Korea's universally relatable When Life Gives You Tangerines will give you everything

Dear Gossips,

Ampere Analysis is a research firm that focuses on entertainment industry data. A few days ago it released a report showing that in 2024 “Korean content [was…] second only to U.S. shows and accounting for a 8% of all global Netflix streams”. Per Variety:

“In the second half of 2024, Korean content was streamed for 7.7 billion hours. Korean content consistently represents 8%-9% of viewing hours on Netflix, ahead of U.K. content at 7%-8%, and Japanese content at 4%-5% of viewing time, the report finds. This is despite hits from the U.K., such as “Black Doves” Season 1 and “The Gentlemen” Season 1, and the growing popularity of anime, which is a key driver of Japanese content viewing on Netflix.”

It's been almost a decade since Netflix started investing in Korean programming and just last year they further committed $2.5 billion over five years to secure more Korean content on the platform after the getting the jump on the competition in this space.

Also this week, Max, which is Warner Bros’ streaming service, expanded into Türkiye and has promised to invest in local productions. Türkiye is now the “third largest exporter of scripted television” behind the United States and the UK.

Storytellers from non-English speaking creatives are finding a global audience, and it’s a lucrative business that is still on the upswing, as American entertainment companies well know, even though the current American government continues to insist, aggressively, that DEI is irrelevant. You can’t be in the business of investing in or acquiring creative content from other parts of the world if you don’t have people on your team who understand storytelling and storytellers from other parts of the world.

Going back to the global dominance of Korean content, though, Squid Game is a part of it but it’s not all of it, not even close. Season three of Squid Game will premiere in June and, no doubt, will put up big numbers but Netflix’s biggest hit out of Korea so far this year has been a multi-generational drama series called When Life Gives You Tangerines. The series has been a critical and commercial success, ranking globally in Netflix’s Top 10 in dozens of territories with one of the highest scores ever, if not the highest, on ratings sites around the world, from IMDb to Douban in China.

What’s even more amazing about Tangerines is that its story is so specifically Korean, tracking one family’s experience through several decades of Korean history. And still, it’s universally relatable because the themes are so human: parental love, perseverance, the unpredictable seasons of our lives…

I LOVE this show, it might be my most beloved K-drama ever, and I watch a lot of them. But every detail was exquisite, from the way it was shot and paced, the dialogue was like poetry, the acting is superb… When Life Gives You Tangerines is a television masterpiece. And the star of the series is IU (pronounced “Eye You”), known as the Taylor Swift of Korea.

She is and has been for years the undisputed pop queen of the nation, a singer-songwriter in an industry where solo acts rarely become as popular as group acts. IU is selective about her acting projects, she focuses more on her music so expectations were already high before the release of Tangerines. But this is a case of exceeding expectations, her performance in Tangerines is astonishing. And she and the series will for sure be nominated at the International Emmys and probably win all of it.

There’s a long weekend coming up for a lot of people. And if you want to keep it quiet, tuck in on the couch, and watch something that will expand your heart way beyond the boundaries of how big it could get, and cry and laugh in equal measure, When Life Gives You Tangerines will give you everything.