Korean content is experiencing a huge surge in global popularity. Netflix is doing its best to ensure it takes advantage of this trend, announcing it will produce a new coming-of-age Korean drama series titled “Doona!” that will debut in 2023.
The series will feature K-pop star Suzy (aka Bae Suzy, aka Bae Su-ji) as a pop idol who decides to leave the music industry behind in order to find herself. Korean TV star Yang Se-jong will portray a starstruck college freshman who lives in the same shared house as the newly-relocated global superstar.
“Doona!” is an adaptation of “Lee Doona!,” a webtoon written by Min Song-a. The announcement of the series comes at a time when content from Korea is more popular than ever. According to Netflix, over 60% of the company’s global users have watched some form of Korean content in the past year. Korean series have spent time in the top 10 most-watched rankings in 90 global territories in 2022.
Three Korean series released by Netflix in the last 15 months have climbed into Netflix’s all-time top 10 most popular non-English language shows: “Squid Game,” the zombie apocalypse series “All of Us Are Dead,” and “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” which centers on a new attorney at a top law firm struggling to find her way while dealing with life on the autism spectrum.
Netflix is not the only company looking to capitalize on the increased popularity of Korean content. Earlier this summer, it was announced that Disney+ would release five major K-pop titles on its service, three of which would feature the K-pop super-group BTS, arguably the most popular band in the world currently.
Zooming out from Korea, Netflix has seen a great deal of success with other content originating in Asia in the recent past. In April, the company reported that over 50% of Netflix’s global users watched its Japanese anime library in 2021; over 100 million households globally watched at least one anime title on its platform between October 2019 and September 2020.
Netflix
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