South Korea's 'Squid Game,' 'Hellbound,' 'The Silent Sea' Among Most-Watched Netflix Shows

Apart from the massive hit "Squid Game," two other South Korean shows have topped Netflix’s weekly viewership ranking for non-English TV shows in 2021.

Thriller shows "Hellbound" and "The Silent Sea" took a huge chunk of the streaming platform’s viewers last year, making the nation the second-biggest supplier of popular content to Netflix in the fourth quarter of 2021, next to the U.S., according to Yonhap News Agency.

The outlet said South Korean shows made up 11.8 percent of the top 10 films and TV series in the final quarter of the year 2021. This made South Korea the second-biggest producer of hit series on the streaming platform for the second consecutive quarter after the United States with 59 percent. The outlet cited data from the private website What’s On Netflix, which based its streaming analytics from FlixPatrol.

The significant increase was due to the breakout hit "Squid Game," which managed to increase the share from 5.4 percent during the third quarter.

The nine-episode series "Squid Game," which released Sept. 17, became Netflix’s most successful show in history, with total viewership reaching a record 1.65 billion hours in the first four weeks of its release.

Netflix announced Thursday the drama has been officially renewed for a second season.

The announcement was made during Netflix’s fourth quarter 2021 earnings interview as reported by Variety. In the interview, CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos said: "The ‘Squid Game’ universe has just begun.”

Series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has earlier talked about the possibility of making a second season of the dystopian drama. However, this is the first time the streaming service has confirmed its return to the platform.

Netflix also announced Tuesday it would launch 25 shows from South Korea this year, including the high school zombie drama, “All Of Us Are Dead,” which will premiere on Jan. 28.

Other South Korean shows that will be available on Netflix this year are “Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area,” “Casa de Papel”and “Seoul Vibe,” an action film, which takes place during the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.

Sarandos said the success of the film “Parasite” was the “turning point” for South Korean drama. He also praised Netflix’s South Korea staff for the success of “Squid Game.”

“They didn’t try to make the show different so that it would travel, but tried to find all the things about Korean cinema and Korean drama and build them up in a way and new levels of production values,” he said.