Why 2025 will be the year of the K-drama

Next month will see the return of Netflix’s Squid Game, the Korean class-war allegory that racked up 1.65 billion viewing hours within weeks of its 2021 debut—and drew the world’s attention toward the fast-growing field of Korean dramas, or “K-dramas.” And interest has only continued to grow. Netflix and Disney are both ramping up investment in K-dramas for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the continued popularity of K-pop—Rosé and Bruno Mars’s “Apt” is currently No. 1 on Billboard’s Global charts—keeps fueling enthusiasm for all things Korean.Rakuten Viki, the top international streaming service for Asian content, has been preparing for more than a decade for just such a feeding frenzy.“We started to see interest in K-dramas take off in the early 2010s, long before Squid Game,” says Viki CEO Sam Wu. “The arrival of that show was a cultural moment, which brought millions of viewers into the world of K-content. However, our viewership base has been with us and scaling for years.”Betting on Korean dramasThe logical next step for many viewers after connecting deeply with their first K-drama is to seek out other gems from the region that have previously eluded them. In a lot of cases, that search leads to Viki’s vast ocean of K-dramas—more than a thousand shows and movies with subgenres spanning romance, horror, comedy, and more. Boasting popular series, including Boys Over Flowers, What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim, Lovely Runner, and frequent TikTok-fixation True Beauty, Viki has reeled in 95 million-plus registered users—its standard ad-free package costs $7.99 per month—with more than 20% of them arriving in just the past few years. That’s quite a feat for a streaming service that started out as a grad school project.Back in 2007, Stanford students Razmig Hovaghimia and Changseong Ho embarked on an experiment with Harvard student Jiwon Moon. The trio sought to create a language-learning tool that crowdsourced subtitles for YouTube videos in various languages. Users ultimately proved less interested in learning new languages than in simply accessing the many newly subtitled Asian drama series on the beta version of Viki. As obvious as it may seem now, the idea that viewers around the world craved easy access to international entertainment was considered revolutionary at the time.Squid Game, Season 2 [Photo: No Ju-han/Netflix]The cofounders gradually pivoted to making Viki into a legitimate global destination for world TV and movies. They started officially licensing the desired content, and completed Series A funding in 2010. (The company was acquired by the tech company Rakuten in 2013.) By the time Wu came on board in 2012, though, Viki had begun to further specialize.“We saw that Korean content and Korean dramas were the most popular material being consumed on the platform,” Wu says. “We saw the growth potential, we saw the market landscape aligning with that, and decided to focus the business to become the leading destination for Asian entertainment.”In the early 2010s, far fewer global streamers existed. Those that did had not yet started programming many Asian dramas on their services. As Netflix continued its worldwide expansion, though, and especially after it launched in South Korea in 2016, the company began bringing more and more Korean series onto the platform. At the same time, a general thirst for Korean content began to take hold. K-pop fandom started spiking globally after Korean pop star Psy’s “Gangnam Style” became the first-ever music video to exceed a billion views in 2012, and digital comics from Korea called WebToons began to get millions of views a day.By the end of the decade, bands including BTS and Blackpink were causing stampedes in public appearances, K-pop stars Bae Suzy and Park Hyung Sik were regularly appearing in roles on K-dramas, and the Korean film, Parasite, took home top honors at the Oscars. Viki’s founders had accurately predicted the future: Korean content was undeniably hot. It was also hot everywhere, with 75% of the platform’s viewership coming from outside of Asia.Viki acquires its content through a mix of gut instinct and audience data, leveraging the strong relationships its team has built with top studios and broadcasters across Asia. According to Wu, Viki has become more bullish in the past few years on investing in a variety of subgenres—including period and costume dramas and BL dramas (or Boys’ Love)—as internal data shows many of the platform’s users branching out further, and falling deeper, whenever presented with more categories. Additionally, in 2016, the company began producing originals, resulting in such homegrown hits as Cinderella at 2 AM, Brewing Love, and True Beauty, one of many K-dramas adapted from WebToons. More K-dramas for 2025The market has gotten more crowded since Netflix ramped up its Korean content. The streamer plans to launch nearly a dozen new K-dramas in 2025, including astro rom-com When the Stars Gossip, the genie romp All the Love You Wish For, and a third season of Squid Game. Disney+ and other global players have also begun gobbling up properties, with at least 10 new K-dramas coming to Disney in 2025, such as the historical drama The Murky Stream. Viki does not appear to be sweating the increased competition, though.“We see the top global streamers getting into K-dramas as a benefit, since it adds a wider audience into the mix,” Wu says. “It’s a healthy evolution of the ecosystem and we’re seeing more mainstream viewers discovering Korean content who might not have otherwise been introduced to it.” Viki’s latest initiative for helping mainstream viewers discover more Korean content is its annual International K-Drama Day. The company launched the event last year to connect burgeoning fans with a crop of shows they’d likely never seen before. In its second iteration, starting November 29, viewers will be able to stream 10 series on Viki without a paid subscription, including True Beauty, My Sweet Mobster, and A Good Day to be a Dog.While that trial period ends too soon for anyone coming to Viki directly from mainlining the second season of Squid Game (premiering December 26 on Netflix), those who do find the service that way will arrive in time to experience the fresh crop of Viki Originals slated for 2025, which are currently being kept under wraps.“I think the potential for Korean dramas still has a lot more room to grow,” Wu says. “The category can definitely be bigger than it is already. I think we’re still in the early phases.”