Analyze Trends in Popular K-Drama Series 

South Korea’s movies and TV series have played a crucial role in her intensive culture export efforts to boost the nation’s ability to “shape the preferences of others [country] through attraction of values, policies, and culture as distinct from coercion by economic and/or military means” (i.e. soft power) 1. Its influence in the US specifically is undeniable as many Korean cultural products have become a part of the collective mainstream cultural landscape from Kpop music groups like BTS and Black Pink to the critically and commercially acclaimed show: Squid Game. The story of Squid Game focuses on the anxiety and hopelessness of the lower class and neglected groups, whose only option to escape poverty or paying gambling debt is to participate in life-staking children’s games for the entertainment of the ultra-wealthy.

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Dive into the same mindset of capitalist horror is the film Parasite which is the first foreign film to win best picture from the Oscar and has been considered a historical step for the Korean media landscape, breaking the old US exclusive-winning convention of this category. These media provide a medium for many during and after the pandemics where the same sentiments of the public resonate with the message of these shows. How do South Korean shows make such an impact? What can we learn from one of the Four Asian Tigers 2 cultural production and publishing’s history and journey? In this project, we want to explore “Which original network has the highest number of Korean drama series on weekdays and weekends, and how does it compare to other days of the week?” and “Which original network has the highest variation in IMDb ratings, and how does it compare to others in terms of the median rating?”