(SEOUL) The giant Netflix wants to support a new generation of creators in South Korea, its CEO said Thursday in Seoul after the announcement in April of a plan to invest 2.5 billion dollars in South Korean content. Koreans.
South Korea, on the strength of the global hit Squid Game and more recently the success of The Glory, is already one of the best breeding grounds for the streaming giant. Its CEO, Ted Sarandos, therefore intends to “invest in it for the long term”, he explained to journalists.
Outlining the $2.5 billion investment plan announced in April during a visit by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to the United States, the leader hailed “the extraordinary partnership between Korean designers and Netflix”.
“But I think we’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible,” he added, explaining that he wants to support a new generation of South Korean authors and strengthen funding for original creations.
According to him, between 2022 and 2025, one in five Korean Netflix titles will have been the work of a neo-author or neo-producer.
So far, the success has been there: in 2022, more than 60% of platform users had watched at least one South Korean production, from drama to reality TV, according to data from the streaming giant .
This prolific relationship is, however, marred by a conflict between Netflix and internet service providers in South Korea, who accuse it of overloading the network without paying the appropriate bill.
In 2020, the American company, present in the country since 2016, sued SK Broadband, one of these providers, for confirmation that it did not have to pay more to use its network.
The court, however, ruled that it was “reasonable” for the platform to be “obligated to give something back”. She called.
In 2021, SK Broadband in turn filed a complaint against Netflix to claim additional costs linked to the explosion in the number of users and therefore in traffic.
This is not a “conflict” with South Korea, Mr. Sarandos assured, citing instead a “clear, direct and symbiotic relationship between creative companies like (his) and the industries of Internet “.
The CEO of Netflix notably recalled an investment of approximately one billion dollars to “improve and reduce the costs” of data distribution in the world. The company has 18,000 servers in 175 countries that make the internet “faster and more efficient”, he said.
