Netflix’s K-drama success with It’s Okay to Not Be Okay is spurring Korean streaming platforms Watcha, Seezn and Kakao Play to strike back
Kim Yohan of X1 and So Ju-yeon will star in big budget series A Love So Beautiful on new platform Seezn, as Korean networks try to reclaim their K-drama crowd from the global streaming service
With everyone staying at home and observing quarantine, time spent online and watching videos is inevitably increasing. And with the simultaneous rising popularity of K-dramas, Netflix has been upping its investment in the market, producing more and more K-drama originals, as well as allocating higher budgets,
Following the success of Netflix’s first original K-Drama, Kingdom, about a gory zombie takeover in the Joseon dynasty, next year brings us Sweet Home, a thrilling action-packed drama about a group of survivors fighting off an infectious virus that turns one into, quite literally, their own monsters.
It is based on a popular webtoon of the same name. The budget per episode is slated to be US$2.4 million, surpassing that of Kingdom and Arthdal Chronicles. It is set to star rising celebrities, Song Kang (Love Alarm) and Lee Do-hyun (Hotel Del Luna).
In response, it seems that domestic companies are fighting back – some newly founded platforms are here to remind the media giant not to get complacent. Kakao Corp, home to ubiquitous messenger app KakaoTalk, is opening its own streaming platform, Kakao Play. It has already signed a few in-production dramas, including highly anticipated adaptations of webtoons, such as Love Revolution starring Wanna One member, Park Ji-hoon. It also clinched the rights to Chinese drama remake, A Love So Beautiful, set to star Kim Yo-han of X1 and rookie actress So Ju-yeon.
Seezn, another streaming app, has gone the other direction and has cut deals with reality shows. This includes NCT Life: Dream in Wonderland, a travel reality programme with popular idols, NCT Dream, at its centre. Other mini-web series are also signed up to this app, offering app users exclusive advance viewership.
Lastly Watcha, which has been around for a few years now and is better known as the “Netflix of Korea”, given that it provides access to most K-dramas. It also operates similarly to Netflix with a monthly subscription fee. Seezn is currently free to view as it is slowly but surely growing its user base.
And how well is Netflix doing in Korea? For starters, the recent joint broadcast with TVN of It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, starring Seo Ye-ji and Kim Soo-hyun, saw dismal ratings on television, while viewing figure for it on Netflix are soaring. Netizens have commented on the preference of watching such shows by themselves on their laptops, rather than in the living room with family.