Actor Lee Jung-jae is seen in the upcoming season 2 for Netflix series "Squid Game," to be released Dec. 26. Courtesy of Netflix By Park Jin-hai Global video streaming service Netflix is experiencing a decline in its user base as its Korean original content continues to underperform. Attention is now focused on whether upcoming titles such as season 2 of "Squid Game," slated for release in December, can reverse this trend. According to the industry, Sunday, Netflix's original Korean series have achieved the top spot in weekly global viewership seven times since the beginning of this year. "Parasite: The Grey" claimed the top spot twice, while "The Bequeathed," "A Killer Paradox," "Physical: 100" season 2, "The 8 Show" and "Hierarchy" each secured the No. 1 position for a week. However, no new hit series has emerged to follow in the footsteps of "Squid Game," which achieved phenomenal success with its first season in 2021, as well as "All of Us Are Dead," which ranked No. 1 for five consecutive weeks in 2022, and "The Glory," which topped the charts five times from late 2022 to early 2023. In terms of buzzworthiness, Netflix's original series have also failed to produce any significant results recently. According to GoodData, which releases weekly buzzworthiness rankings, none of Netflix's original series have ranked first this year. Netflix's recent struggles with original content are tied to its declining subscriber numbers. Since original content is exclusive to the platform, it's vital to increase and maintain its user base to make original content profitable. Data management platform service Mobile Index data showed that Netflix's monthly active users here dropped by some 16 percent from 13.06 million in December to 10.96 million in June. According to pop culture critic Jung Duk-hyun, Netflix's funding decisions favor genre-specific content, particularly action-thrillers like "Squid Game," and this has overshadowed other genres that have long been a cornerstone of Korean dramas, such as melodramas. In a significant milestone for the Korean streaming industry, Tving surpassed Netflix in daily viewing hours for the first time ever. The daily viewing time of the final episode of "Lovely Runner" (based on mobile app data) on Tving, which exclusively streamed the drama, reached 2.5 million hours, surpassing Netflix's 2.41 million hours on the same day. Netflix, however, still has a few potential game-changers up its sleeve. The most anticipated is the second season of "Squid Game," which will be released Dec. 26. The platform also has a lineup of crime thrillers, suspense and action shows coming up. New romance dramas and variety shows, including a cooking competition and a comedy battle, are in the works. The crime thriller drama "The Frog," starring Go Min-si, will be released on Friday. The second season of "Gyeongseong Creature," starring Park Seo-jun and Han So-hee, will also be unveiled in September. "The Trunk," starring Seo Hyun-jin and Gong Yoo, and "Hellbound" season 2, starring Kim Hyun-joo, will be released later this year. Yim Jung-su, a business communication professor at Seoul Women's University, said that more original content can tie subscribers to their platforms, emphasizing that original content is still important for platforms to maintain their power. "In general, the more exclusive and unreleased a new piece of content is, the more advantageous it is in acquiring and retaining subscribers," the professor wrote in an article contributed to the Korea Creative Content Agency's recently published Global OTT Trends report. "This is why Netflix has invested in original content."
