Romantic blockbusters: the co-commissioning of Korean network-developed K-dramas as ‘Netflix originals’

Since Netflix started offering its multinational service in South Korea in 2016, the company’s main strategy has been to enter into partnerships with local legacy networks in the form of co-commissions and offer locally developed K-dramas as ‘Netflix Originals’. In this paper, I analyse the industrial changes that led to the Korean cable channel tvN and Netflix co-commissioning television series, focusing in particular on Mr. Sunshine (Miseuteo syeonsyain, 2018) and Crash Landing on You (Sarangui bulsichak, 2019-2020) as the culmination of the many successful K-dramas developed through this partnership. Renowned internationally for productions in the romance genre, K-drama has evolved rapidly since the enormous success of Winter Sonata (Gyeoul yeonga, 2004), the series that initiated the Korean Wave in Japan. These programs continue the decades-long lineage of romance-themed K-dramas by terrestrial broadcasters while offering enhanced production values made possible by infusions of capital from Netflix, which have fuelled the evolution of K-dramas into what I have termed ‘romantic blockbusters.’ I examine the triadic relationship among the key stakeholders—the local networks, the local production companies, and Netflix—to trace the development of local network-developed K-dramas into internationally circulating Netflix Originals.