The strength of Korean storytelling on TV is no longer a secret. With Netflix reporting 80% of platform users watching Korean-language content, it’s official: K-dramas have broken into the American mainstream, a process helped along by the massive investments Netflix and other U.S.-based media companies like Disney, Paramount, and Amazon have made in the Korean entertainment industry as part of their corporate mandates to grow profits and subscription bases.
The influx of U.S.-based streamers into the K-drama scene has been met with some criticism from its ardent, women-dominated international fanbase. Critics have called out changes in the industry they perceive to be driven by international streamers—e.g. a slight shift away from the one-and-done season format and the increase in the depictions of violence, sex, and nudity in K-drama. Broadly, international streamers’ interest in Korean entertainment has expanded and diversified the global K-drama audience, broadening of the kinds of K-dramas that get made. While romantic melodrama remains a backbone of the Korean …