International Journal of Communication Publishes a Special Section: Is Netflix Riding the Korean Wave or Vice Versa?

As exemplified by the success of several Netflix originals, such as Squid Game, Kingdom, All of Us Are Dead, The Glory, and Jung E, Netflix is riding the Korean Wave. Korean cultural content is also jumping on the Netflix Bandwagon. The close collaboration between these seemingly unrelated cultural powerhouses, one originating from a non-Western and the other from a Western context, foregrounds the following question: What will be the power relationships in cultural production between global and local forces in the digital platform era?

Guest-edited by Dal Yong Jin, Sangjoon Lee, and Seok-Kyeong Hong, this Special Section—Is Netflix Riding the Korean Wave or Vice Versa?—aims to provide a better understanding of the ways in which Netflix has influenced the local cultural industries in terms of the shift in cultural genres and industry structure. The authors present works from critical studies, cultural studies, and  platform studies perspectives, partly using Squid Game—one of the most famous Netflix originals—to anchor their analyses. These authors articulate ways in which local cultural industries change their production norms to comply with Netflix’s orientation and map out the shift in the standard of cultural production, which changes the cultural text. Some authors also delve into the extent to which global platforms destroy local specificities and identities, both culturally and structurally.

Together, the contributions to this Special Section interrogate shifting power relationships between a global OTT (over-the-top) platform and local players, including cultural creators and platform users, and the implications of Netflix’s influence on the Korean cultural industries. They stress the platformization of cultural industries as well as the limits placed on global OTT platforms by the unique qualities of popular culture, cultural production, and the reception of cultural texts. 

We invite you to read these articles that published in the International Journal of Communication on November 14, 2023. Please log into ijoc.org to read the papers of interest. We look forward to your feedback! 
____________________________________________________________________________________

Netflix and the Global Receptions of Korean Popular Culture: Transnational Perspectives—Introduction 
Dal Yong Jin, Sangjoon Lee, Seok-Kyeong Hong

Critical Cultural Industries Studies: A New Approach to the Korean Wave in the Netflix Era 
Dal Yong Jin

Questioning Platform-Driven Diversity: Diasporic Korean Storytelling on Netflix
Kyong Yoon

Netflix Korea and Platform Creativity
Benjamin M. Han 

Reshaping Hallyu: Global Reception of South Korean Content on Netflix
Sojeong Park, Seok-Kyeong Hong 

Squid Game as a Levinasian Morality Tale: The Ethics of Alterity and Empathy in a Survival-Game  Narrative 
Hye Seung Chung

Third-Space K-Drama: Netflix, Hallyu, and the Melodramatic Mundane 
Yin Yuan

Duality of K-Content in the Era of Netflix: An Investigation of Korean “Netflix Original” Characteristics
Kristin April Kim, Ji Hoon Park, Sola Yoon, Yue Wang, Hayoung Bae, Kieu Trang Luc

Transversal Korean Waves: Speculating on the Next Wave with Netflix and Korean Gaming
Tae-Jin Yoon, Yaewon Jin

Kingdom Cultures: Zombie Growth and Netflix Korea
Joseph Jonghyun Jeon
____________________________________________________________________________________
Larry Gross, Editor
Kady Bell-Garcia, Managing Editor
Chi Zhang, Managing Editor, Special Sections
Dal Yong Jin, Sangjoon Lee, Seok-Kyeong Hong, Guest Editors

Please note that according to the latest Google Scholar statistics, IJoC ranks 7th among all Humanities journals and 8th among all Communications journals in the world — demonstrating the viability of open access scholarly publication at the highest level.