KOREA FOUNDATION

Suh Byung Kee, Senior Reporter for Popular Culture
Herald Business

 

The strong wave of K-pop, K-drama, K-movies, K-entertainment, and webtoons is sweeping the world without interruption. Korean media has emerged triumphant on Netflix and other streaming platforms, too. K-documentaries, though not quite as popular as other Korean media, are drawing increased interest thanks to a religious documentary series.

Titled In the Name of God: A Holy Betrayal, the series was released by Netflix last March and quickly claimed fifth place on the Global Top 10 list of Netflix’s most-watched television shows within a day of its release. The documentary also drew great responses in Hong Kong, Indonesia, and eight other countries, making its way to their respective Top 10 lists. Such a performance is unprecedented for a Korean documentary.

The series presents a different take as it delves into a subject already dealt with by the Korean television and radio company, Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC). MBC’s series was created over the span of two months, but it took two years for the Netflix version to be completed, producer Jo Sung Hyun said. The latter, being comparatively free in terms of expression, was able to expose the harm and damage done to female believers in detail. Some critics labeled the series as scandalous, but such opinions were outnumbered by positive reviews claiming that the exposure of “uncomfortable truths” would give a necessary warning to the public.

The series successfully appealed to viewers and changed their existing perception of documentaries as boring. It successfully drew attention to the harmful effects of pseudo-religions, and delivered the message that such crimes should be exposed, its culprits duly punished, and that there should be no more victims.

Other Korean documentaries are being produced by Netflix and other streaming services in addition to this series. Many documentaries on streaming services deal with crime and investigations, popular celebrities, and religion. BLACKPINK: Light up the Sky, released by Netflix in 2020, was watched by countless international fans of the group. Netflix also released My Love: Six Stories of True Love and Raincoat Killer: Chasing a Predator in Korea in 2021, and Cyber Hell: Exposing an Internet Horror in 2022.

They were followed this year by the Wavve documentary National Office of Investigation, produced by director Bae Jung-hun. Bae is known for his investigative documentary series, Unanswered Questions, produced for Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), as well as documentaries on the musical journeys of BTS members J-hope and Suga: J-hope in the Box and Suga: Road to D-Day.

Documentaries on streaming services are sometimes able to shed light on topics that cannot be shared via public networks. Even when covering subjects that have already been featured on such networks, streaming service documentaries can leave stronger impressions as they can use more daring expressions. They tend to be more revealing and provocative. The current climate points toward documentaries, usually created for general education or coverage of current news issues, becoming as sensational and stimulating as globally popular reality TV shows. As time passes, transformations in the media environment warrant a reinterpretation of the concepts of scandal and sensationalism.

Television documentaries and documentary films may be in a transitional period under the influence of documentaries on streaming services. Even the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), a company well-known for its quality documentary production technology, claims that its most powerful rival is Netflix.

In the time of multi-platforms, public and cable networks need to decide on the direction they wish to take with their documentaries. In order to be successful, they need more than a simple softening of tone, sensationalism, or authenticity.

K-documentaries are widely affected—not just by streaming services but by the wide variety of video logs (vlogs) that inundate YouTube and other social media. Therefore, documentaries need to be a little more flexible. They may take the soft approach of vlogs but should still have a “powerful punch” that delivers their unique perspectives and messages. In order to avoid suffering from a lack of subjects, documentary producers are encouraged to be more positive and daring, to actively seek out people and values long suppressed in the dark and bring them out into the public domain for discussion.

The average production cost of independent Korean documentaries ranges between 300 and 500 million won, making it impossible for producers to cover production costs with the local demand only. Through “K-Docs,” a platform operated by the EBS International Documentary Festival to support documentary production, producers can make documentaries independently or transform their ideas into international, collaborative productions to globally expand their market.

Compared to K-pop and K-dramas, Korea’s documentary production industry has a long way to go. However, if the production support system is active and functions smoothly, the potential and creativity of Korean documentary producers is sure to shine as brightly as K-pop on the global stage.

 

Please note: This article has been authored by a specialist outside the Korea Foundation and the views expressed here may be different from the KF’s official position.