Yellow Door: Looking For Director Bong’s Unreleased Short Film (working title), delving into the story behind Parasite director Bong Joon Ho’s first short film, which was seen by just ten people.

While many believe that Bong’s 1994 short White Man was his first production, the doc reveals that his first work was Looking For Paradise, made during his university days in 1992. Filmed with stop-motion techniques, the 22-minute film was screened for ten members of cinephile club, Yellow Door, over Christmas 1992 and has never been seen since.

The Netflix documentary, directed by Lee Hyuk-rae, will also explore the origins of the Oscar-winning artist’s career and an era in Korean cinema when many talented young cinephiles emerged.

Lee interviewed several members of Yellow Door who reminisce about the young Bong, “who obsessively took care of Yellow Door’s greatest asset – its video library”. Produced by Broccoli Pictures Co,...

BT And Warner Bros Discovery UK Sports Joint Venture Approved

Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has given approval for BT Group and Warner Bros. Discovery to form a 50-50 sports joint venture for the UK & Ireland. Both companies sports assets will now combine over coming weeks. BT Sport and Wbd’s Eurosport will initially retain their brand propositions before uniting under a single brand name in the future. BT’s Consumer division CEO Marc Allera, who has been named Chairman of the Jv, said the approval marked a “milestone.” The chair will rotate between the two shareholders, with management of the Jv going to board member Andrew Georgiou, President and Managing Director, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe. The CMA had initially decided too investigate the merger more than six weeks ago.

Netflix Ties With ‘Descendants Of The Sun’ Team For K-Drama

Netflix has greenlit a Korean series from...

Leading Korean film and TV star Song Hye-kyo will head the cast of “The Glory,” an epic revenge drama series being produced for Netflix.

The series is a change of direction for Kim Eun-sook, a screenwriter billed as the queen of Korean romance.

The project is also a reunion of sorts for the pair. Six years ago, Song starred in the Kim-penned “Descendants of the Sun” a lush Kbs series about a war-time romance between an army surgeon and a special forces office that also played on Netflix.

In “The Glory” Song portrays a woman who is extracting revenge on a group of school bullies who destroyed her childhood and the bystanders who failed to prevent the trauma.

Song has been a mainstay of Korean TV dram series including “That Winter The Wind Blows” “Full House” and “Encounter,” as well as internationally-produced movies including Wong Kar-wai’s “The Grandmaster” and...

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Korean screenwriter Kim Eun-sook and actress Song Hye-kyo, who last teamed on the wildly popular K-drama Descendants of the Sun, are pairing up again for revenge series The Glory, produced by Netflix. Rising star Lee Do-hyun, best known from Sweet Home, will also take a lead role in the new show.

Song plays Moon Dong-eun, a young woman who is seeking revenge on the bullies who destroyed her childhood. Taking on a very different character from her previous outings in hit dramas like We Are Breaking Up, Encounter and That Winter, the Wind Blows, Song portrays a rage-filled individual keen to inflict the ultimate comeuppance on those who tormented her — as well as those who didn’t lift a finger to help. Lee plays Joo Yeo-jeong, a man with a secret past. Better known for his performances in horror (Sweet Home) and romance (18 Again) projects,...