The Childhood Connection: The Psychological Reason K-Dramas Are Obsessed with This Trope

Hello! This is Sunny from K-Music Note.

Birth secrets, amnesia, and the legendary 'kimchi slap.' For years, these were the hallmarks of a guaranteed K-drama hit, a style known as 'Makjang'—over-the-top, sensationalist soap opera. But that code has been decisively rewritten. In its place, we have the shocking survival horror of 'Squid Game,' the brutal zombies of 'Kingdom,' and the meticulous revenge of 'The Glory.' How did such a dramatic transformation happen in just a few short years? The answer lies with the global streaming giant, Netflix. Today, let's break down the decisive reasons how Netflix entered the Korean market, erased the Makjang formula, and ushered in an era of world-class genre series.

1. The Metric of Success: From Weekly Ratings to Global Subscriber Satisfaction

The success of a traditional broadcast drama was measured by one thing: weekly television ratings. This was directly tied to advertising revenue. To keep viewers hooked week after week, producers often relied on provocative, sensationalist plot points—the core of Makjang. Netflix, however, operates on a monthly subscription model. For them, the key metric isn't immediate ratings but long-term subscriber satisfaction. In a binge-watching environment where all episodes are released at once, a compelling, tightly-written story with a fully realized world is far more valuable than a series of weekly cliffhangers. This fundamental difference in business models was the first step in changing K-drama's DNA.

2. Full Support: Granting Unprecedented Capital and Creative Freedom

Seeing the potential of K-content, Netflix invested massive amounts of 'capital.' Production budgets soared to millions of dollars per episode, allowing for a scale and visual quality previously unimaginable in Korean television. The sprawling zombie action of 'Kingdom' and the hyper-realistic monsters of 'Sweet Home' were direct results. But even more important than money was 'creative freedom.' Liberated from the strict regulations of Korean broadcast censorship and the constant pressure of product placement (PPL), creators could finally explore darker and more complex themes. Netflix aimed for 'subscriber satisfaction' instead of 'viewer ratings,' creating an environment where writers could focus on artistic integrity and world-building over cheap thrills.

3. The Target Audience: From the Korean Living Room to the World

From day one, a Netflix Original is developed for a global audience of over 200 million subscribers, not just the domestic Korean market. This meant that the culturally specific tropes of Makjang, which might be familiar to Koreans, had to be replaced with universal themes and the satisfying conventions of genre storytelling. Class struggle ('Squid Game'), survival instincts ('Kingdom'), and justice ('The Glory') are concepts that resonate with anyone, anywhere, regardless of their cultural background. For K-drama to become a truly global phenomenon, shedding the old skin of Makjang and embracing the new armor of the well-made genre series was an inevitable and necessary evolution.

[Insider's Tip] Netflix's arrival in the K-drama market was like dropping a catfish into a quiet pond. As Netflix produced one global hit after another, a sense of crisis pushed domestic broadcasters and production companies to innovate. They could no longer rely on the old formulas. Now, even terrestrial channels are planning big-budget genre series aimed at OTT platforms, creating a positive 'catfish effect' that has raised the quality standard of the entire K-content ecosystem.

Core Ideas in 3 Lines

• Netflix changed the business model from chasing weekly domestic ratings with 'Makjang' tropes to satisfying a global subscriber base with high-quality, binge-worthy content.
• By providing massive capital and creative freedom from broadcast censorship, it enabled Korean creators to produce ambitious, world-class genre series that were previously impossible.
• It targeted a global audience from the start, forcing a shift toward universal themes and genres over culturally specific melodrama.