Netflix plans to invest $2.5b in Korean content

Netflix is spending $2.5 billion on Korean content and sees opportunities beyond the Asian region, said Don Kang, Netflix’s vice president of Korean content.

Over the next four years, Netflix will invest $2.5 billion in various types of Korean content spanning TV series, films and nonfiction shows, Kang told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.” He said it will double the number of nonfiction shows it is producing, from about four in 2022 to at least eight this year, reflecting the Korean audience’s demand for variety shows.

These include the reality show “Physical 100” it released earlier this year, which features a hundred contestants battling each other in a series of physically strenuous challenges.

“I think that was really the first nonfiction show to have global viewing, getting people really excited,” he said. Korean competition or nonfiction shows don’t typically travel very far outside Korea and the Asia-Pacific region, but Kang said the success of “Physical 100” is a “really positive sign.”

“Physical 100” topped Netflix’s weekly viewership for non-English TV shows for two weeks in 2022. Another Korean variety show that earned global success in 2022 was reality dating show “Single’s Inferno,” which Kang said featured in the global top 10 list.

Kang said he worked on the international distribution of Korean shows before joining Netflix in 2018. “Back then it was mostly romantic comedies” that received traction, he said. Distribution was limited to nearby countries like Japan and other Southeast Asian nations due to language and cultural differences in other regions, he added.