Korean wave crosses the Pacific

By Ed Waller 07-09-2014

Korean dramas have been dominating Asian television schedules for more than a decade but could the next step be US network primetime? C21 went to the Seoul Drama Awards (SDA) to find out.

Good Doctor

The Korean Wave began something like 15 years ago, and pioneering K-dramas went on to become the standard-bearers for a sexy new kind of TV series that appealed to women as much as men and helped to spread Korean culture around Asia.

The 2002 series Winter Sonata from KBS, for instance, set the bench mark for Korean drama exports and has reportedly generated a total of US$27bn – that’s billion – when you take in account everything from TV rights to format deals, stage plays, animé adaptations, spin-off books and even its boost to tourism for the small island where the series was filmed.

The success of K-dramas since then has ousted Hollywood product from TV schedules across Asia, and in tandem with K-pop acts like Baby VOX, Super Junior and TVXQ has propelled Korean culture to the big league. You need only witness the popularity and quality of Korean series like Good Doctor, My Love From the Star and Empress Ki that won awards at last week’s Seoul Drama Awards to see that K-drama is a regional phenomenon.

However, the K-drama wave has never really extended far beyond Asia, apart from a few series going to niche cable networks and video-on-demand platforms in Europe and the US, and some remake rights being picked up in Russia and other markets. Notable exceptions were several markets in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, where Korean dramas like Jumong from MBC hit big in Romania and Iran.

Reply 1997

Now front of mind among Korean producers and distributors is getting their scripted formats away in the bigger Western territories in Europe and North America, if the mood at last week’s BCWW trade convention and Seoul Drama Awards was anything to go by.

The BCWW event kicked off with C21’s story that NBC in the US had greenlit a reality series based on a Korean format – marking the first K-format to go to series in the US – and the news spread like wildfire, enthusing exhibitors in Seoul last week with the idea that scripted formats were next on the list. If drama and sitcom formats from Latin America and Israel can work in the US market, BCWW delegates were asking themselves, then why not those from South Korea?

South Korea produces around 150 original dramas a year and at least some have already been picked up for US development. Award-winning KBS hit Good Doctor has been picked up by CBS, after a deal involving Hawaii Five-0 star Daniel Dae Kim’s firm 3AD, EnterMedia Contents and CBS TV Studios, while CJ Entertainment & Media (CJ E&M) series Nine: Nine Time Travels was put into development last autumn by ABC and Josh Schwartz’s company Fake Empire but never went any further.

Another CJ E&M drama, Reply 1997, has also been acquired for US development by the Fox network, with Step Up 3D writers Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer adapting the coming-of-age musical drama into a project called Answer Me 1999, via FX Productions.

Korean drama formats are evidently reaching US shores but as yet nothing has been greenlit for production, let alone become a hit in the US. Nevertheless, the US market is the biggest importer of scripted formats, according to industry analyst The WIT, with its risk-averse broadcasters and dozens of basic and premium cable networks all keen to fast-track their way to ratings success with imported IP.

“Korea’s about three or four years away from seeing one of its dramas becoming a hit for US audiences but it’s just a matter of time. It has the talent, in terms of writers and actors, but it just needs to work on its distribution,” according to one BCWW panelist, Lionsgate and former HBO Europe exec Marc Lorber.

Another panelist at SDA, Michel Rodrigue of The Format People, described Korea as being “on the edge of the international TV industry,” but it’s there on the edges where some of the best out-of-the-box thinking can be found. Once upon a time Israel, Scandinavia and Turkey were on the peripheries of the global TV industry but were busy coming up with ideas that were unlike those being developed by the mainstream – and look where they are now.

Given South Korea’s global positioning, the soaring popularity of its other cultural contributions like K-pop, and the growing acceptance in the major TV markets of ideas from anywhere, we might only have so far seen the initial stages of the Korean drama wave.