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This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.
What do you get if you take a bunch of ripped, shirtless male K-pop idols in boxing gloves and have them spar in the ring until they’re sweating? For Netflix: another global hit.
The streamer’s K-drama Bloodhounds, now in its second season, is currently tearing up its global viewing charts. Season 2 attracted 7.4 million views last week, making it the most-watched non-English TV show worldwide on the service, and the third-most-popular show overall.
Bloodhounds is no exception for Netflix. Last week, three of the 10 most-watched non-English-language shows on the service were Korean. The week before that, it was four out of 10, and the week before that, three. And Netflix’s three most-watched TV show seasons of all time, in any language? All Korean.
Those three seasons are seasons 1–3 of Squid Game. The life-or-death competition drama broke audience records when it first debuted in 2021, racking up 1.65 billion viewing hours in its first four weeks. “It was probably the biggest show in the history of television,” as Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos claimed in 2022. Since its launch, total Squid Game viewing has surpassed 4.5 billion hours.
But here’s the thing about Squid Game: Despite its unrivaled success, it has only been responsible for a small percentage of the overall viewing of Korean content on Netflix, with viewers around the world wholeheartedly embracing the country’s storytelling. From 2023 to 2025, Netflix subscribers have streamed more than 51 billion hours of Korean movies and TV shows, according to Netflix data that I recently analyzed for a new special Lowpass report.
From little pockets of interest to a global phenomenon
Netflix’s success with Korean dramas didn’t come out of thin air, as Sarandos himself acknowledged in 2021. “It’s not like we had to go in and teach anyone in South Korea how to make great content,” he told Netflix investors that year. “It’s an incredible market for that. And there’s always been curiosity around the world. The K-drama market has always had little pockets of success all over the place.”
That includes the United States, where services like DramaFever, Viki, and KDrama tried to bring Korean storytelling to Western audiences long before Squid Game became a breakout success for Netflix. DramaFever executives in particular quickly realized that there were untapped audiences for Korean content in the United States. “We [catered] predominantly to Midwestern middle-aged women, as well as Latin teenagers,” says DramaFever cofounder Hyun Park.
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