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      Sex, Thugs and Kidneys: ‘Bargain’ Bids to Be the Next ‘Squid Game’

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      A new Paramount+ thriller depicts a fight for survival amid sex scams, organ auctions and earthquakes. Like other Korean dramas, it is really about class.In “Bargain,” a new dystopian South Korean series on Paramount+, a man shows up at a hotel far from the city to consummate a deal. He is to pay a young woman for sex; the price is steep because she claims to be a virgin. But wait: It turns out she actually works for a criminal organ-auctioning operation, and the guy is about to unwillingly give up a kidney.Then an earthquake levels the hotel, initiating a desperate scramble for survival. And that’s just the first 30 minutes or so.There’s an almost comical amount of calamity in “Bargain,” the latest offering in the push from Paramount+ into a robust South Korean streaming market that exploded with the popularity of Netflix’s “Squid Game” in 2021. Like that show, which depicted debt-ridden citizens competing in a series of deadly, Darwinian children’s games for the amusement of wealthy overlords, “Bargain” deals in dystopian extremes. (All six episodes begin streaming on Thursday.)But these shows aren’t serving up shock for its own sake. They use dark fantasy to confront issues that plague contemporary South Korean society, particularly the economic inequality fostered by capitalism run amok; social isolation in a frenzied tech boom; and a widespread distrust of government authority.In a paradox of the South Korean streaming boom, shows that often dramatize desperate efforts to get a piece of the economic pie are proving to be big business. (Netflix, the world’s biggest streaming service, reported that 60 percent of its subscribers worldwide had watched a Korean-language show or movie in 2022; the company plans to invest $2.5 billion in South Korean content over the next four years.)Jin Sun Kyu plays a man lured into a trap set by a woman posing as a prostitute. Next thing he knows, a roomful of people are bidding on his organs. Then comes the earthquake.TVING Co/Paramount+“We’ve seen a lot of demand for international content across the globe, and Korean content particularly is a phenomenon in itself,” Marco Nobili, the executive vice president and international general manager of Paramount+, said in a video interview. “Globalization has really brought that to light. So certainly Korea was a top market for us.”Paramount+ entered the arena through a film and television partnership between its parent company, Paramount Global, and the South Korean media conglomerate CJ ENM. As part of that deal, Paramount+ and the Korean streaming giant TVing, which CJ ENM controls, committed to co-producing seven original Korean series, of which “Bargain” is the second. The first, “Yonder,” about a man who reconnects with his dead wife, debuted on Paramount+ in April. (Both premiered in South Korea, on TVing, in October 2022.)At the same time, Paramount+ has begun building its K-drama library with hit shows from the CJ ENM vaults, including the 2016 procedural “Signal” and a 2017 thriller about a religious cult, “Save Me,” both of which also arrived in April.A dark, competitive thread runs through much of it; and just as the characters in Korea’s many dystopian offerings must fight for survival, there seems to be a kind of “can you top this?” contest happening among the shows themselves. The premise of “Bargain” is a little more extreme than that of “Squid Game.” Paramount+’s coming series “Pyramid Game,” in which a bullied high school girl must become a sniper in order to survive a brutal game, looks to be yet another nightmare blood sport.For Byun Seungmin, the creator of “Bargain,” the idea of toxic competition is crucial.“In South Korea, the issue of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer is severe,” Byun said in a video interview last month through an interpreter. “There’s a prevailing sense of defeat that if one isn’t born into a good background, it’s difficult to have a fair opportunity to achieve something.”In “Bargain,” you can either afford to buy a kidney for your dying father (freshly carved from a captive), or you can’t. You either run a criminal empire, or what’s left of your body is fed to the fish. Near the end of the series, as the female and male lead characters (played by Jun Jong Seo and Jin Sun Kyu) try to escape the collapsing structure, one says to the other: “If we die here, we die for nothing.” The response: “People like us always die for nothing.”The hit Netflix series “Squid Game,” whose premise put contestants in a series of deadly children’s games, initiated the boom in the South Korean streaming market. Noh Juhan/Netflix“Bargain,” like “Squid Game,” offers the spectacle of millions in cash literally dangling above those who can grab it. Such images are laden with meaning, said the journalist Elise Hu, whose book “Flawless” is a deep examination of South Korea’s booming beauty industry.“You have this story in which body parts are actually getting fragmented, and organs sold and then harvested, so that you can put a price on a body,” she said last month in a phone interview. “It all flows from this moment that South Korea is in with consumption, where you can buy all the things that you want and it’s all money, money, money.”As Byun put it, “The younger generation in Korea now believes unless the system collapses, or a disaster occurs where everyone becomes truly equal, there is no opportunity for the future.”“Bargain” unfolds in a series of carefully choreographed long takes, the camera darting and gliding among the wreckage and creating a sense that, even in this dog-eat-dog world, everyone’s fate is connected. The dearth of editing made it essential that everyone hit their marks and stay on the same page.“It felt like a theater piece, or like I was playing a game of chess or Go,” Jun, the female lead, said through an interpreter. “The series is quite experimental in terms of the scenario and also the structure.”From left, Chang Ryul, Park Hyung-Soo and Jun in “Bargain.” Their characters must battle in an postapocalyptic-like environment after an earthquake collapses much of the building they are in.TVING Co/Paramount+The past few years have seen seismic change and even scandal in South Korean television and film. In 2017 the conservative president Park Geun-hye was removed from office and later convicted on charges of bribery, extortion and abusing her power, including the maintenance of a government blacklist that denied state funding to thousands of artists deemed unfriendly to her administration or insufficiently patriotic. During the Park administration, more filmmakers subsequently sought funding and distribution from streamers — especially Netflix, Hu said.Now the streaming frontier is wide open, and Paramount+ is staking its claim. Nobili, the Paramount+ executive, is particularly excited about the coming series “A Bloody Lucky Day,” about a taxi driver and a serial killer — shades of Michael Mann’s hit man/cabby movie “Collateral.”Business, in other words, is promising. But if “Bargain” stands to provide some wild entertainment for American audiences — and the promise of big revenue for its American streamer — Byun, its creator, seemed more focused on the culturally specific ways he hopes the series will speak about South Korea today. He described a country in which birthrates are plummeting and “people tend to avoid communication with others.”“They express anger about many things, claiming the value of fairness,” he continued. The characters in “Bargain,” he added, “reflect the masses in modern South Korea who seem to have lost hope, and even among them there is a rift.”And yet where there is collapse — of a building, an entertainment industry, a society — there is also the hope for renewal.“Collapse is not the end but a new beginning,” Byun said. “After going through the collapse, the characters inadvertently gain an opportunity to start over in a more primitive era where equality prevails.“I believe this also reflects the psyche of the public, desiring the end of the period they’re living in so that a new one can arise.” More

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      in Music

      QI.X, a Queer K-Pop Group, Wants to Change South Korea

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      In conservative South Korea, few L.G.B.T.Q. entertainers have ever come out. The young members of QI.X don’t see the point of staying in.At a bar in Euljiro, one of Seoul’s up-and-coming hip neighborhoods, two voices intertwined in a duet. One was high-pitched, the other an octave lower.But there was only one singer, a 27-year-old named jiGook. The other voice was a recording made years ago, before he began his transition and hormone therapy deepened his voice.“I don’t want to forget about my old self,” he told the 50 or so people at the performance, a fund-raiser for a group that supports young L.G.B.T.Q. Koreans. “I love myself before I started hormone therapy, and I love myself as who I am now.”jiGook performing at a bar in the Euljiro district of Seoul.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesLike many other South Korean singers, jiGook, who considers himself gender fluid, transmale and nonbinary, wants to be a K-pop star. So do Prin and SEN, his bandmates in QI.X, a fledgling group that has released two singles.What makes them unusual is that they are proudly out — in their music, their relationship with their fans and their social activism. They call themselves one of the first openly queer, transgender K-pop acts, and their mission has as much to do with changing South Korea’s still-conservative society as with making music.In the group’s name — pronounced by spelling out the letters — Q stands for queer, I for idol and X for limitless possibilities. Park Ji-yeon, the K-pop producer who started QI.X, says it is “tearing down the heteronormative walls of society.”Very few K-pop artists, or South Korean entertainers in general, have ever been open about being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. Though the country has become somewhat more accepting of sexual diversity, homophobia is still prevalent, and there are no legal protections against discrimination.The bandmates saying goodbye after a livestreaming session in Seoul. “Someday, we want to be on everyone’s streaming playlist,” Prin said.For entertainers, coming out is seen as a potential career killer, said Cha Woo-jin, a music critic in Seoul. That applies even to K-pop, despite its young, increasingly international fan base and its occasional flirtation with androgyny and same-sex attraction.“K-pop fans seem to accept the queer community and imagery so long as their favorite stars don’t come out explicitly,” Mr. Cha said.That’s not a compromise that QI.X is willing to make.The bandmates’ social media accounts, which promote their causes along with their music, are up front about who they are. So are their singles, “Lights Up” (“The hidden colors in you / I see all the colors in you”) and “Walk & Shine,” which Mx. Park says “celebrates the lives and joy of minorities.”“Someday, we want to be on everyone’s streaming playlist,” said Prin, 22.SEN dancing before the start of a recording session in Seoul for Q Planet, an online show, as jiGook and QI.X’s producer, Park Ji-yeon, watched. As a producer, Mx. Park, 37, who identifies as queer and nonbinary, has worked on hits for well-known K-pop acts like GOT7 and Monsta X. But she wanted to make music that spoke directly to people like her, with “an artist who could encapsulate our lives, love, friendships and farewells.”She met some of the QI.X members through a K-pop music class she started in 2019, designed with queer performers in mind. (In other classes, she said, “It was assumed that female participants only wanted to learn girl-group songs and male participants only boy-group songs.”)SEN, 23, said that when Mx. Park asked her to join QI.X, “it was as if a genie in a bottle had come to me.”SEN had been a dancer and a choreographer for several K-pop management agencies, including BTS’s agency, Big Hit Entertainment, now known as HYBE. The people she worked with knew she was queer, and they were welcoming.Mx. Park, leaning against the mirror, with SEN and other QI.X members during a rehearsal in June. In the red shirt is Maek, an original member who has since taken a break from the group. But whenever she auditioned to join an idol group, she said, she “never fit the bill for what they wanted.” People would say she was too short or boyish, or comment about her cropped hair.That’s not an issue for QI.X, which doesn’t aspire to the immaculately styled look of the typical K-pop act (and, in any case, couldn’t afford the ensemble of stylists those groups have). Individuality, they say, is part of the point.QI.X often performs at fund-raisers, for L.G.B.T.Q. and other causes, and sees its music as inseparable from its activism. Maek, for instance, an original member who sang on both singles but is on hiatus from the group, works for the Seoul Disabled People’s Rights Film Festival and volunteers for a transgender rights organization.With no support from a management agency, Mx. Park and the group do everything themselves. They handle their own bookings and manage their social media presence, recording videos themselves to post on TikTok and Instagram.Many of the videos are shot at LesVos, an L.G.B.T.Q. bar in Seoul that often serves as QI.X’s studio and rehearsal hall. Myoung-woo YoonKim, 68, who has run LesVos since the late 1990s, grew up at a time when lesbians were practically invisible in South Korea. “I would often think, ‘Am I the only woman who loves women?” they said.Rehearsing at LesVos, an L.G.B.T.Q. bar in Seoul, as its manager, Myoung-woo YoonKim, and Mx. Park look on.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe QI.X members adore Mx. YoonKim, whom they call hyung, a Korean word for older brother. During a recent video session at LesVos, after dozens of increasingly comical lip-syncing takes of “Walk & Shine,” Mx. YoonKim started to join in. Before long, everyone was bent over with laughter.To a casual observer of K-pop, it might seem surprising that so few of its artists are out. As Mr. Cha, the music critic, notes, L.G.B.T.Q. imagery has been known to surface in K-pop videos and in ads featuring its stars.Some critics see this phenomenon as “queerbaiting,” a cynical attempt to attract nonconformist fans — or to deploy gender-bending imagery because it’s seen as trendy — without actually identifying with them. To Mr. Cha, it suggests that K-pop has a substantial queer fan base, and that some artists might simply be expressing their identities to the extent they can.From left, SEN, Prin, Maek and jiGook livestreaming on YouTube in June. Many of QI.X’s fans live outside South Korea and follow the group online.Mr. Cha thinks the taboo against entertainers’ coming out reflects a general attitude toward pop culture in South Korea: “We pay for you, therefore don’t make us uncomfortable.” (Similar attitudes seem to prevail in Japan, where one pop idol recently made news by telling fans he was gay.)QI.X’s fans, who call themselves QTZ (a play on “cuties”), love the group for charging over that boundary. Many are overseas and follow the group online, leaving enthusiastic messages. “I’m so happy I can finally have an artist in the K-pop industry that I can relate to on a gender level, on a queer level,” one said in a video message to the group. “I’m so excited for you!”The band also gets hateful messages, which its members do their best to ignore. Prin, 22, is optimistic that attitudes in South Korea are changing. (Joining QI.X was Prin’s way of coming out as gender queer, but friends were much more surprised by the news that Prin was in an idol group.)The biggest show of QI.X’s career, so far, was in July at a Pride event, the Seoul Queer Culture Festival. In recent years, it had been held at Seoul Plaza, a major public square. But this year, the city denied organizers permission to hold it there, letting a Christian group use the space for a youth concert instead.QI.X onstage at the Seoul Queer Culture Festival in July.Activists saw that as discrimination, though the city denied it. Conservative Christians are a powerful force in South Korean politics, having lobbied successfully for years to block a bill that would prevent discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people. Organizers held the festival in Euljiro.For its set, QI.X had about 20 backup performers, some of whom were their friends (Mx. YoonKim was one of them). They had rehearsed only once together, on the festival stage that morning, because they hadn’t had the money to rent a big studio.Christian protesters were picketing the festival, some with signs that read “Homosexuality not human rights but SIN.” But fans were there, too. As QI.X sang “Lights Up” and “Walk & Shine,” hundreds crowded in front of the stage, many wearing headbands that were purple, the group’s color. There were Pride flags, and signs that read “We only see you QI.X.”A Pride parade was part of the festival. Hours later, the excitement still hadn’t faded for QI.X. “I felt alive for the first time in a while,” SEN said. More

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      in Television

      How Netflix Plans Total Global Domination, One Korean Drama at a Time

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      As “Squid Game” showed, success with audiences around the world can come from a laser focus on local taste.They met in a 20th-floor conference room in Seoul named for one successful project with Korean talent — “Okja,” a 2017 film of one girl’s devotion to a genetically modified super pig — to discuss what they hoped would become another hit.Quickly, the gathering of Netflix’s South Korea team became an unhappy focus group, with a barrage of nitpicks and critiques about the script for a coming-of-age fantasy show.One person said the story line pulled in too many fantastical — and foreign — elements instead of focusing on character and plot. The creative components struck another person as too hard to grasp, and out of touch.Finally, the executive who was championing the project offered a diagnosis: The writer had watched too much Netflix.Inspired by the streaming service’s success in turning Korean-language shows into international hits, the writer wanted this show to go global, too, and thought more far-fetched flourishes would appeal overseas.The fix, the executive said, was the opposite. The script needed to “Koreanize” the show, ground it in local realism and turn some foreign characters into Korean roles.Netflix wants to dominate the entertainment world, but it is pursuing that ambition one country at a time. Instead of creating shows and movies that appeal to all 190 countries where the service is available, Netflix is focusing on content that resonates with a single market’s audience.“When we’re making shows in Korea, we’re going to make sure it’s for Koreans,” said Minyoung Kim, Netflix’s vice president of content in Asia. “When we’re making shows in Japan, it is going to be for the Japanese. In Thailand, it’s going to be for Thai people. We are not trying to make everything global.”Front, a robot doll from the show “Squid Game.” Back, Minyoung Kim, Netflix’s vice president of content in Asia, who brought the show to the world.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesNetflix’s 2023 Emmy nominations — a respectable if not record-breaking haul for the streaming service — tell one story of its ambitions: It received nods Wednesday for its prestige drama “The Crown,” its comedy-drama “Beef” and its reality shows “Love Is Blind” and “Queer Eye.”In addition to that wide spectrum of English-language programming, Netflix’s ambition is to grow in relatively untapped regions like Asia and Latin America, beyond its saturated core markets in the United States and Europe, where subscriber growth is slowing. It is allocating more of its $17 billion annual content budget to expanding its foreign language programming and attracting customers abroad.But the company is also betting that a compelling story somewhere is compelling everywhere, no matter the language. This year, Netflix developed “The Glory,” a binge-worthy revenge saga about a woman striking back against childhood bullies, which cracked the top five most-watched non-English-language TV shows ever on the service. Before that, at one point “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” a feel-good show about a lawyer with autism, was in the weekly Top 10 chart in 54 countries. Last year, 60 percent of Netflix subscribers watched a Korean-language show or movie.The overseas content has also taken on greater significance with the Hollywood writers’ strike, in which Netflix has become a focal point of frustration for the ways streaming services have upended the traditional television model. In April, before the writers went on strike, Ted Sarandos, one of Netflix’s co-chief executives, said that he hoped there wouldn’t be a strike and that he would work toward a fair deal. But he also promised, “We have a large base of upcoming shows and films from around the world,” adding that Netflix had to “make plans” for a worst-case scenario.In building an audience abroad, Netflix has a head start on other major streaming platforms, although Disney and Amazon have announced plans to build their catalogs of international content. In many Asian markets, Netflix is also competing with a local streaming option — often created by broadcasters wary of ceding control to foreign media giants.Asia, Netflix’s fastest-growing region, is a key battleground because customers watch a higher percentage of programming in their native tongues. Netflix already has shows in more than 30 Asian languages.That’s where Ms. Kim, 42, comes in.Ms. Kim joined Netflix in 2016. Her job is, essentially, to help Netflix do something that has never been done before: build a truly global entertainment service with shows in every market, while selling Americans on the appeal of foreign-language content. If she is daunted by the demand, she doesn’t show it.She is chatty and direct, with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Korean television dramas. But perhaps most importantly for her task, she is the woman who gave the Netflix-watching world “Squid Game.”‘Don’t expect miracles’In 2016, Netflix rented Dongdaemun Design Plaza, a Seoul landmark and futuristic exhibition space, for a red-carpet affair featuring the stars of one of its biggest shows at the time: “Orange Is the New Black.”The hors d’oeuvres were served, on theme with the show, on food trays meant to mimic prison. Netflix was arriving in Korea’s entertainment industry with a big splash. But the tongue-in-cheek humor felt inhospitable and culturally out of touch, according to industry people who attended. It left the impression of an American company that did not understand Korea.It was a clumsy start. A few months later, when Ms. Kim began in her role as Netflix’s first content executive in Asia with a focus on South Korea, she warned the company’s executives: “Don’t expect miracles.”Ms. Kim said she needed to make Netflix feel less foreign and sell creators on why they should work with the company.She traveled to visit producers at their offices instead of summoning them to see her. She arranged regular boozy dinners with producers — the custom in South Korea — knowing that it was difficult to gain their trust until they got drunk with her.Over lunch, where she had a steaming bowl of beef offal soup, she described her strategy.“Here, you first have to build a relationship,” Ms. Kim said. “At the time, I think the way we approached things felt very transactional and aggressive. When it comes to Asian partners, oftentimes it’s more than just the money we put on the table.”The 2021 show “Squid Game” became the most-watched show ever on Netflix and spurred interest in more Korean shows and movies.Noh Juhan/NetflixEarly in her tenure, she came across a movie script called “Squid Game” by Hwang Dong-hyuk, a respected local filmmaker. He had written it a decade earlier and could never find a studio to finance it. She said she immediately loved the irony of a gory “death game” thriller based around traditional Korean children’s games. She thought the concept might work better as a TV show, allowing for more character development than a two-hour film.But it seemed like a strange choice for one of her first big bets. Similar titles were in the young-adult genre, such as “The Hunger Games” or “Battle Royale,” a Japanese cult film in which a group of students fight to the death.“Who wants to see a death game with poor old people?” she recalled being asked by a member of her team.But after she saw the set designs, she was convinced that it would be a big hit in Korea. Netflix decided to change the English title to “Round Six” to appeal to an international audience. Near the release date, Mr. Hwang asked to change the title back because he felt that “Squid Game” was closer to the show’s essence.Much to everyone’s surprise, “Squid Game” garnered an enormous number of views in South Korea and across the world. It was a sensation that broke into the cultural zeitgeist, complete with a “Saturday Night Live” skit and Halloween costumes. And Netflix finally threw the right kind of party for the show’s Korean cast: an after-party, after dominating last year’s Emmy Awards.“Squid Game” changed everything. It became the most-watched show ever on Netflix, and it spurred interest in other Korean content. In April, to coincide with a visit to the United States by South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, Netflix said it was planning to invest $2.5 billion in Korean shows and movies in the next four years, which is double its investment since 2016.After decades of Hollywood’s delivering blockbusters to the world, Netflix is trying to flip the model. Mr. Sarandos said that “Squid Game” proved that a hit show could emerge from anywhere and in any language and that the odds of success for a Hollywood show versus an international show were not that different.“That’s really never been done before,” he said at an investor conference in December. “Locally produced content can play big all over the world, so it’s not just America supplying the rest of world content.”‘Green-light rigor’Global expansion requires a guiding principle. For Ms. Kim, that’s “green-light rigor,” a mind-set she brought to Netflix’s office in the Roppongi district of Tokyo, where she moved last year to oversee the content teams in Asia-Pacific except for India. In some Asian countries, she explained, Netflix has a more limited budget, so the company has to select only the “must-haves” and pass on “nice-to-haves.” Green-light rigor also means not pandering to what Netflix imagines viewers across the world want.How that discipline played out in practice was on display when the Japanese content team met to discuss whether to option a book for a show in late January.The book in question was a love story set in a dystopian world with elements of science fiction. A data analyst said that based on the show’s projected “value,” he wondered whether Netflix would recoup its investment because of the sizable budgets usually required for science fiction.Kaata Sakamoto, who heads the Netflix Japanese content team, said the company had helped creators working in their own countries in their own languages reach a global audience.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesKaata Sakamoto, who heads the Japanese content team, said he worried about the mismatched expectations of viewers who might come expecting a romance drama and then find themselves in hard-core science fiction.“It’s like someone who goes into a restaurant and they are served food that is different from what they want to eat,” he said. “If this is a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ tale, do we need a big sci-fi world setting? It feels like mixed soup.”The executive pitching the project said the writer watched “a lot of Netflix” and was aware of what was popular. So instead of a pure love story, he wanted to infuse elements of dystopian science fiction — a popular genre on Netflix.But Mr. Sakamoto, who played an active role in producing some of Netflix’s hits from Japan, seemed unconvinced.“My question is what is it about this project that is uniquely Japanese?” he asked.Netflix’s Tokyo office exudes an American vibe, but very little English is spoken in the creative meetings. This was the case when Mr. Sakamoto met with Shinsuke Sato, creator of “Alice in Borderland,” a science-fiction survival thriller that was Netflix’s biggest hit in Japan, to discuss a coming project.It was a free-flowing discussion that touched on minute details of the project, from character development to plot twists to which scary animals would work best in computer graphics — reptiles could be easier than furry creatures, suggested Akira Mori, a producer who works with Mr. Sato. (“Maybe an alligator?”)Later, Mr. Sakamoto said that in the past, a lot of talented Japanese who were successful in Japan had struggled to break through in Hollywood because they didn’t speak English well.“But what Netflix has allowed is that creators can make work in their own countries in their own language, and if the storytelling is good and the quality is there, they can reach a global audience,” he said. “This is a major game changer.”“Physical: 100,” a gladiator-style game show in which contestants fight for survival and a cash prize, was in the Top 10 of non-English shows for six weeks. NetflixVision come to lifeThe increased expectations are apparent throughout Netflix’s high-rise office in Seoul. The meeting rooms are named after its prominent Korean movies and shows. In the canteen, a human-size replica of the doll from “Squid Game” looms over a selection of Korean snacks and instant noodles.Ms. Kim’s vision of creating a diverse slate of Korean shows has come to life. “Physical: 100,” a gladiator-style game show in which contestants fight for survival and a cash prize, was in the Top 10 of non-English shows for six weeks. This year, at least three Korean shows have been among the top-10 foreign language shows every week.“It’s exciting, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel the pressure,” said Don Kang, Netflix’s vice president of content in South Korea, who has succeeded Ms. Kim in overseeing South Korea.Mr. Kang, who is soft-spoken with a baby face, joined in 2018 after heading international sales at CJ ENM, a Korean entertainment conglomerate. When he started, Netflix was still operating out of a WeWork office.He said that before Netflix, he thought there wouldn’t be much international interest in Korean reality shows or shows that weren’t romantic comedies.“I was very happy to be proven wrong,” Mr. Kang said.Netflix’s slate of Korean programs runs the gamut from romantic comedies to dark shows like “Hellbound,” an adaptation of a digital comic book about supernatural beings condemning people to hell. Yeon Sang-ho, the director of “Hellbound,” said such niche content wouldn’t be made by Korean broadcasters because the audience wasn’t big enough to justify the budget.Yeon Sang-ho, director of the Netflix show “Hellbound,” said such niche content wouldn’t be made by Korean broadcasters because the audience wasn’t big enough to justify the budget.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times“Netflix has a worldwide audience, which means that we can try more genres and we can try more nonmainstream things, too,” Mr. Yeon said. “Creators who work with Netflix can now try the risky things that they wanted to do but they weren’t able to.”Netflix’s success has reshaped South Korea’s entertainment industry. TV production budgets have increased as much as tenfold per episode in the last few years, said Lee Young-lyoul, a professor at the Seoul Institute of the Arts, and there is growing concern that domestic broadcasters will struggle to compete.Production companies need Netflix’s investments to hire top writers, directors and actors, creating a “vicious cycle of dependency,” according to “Netflix and Platform Imperialism,” an academic paper published in The International Journal of Communication this year.The extraordinary success of “Extraordinary Attorney Woo” highlights the tensions.AStory, the show’s production company, rejected Netflix’s offer to finance the entire second season, because of its previous experience with the service. AStory made “Kingdom,” a hit Korean zombie period show, as a Netflix original, meaning Netflix owned all the show’s intellectual property rights in exchange for paying the full production costs.“While it’s true that Netflix helped the series get popular, our company couldn’t do anything with that,” said Lee Sang-baek, AStory’s chief executive. “There are lots of regrets there.”Mr. Kang said that Netflix had a good relationship with AStory and that the situation was complex. He said Netflix had been “very, very generous” in compensating creators and actors but emphasized the need to grow in a “sustainable” way.“You do sometimes hear those types of concerns: Is Netflix taking too much from our industry? But you can’t be in this business and operate that way,” Mr. Kang said.The production company AStory made “Kingdom,” a hit Korean zombie period show, as a Netflix original.Juhan Noh/Netflix‘Too Hot to Handle’ around the worldOne by one, Ms. Kim rattled off the unique traits of audiences around the region. Korean audiences prefer happy endings in romance. Japanese dramas tend to portray emotion in an understated way. Chinese-language viewers are more accepting of a sad love story. (“The Taiwanese staff always says a romance has to be sad. Somebody has to die.”)Ms. Kim understands that local stories share universal themes, but the key to Netflix’s work is to understand these cultural differences.When Netflix’s “Too Hot to Handle,” a tawdry reality dating show with contestants from the United States and Britain, did well in South Korea and Japan, the company decided to make its own shows in the respective countries. But instead of programs replete with sex and hooking up, Netflix’s versions in South Korea (“Singles Inferno”) and Japan (“Terrace House”) were more suited to local sensibilities: only hints of romance with minimal touching or flirting.Storytelling can also differ. Impressions of the first episode of “Physical: 100” were divided by geography. Ms. Kim said she found that in general, American audiences thought the extensive back stories about the contestants slowed the show. Korean audiences liked the back stories because they wanted to know more about the contestants.Ms. Kim recalled how Netflix’s U.S. executives asked her why the first Squid Game contest did not come until the last 20 minutes of the first episode. She was puzzled, because this was fast for Korean audiences — but not fast enough for American sensibilities. In South Korea, the action often does not start until the fourth episode because shows often follow the cadence of a story arc suited to a 16-episode broadcast TV schedule.Ms. Kim said she thought that audiences would tolerate work that defied their expectations or values when it was foreign, but that it must be authentic when it was local.So far, that philosophy has been successful. “Squid Game” proves that. But it also shows the new challenge that awaits Netflix — once something is a global hit, there are global expectations.Leonardo DiCaprio is a fan, and Mr. Hwang, the writer-director, even teased that the Hollywood A-lister could join the “games,” a boost that most people chasing global domination might find hard to resist. But Netflix did manage it — for now.Last month, when the cast was announced, it featured all Korean actors. More

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      ‘The Glory’ Was a Hit. Now Netflix Is Spending More on K-Dramas.

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      As the series, which focuses on bullying and revenge, became the latest global sensation to emerge from South Korea, Netflix announced it would spend $2.5 billion more on Korean content.“Somebody please help me!” Dong-eun, a high school student, screams as a classmate sears a hair curler into her arm while two other tormentors hold her down.The gruesome scene in a school gymnasium is one of the early, pivotal moments of “The Glory,” the 16-episode drama centered on bullying, social status and revenge that has become the latest in a succession of South Korean mega hits for Netflix. Its breakout sensation, “Squid Game,” became the streamer’s most popular series of all time.“The Glory,” which was released in two parts in December and March, is now Netflix’s fifth most popular non-English television offering ever. Executives said they were somewhat surprised to see how well the show did internationally, noting that it reached the top 10 non-English TV list in 91 countries.It was one of the Korean hits, along with “Squid Game” and “Physical: 100,” that Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive of Netflix, cited last month when he met with President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea. There he announced a $2.5 billion investment in South Korean content over the next four years and noted that stories created in the country “are now at the heart of the global cultural zeitgeist.”Don Kang, Netflix’s vice president of content for Korea, said it had been exciting to see the show take off globally. “‘The Glory’ is a great example of a story that resonates authentically with local audiences, but also depicts themes of human psychology and social issues, which audiences everywhere can relate to,” he said in a statement to The New York Times.“The Glory” revolves around Moon Dong-eun, who makes it her life’s mission to seek revenge on the people who bullied her in high school. Her scars serve both as physical reminders of the pain she suffered at the hands of bullies and as the motivation behind her yearslong quest for vengeance. As she ages and develops her complicated payback scheme, she transforms from victim to perpetrator.In braiding together the themes of bullying and revenge — plot devices that have animated dramas for centuries — “The Glory” lured droves of justice-hungry viewers in South Korea and beyond, even without the grand sets and striking visuals that propelled the popularity of “Squid Game.”Netflix officials said they were pleased to discover that a show focused on story line and characters could travel as well as it did. They said they decided early on to release the episodes in two batches in part because of the weightiness of the content.In a country where traditional broadcasters still censor smoking, Netflix is among the platforms that have opened a path for content creators to delve into topics that have long been considered too risqué, said Yu Kon-shik, an adjunct professor of communications at Konkuk University in Seoul and part of the production planning committee at the Korean Broadcasting System.Fans of “The Glory,” some of whom recalled their own experiences with bullying, admitted that they found it gratifying and cathartic to see Dong-eun upend the lives of her enemies, even when she did things they would never consider.“‘The Glory’ is this slow burn of a vengeance,” said Amy Lew, of Temple City, Calif., whose children have been bullied in school. “That’s everyone’s dark side, right? You want to see the underdog win.”“Squid Game” became Netflix’s most popular series of all time.NetflixThere is a reason so many people can relate. Almost one in three students reported being bullied in 2019, according to a UNESCO report, which also found that the prevalence of bullying has increased in almost one in five countries. And although reports of school violence in South Korea are relatively low — about 2 percent of students report being victims, according to its Ministry of Education — the actual figures could be higher because many students are afraid to speak up, said Kim Tae-yeon, a lawyer in Seoul who specializes in the subject.The resonance of “The Glory” and its themes parked the show on Netflix’s Global Top 10 list for non-English television for 13 weeks. (It has spent only three weeks on the list of leading non-English programs in the United States.) It became one of four Korean series among Netflix’s 10 most popular non-English TV offerings of all time, along with “Squid Game,” “All of Us Are Dead” and “Extraordinary Attorney Woo.”Now the company is hoping to build on those successes by releasing more than 30 Korean series, films and unscripted shows this year alone. At the end of March, just three weeks after the release of the second batch of episodes of “The Glory,” Netflix offered up another new Korean thriller: “Kill Boksoon.”It has spent the past five weeks in Netflix’s top 10 for non-English films.The global success of Korean productions demonstrates the international reach of Netflix — which can subtitle or dub shows in more than 30 languages — but also of the growing power of Seoul as a creative hub, Kang, the Netflix vice president, said.“Korea is a storytelling powerhouse with the ability to showcase uniquely Korean culture and issues,” he said, “while conveying universal emotions that resonate with people around the world.” More

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      Moonbin, Member of K-Pop Band ASTRO, Dies at 25

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      The K-pop star was found dead on Wednesday at his home in Seoul.Moonbin, a member of the K-pop band ASTRO, died on Wednesday at his home in Seoul. He was 25.The pop star’s death was confirmed by the band and its management agency in a statement in Korean posted to Twitter. They did not specify a cause.“On April 19, ASTRO member Moonbin suddenly left us and has now become a star in the sky,” the agency said. It called on fans to refrain from “speculative and malicious reports” so that his family could process the news. To respect their wishes, the agency added, the funeral would be held as privately as possible, with only family, friends and colleagues.According to the Korean news agency Yonhap, Moonbin was found dead at his home in the upscale neighborhood of Gangnam at about 8:10 p.m. on Wednesday by his manager, who contacted the Seoul Gangnam Police Station. Moonbin, born Jan. 26, 1998, was an actor, dancer and model as well as a singer, who also performed as part of the band Moonbin & Sanha. ASTRO, originally a six-person male K-Pop group, shot to fame in 2016 with their debut EP “Spring Up.” They were named to Billboard’s top 10 list of new K-Pop groups that year.In a statement shared early Wednesday, ASTRO announced the cancellation of the Moonbin & Sanha tour in Jakarta “due to unforeseen circumstances.”News of Moonbin’s death reverberated throughout the K-pop world, as fans praised the star for introducing them to the genre, and mourned the sudden loss.Moonbin is the most recent of a series of Korean celebrities in their 20s dying suddenly. In 2019, the deaths of two other K-pop stars left South Korea soul searching over what had gone wrong in one of its most popular cultural exports. Earlier this month, Jung Chae-yull, a 26-year-old South Korean actress, was also found dead in her home. Some, though not all, of the cases have been acknowledged as suicide.If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. More

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      Jung Chae-yull, South Korean Actress, Is Found Dead at 26

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      Though the cause of the unexpected death of Jung Chae-yull was not disclosed, it has renewed concerns about mental health in the country’s highly competitive entertainment industry.A young South Korean actress still early in a promising career was found dead in her home on Tuesday, according to the production company she had been working with. Although no cause of death was disclosed, the episode has renewed concerns about the mental health of young people working in South Korea’s highly competitive entertainment industry.The actress, Jung Chae-yull, 26, is the most recent instance of the phenomenon of celebrities in their 20s dying suddenly. Some, though not all, of the cases have been acknowledged as suicide.“Actress Chae-yull has left our side on April 11, 2023,” Management S, Ms. Jung’s agency in Seoul, said in a statement on Tuesday. “We pray that Chae-yull, who has always been sincere about acting, is able to rest in peace in a warm place.”Two years ago, another 26-year-old actress, Song Yoo-jung, was also found dead at her home in Seoul. Both Ms. Song and Ms. Jung’s careers had begun only a few years before they died. Ms. Song’s agency did not disclose the cause of her death either.In October 2019, Sulli, 25, a member of a K-pop girl group, was found dead in her home after facing repeated instances of bullying. Officials determined it was suicide. A few weeks after that, Goo Hara, 28, another K-pop singer, was found dead in her home, and her death was likewise ruled a suicide.“Unless the entertainment industry and media change, South Korea will be first place on celebrity suicide,” one K-pop fan wrote on Twitter. South Korean authorities recently announced that instances of bullying will now be reflected on college applications, as the country struggles to put a stop to such abuse.Ms. Jung stepped into the spotlight in 2016 in a fashion competition show in South Korea called “Devil’s Runway,” which grouped rookie and veteran models into teams to compete on the catwalk. She scored multiple endorsements with popular brands like Etude, a large cosmetics company in South Korea, and U.S. fashion labels such as Jill Stuart.Ms. Jung on the set of the movie “Deep,” a thriller in which she had a leading role.HajunsaMs. Jung branched out into acting in 2018, when she landed a leading role in the movie “Deep,” a thriller set in the Philippines. She would go on to act in at least one more film and two series, including “Zombie Detective,” which took home a prize at the 2020 KBS Entertainment Awards in South Korea.Recently, Ms. Jung had been filming a new series called “Wedding Impossible,” based on a web novel. Filming has been temporarily suspended, according to Studio 329, the company that was working with her on the project.Ms. Jung was born in 1996 and enjoyed boxing and snowboarding, according to social media posts. Since Tuesday, fans have flooded her Instagram account to pay tribute.“I love you, Chae-yull, I’ll pray for your happiness in heaven,” one fan wrote after the announcement.Ms. Jung’s family plans to hold a private funeral, according to her agency.If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. More

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      ‘Gangnam Style’ Brought K-Pop to the World, but Haunted Its Creator

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      In 2012, the song took over the internet, and it helped pave the way for the global success of Korean pop. But Psy, the artist behind it, spent years trying and failing to replicate the phenomenon.SEOUL — He may not look it, in a spiffy double-breasted suit and a coiffure secured with enough hair gel to reflect the ceiling lights, but the 45-year-old music executive confides a secret as he rubs his temples: He’s hung over.But he doesn’t mind nursing this headache, at well past 2 p.m. on a Thursday in Seoul. Some of his best songwriting ideas come to him, he said, in the malaise that follows a night of hard drinking.The man doing the creative suffering is Psy, the onetime global internet sensation whose 2012 viral music video and earworm of a song, “Gangnam Style,” became the first-ever YouTube offering to surpass one billion views and had the world galloping along with him.The outlandish but irresistibly catchy song and accompanying video — which has Psy doing the tune’s signature horseback dance move in and around Gangnam, an upscale Seoul neighborhood — achieved the breakthrough, worldwide success that had mostly eluded Korean pop acts, or K-pop, before then.The video, which now has some 4.6 billion views, was so culturally pervasive in 2012 that Barack Obama was asked about it on Election Day. NASA astronauts recorded a parody, and a North Korean state propaganda site evoked the dance move to mock a South Korean politician. But for several years in the aftermath of all his viral fame, Psy said, the song’s success haunted him. Even as he was thrust overnight into a Hollywood existence, getting chased around New York City by paparazzi, signing with Justin Bieber’s manager and releasing a single with Snoop Dogg, internally he felt the pressure mounting for another hit.Psy performing “Gangnam Style” live on NBC’s “Today” show in New York, in 2012. At the time, the video for the song had more than 200 million YouTube views; it now has more than 4.6 billion.Jason Decrow/Invision, via Associated Press“Let’s make just one more,” he says he kept telling himself.He moved to Los Angeles in an effort to get a global career going in earnest, an ocean away from his native South Korea, where he was both a fixture of the music charts and a source of comic relief on silly television variety shows. But none of the attempts came close to replicating the formula that made “Gangnam Style” a global success.Psy wasn’t alone in trying to figure out how to reproduce the phenomenon. In South Korea, not only the music industry but government officials and economists, too, were studying just what it was about the tune, the lyrics, the video, the dancing or the man that had vaulted the song to such singular levels of ubiquity.And in the decade since the song and video first put South Korea’s pop music on the map for many around the world, K-pop has become a cultural juggernaut, expanding out from markets in East and Southeast Asia to permeate all corners of the world.Artists like BTS and Blackpink command devoted fans numbering in the tens of millions, and the bands wield an economic impact that rivals a small nation’s G.D.P. The fervor has spilled over beyond music into politics, education and even Broadway.Some say Psy deserves much of the credit.“Psy single-handedly placed K-pop on a different level,” said Kim Young-dae, a music critic who has written extensively about the industry. The song was a “game changer” for the Korean music scene and paved the way for the groundswell of interest and commercial success that the South Korean stars who came after him experienced, Mr. Kim said.Now, 10 years on from his lightning-in-a-bottle moment, Psy, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, is back home in South Korea, where he has started his own music label and management company and is trying to recreate the magic with the next generation of K-pop talent as one of the industry’s tastemakers.“Let’s make just one more,” Psy said he kept telling himself after “Gangnam Style” became a phenomenon.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times“One of the things I love most about this job is that it’s unpredictable. We say among ourselves we’re in the ‘lid business’ — because you don’t know what you’ve got until you open it,” Psy said in an interview at the offices of his music label headquartered in — where else? — the Gangnam neighborhood of Seoul. “You don’t know which cloud will bring the rain.” With 10 artists under his wing, including a newly minted six-member boy band, TNX, Psy says he feels immensely more pressure shaping and stewarding other people’s careers compared to when he was responsible for his alone.And while he can give his budding stars advice based on decades of industry experience, what he can’t do is offer them surefire instructions on making a hit record.For all the years he has spent thinking and talking about “Gangnam Style,” he remains just as mystified as anyone by its success.“The songs are written by the same person, the dance moves are by the same person and they’re performed by the same person. Everything’s the same, but what was so special about that one song?” Psy said. “I still don’t know, to this day.”Psy performing on the grounds of Korea University in Seoul in May.Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn global terms, Psy and his “Gangnam Style” are the epitome of a one-hit wonder. But in South Korea, he had been well-known as a rapper and musician for a decade before, carving out a path that differed from many of his fellow performers, in that he didn’t count on a boost from his physical appearance or shy away from courting controversy.He never had the chiseled look sought after in South Korea’s pop music industry, and from the release of his first album in 2001, he became notorious for his blunt, profane and at times ribald lyrics. “I Love Sex” was one of the tracks on his debut album, “Psy from the Psycho World!” which was slapped with a ban on sale to minors at the urging of the country’s Christian Ethics Movement.Despite — or perhaps because of — his unapologetic, iconoclastic ways, over the past two decades at home in South Korea, the college dropout has consistently logged chart toppers, best-selling albums and sold-out concerts.“It’s kinda sorta ironic he became so iconic — he went from being occasionally censored to widely celebrated,” said Bernie Cho, president of DFSB Kollective, a Seoul-based creative services agency that offers marketing and distribution solutions to Korean music artists and their labels. “He irreverently winked his way from being the bad boy of K-pop to the golden boy of K-pop.”For a pop song, “Gangnam Style” also unleashed an avalanche of deep think pieces and analyses on the various aspects of South Korea and Seoul it was said to be lampooning: the hypocrisy of the nouveau riche, the superficiality of its social standards and the inequality exemplified by the opulent Gangnam neighborhood.Psy insists the song never intended to deliver any profound social commentary — he was just looking to give people a few minutes of mindless hilarity and a reprieve from reality.If anything, he said, he was poking fun at himself, because he doesn’t aesthetically fit the bill of a posh Gangnam local.A decade on from his lightning-in-a-bottle moment, Psy has started a music label and talent management company. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times“It’s funny because someone who doesn’t look like he’s ‘Gangnam style’ says he is,” he said.Initially targeted for development in the 1970s to expand Seoul south of the Han River, Gangnam has became a coveted address where many of the capital’s wealthy congregate and the best schools are concentrated, an educational disparity likely to ensure that the inequalities symbolized by the neighborhood continue into the next generation.In the years since Psy made Gangnam a globally recognized, if oft-mispronounced, proper noun (“Gang” sounds closest to the latter half of Hong Kong; “nam” like Vietnam), the neighborhood has gotten ever more unattainable for the average South Korean. Nowhere have runaway real estate prices risen as steeply as in the Gangnam area.“If you say you live in Gangnam, people look at you differently,” said Jin Hee-seon, a former vice mayor of Seoul and professor of urban planning at Yonsei University. “It’s an object of desire and envy.”Psy, raised in the greater Gangnam area in a family running a semiconductor business, now lives north of the river with his wife and twin daughters and says he spends little time thinking about the place.A bronze sculpture in Gangnam by the artist Hwang Man-seok, modeled after the signature “Gangnam Style” horse-riding hand motion.Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat he has recently returned to is his signature live performances.His concerts are legendary in South Korea for raucous good fun. His music — loud and energetic — is often accompanied by dance moves just as outrageous, requiring him to jump, kick and wave his arms wildly in the air. During his six-city tour this year, his first since the pandemic, he said he was surprised to find his joints and limbs as nimble as ever in middle age.In his latest album released this April, his ninth, he collaborated with the rapper Suga of BTS on a single titled “That That.” In the music video, Suga comically duels — and kills — the blue tuxedo-wearing Psy of the 2012 video. (That video has accrued 369 million views.)As for the chase of global fame that once drove him nearly mad, he says he’s made his peace with its absence.“If another good song comes along and if that thing happens again, great. If not, so be it,” he said. “For now, I’ll do what I do in my rightful place.” More

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      BTS to Enlist in South Korea’s Military

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      Ending months of debate, the band’s label said that the seven members would serve their military conscriptions. They plan to reunite in a couple of years.The biggest question about the biggest K-pop band has been answered.The members of BTS will enlist in South Korea’s military as required by law, the band’s label said on Monday, ending months of public debate about whether the group qualified for an exemption to mandatory conscription.The announcement of the band’s decision — which came less than two days after it had performed its first concert in months — effectively confirms the hiatus that the members had first mentioned this summer. The seven members will reconvene “as a group again around 2025” after completing their service, the label, Big Hit Music, said in a statement posted on Twitter.Millions of dejected fans, who call themselves the Army, took to social media to express their support, grief and disbelief. The move is also likely to have wider ramifications, deprivingSouth Korea of the billions of dollars the band’s followers pump into its economy.South Korea requires all able-bodied men to enlist by the time they turn 30 and to serve for about two years. Exceptions can be granted, for example to athletes who win medals at international competitions like the Olympics and to some high-level classical musicians, but pop music artists do not qualify. The first member of BTS to enlist will be Kim Seok-jin, known as just Jin, who turns 30 in December.After the announcement, the stock price of Big Hit’s parent company, HYBE, fell 2.5 percent on Monday. The company has lost about half its market value since June, when BTS talked about a hiatus as the members pursued solo projects.Jin announced a solo project at the BTS concert on Saturday in Busan, South Korea, an event that was free of charge and drew about 50,000 fans. On Monday, the label had a message that seemed targeted to both fans and investors.“‘Yet to Come (The Most Beautiful Moment)’ is more than a track from their latest album, it is a promise,” the label said. “There’s much more yet to come in the years ahead from BTS.” More