A Decade Built with Korean Creators: Netflix Marks 10 Years in Korea

Netflix celebrates 10 years in Korea this week with "Netflix Janchi," a fan festival held October 24 to 25 in Seoul, bringing together fans, actors and creators, and Netflix leaders to mark a decade of Korean stories reaching audiences around the world. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos joined the celebration, reflecting on Netflix's journey and reaffirming its commitment to Korea. He also revealed a first look at what's coming next, including Possible Love , Tantara , All of Us Are Dead Season 2, and Solo Leveling .

"For Netflix, Korea is more than a market. It is where we discovered new possibilities, and where we learned how far a story can travel. And it is one of our most treasured partners for the future we are building together," Sarandos said.

The global love for Korean stories has grown further than anyone could have predicted a decade ago. Since Netflix began tracking the Global Top 10 in June 2021, more than 200 Korean titles have appeared on the list. The first season of Squid Game holds the record for the longest run of 32 consecutive weeks - nine of them at #1 - and Teach You a Lesson has become Netflix's second most-watched Korean show ever, behind only Squid Game .

K-content is now the most-watched non-English content on Netflix worldwide, with more than 80% of Netflix members globally having watched something Korean.

Investing in local stories told with Korean creators

Behind those numbers are the creators who've built their careers alongside Netflix in Korea, including a new generation of creative talent. From 2024 to 2026, more than one-third of Netflix's Korean titles have been made by first-time directors or writers . Park Yoon-seo previously worked as an assistant director on Kingdom: Season 2 , and this year, he made his own directorial debut with the YA horror series If Wishes Could Kill . "Netflix gave me an opportunity when I was an assistant director on Kingdom: Season 2. I'm glad I was able to give new actors that same opportunity," he said. "I also wanted the project to feel fresh, so I suggested casting only new actors. Netflix agreed, saying that fame wasn't what mattered." And Baek Seung-min, who began as a second assistant on the lighting team for Kingdom , is now the lighting director for All of Us Are Dead: Season 2 . "Working with Netflix Korea at important stages of my career has helped me grow professionally," he said.

Colorist Park Jin-young, who has worked on titles including Possible Love and Good News , said Netflix's arrival in Korea coincided with the commercialization of HDR technology: "It felt like going from working with 30 colors of paint for 10 or 20 years to suddenly having 100 colors at my disposal. I realized just how much more limitless the possibilities were for creating and expressing images. It made us put even more thought into the beauty, quality, and overall visual finish of our work."

Every story, in every language

Reaching an unprecedented global audience took more than great stories - it took making them accessible. Netflix now works with 122 localization partners worldwide, including 119 dubbing studios , to bring Korean titles to viewers in their own language. That work extends to accessibility too: audio descriptions and captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers means more fans can watch and talk about the same shows together, down to details like team-colored subtitles for Physical: Asia and title translations that carry the nuance of the original into each local language, as with When Life Gives You Tangerines .

Impact beyond the screen

Between 2016 and 2025, Netflix worked with more than 80 production companies in Korea, and Korean productions made or co-produced during that period involved over 25,000 cast and crew along with another 70,000 extras and day hires. When Life Gives You Tangerines alone employed nearly 4,000 vendors and 600 cast and crew, contributing more than 90B won to the Korean economy. Unscripted formats have traveled too: Physical: 100 became the first non-English unscripted series to top Netflix's Global Top 10, and the format has since been adapted in Italy and Mexico, with U.S., French and Swedish versions on the way.

A decade of Korean storytelling has reshaped how global audiences travel, eat and speak:

• Travel : 72% of members who've watched Korean content are far more likely to say they want to visit Korea. Foreign visitors to Jeju reached about 2.24M in 2025 - the highest in nine years - the same year When Life Gives You Tangerines premiered. Visits to the show's Gimnyeong Beach filming location rose by about 96%.

• Food : Sales at Chef Choi Hyun-seok's restaurant, CHOI, rose 300% after Culinary Class Wars Season 1; reservations at other contestants' restaurants rose 303% after Season 2.

• Language: New Korean learners on Duolingo in the U.S. rose 37% during Squid Game Season 3's release week, and applications for Korea's TOPIK proficiency exam topped 550,000 in September 2025 - more than all of 2024 combined - just three months after KPop Demon Hunters .

• Scale: K-content drew over 12B viewing hours on Netflix between April 2025 and March 2026 - second only to the U.S. by country of production - and interest extended to source material too, with the Hellbound webtoon's rights selling to 11 countries after the series' release.

To mark the anniversary, Netflix has also launched a microsite bringing together the people, places and numbers behind the past decade of Korean storytelling.

Ten years ago, Netflix set out to tell bold and world-class stories for Korean audiences, by Korean creators. Today, those stories sit at the center of global culture - and the next chapter is already taking shape.