How K-Drama Production Changed: A Timeline

In 2008, the Korea Times noted that most Korean dramas started airing after only the first few episodes were shot, so production got busier as the run went on. Even MBC's 2007 blockbuster The Legend (태왕사신기), made with a ₩43 billion budget and three years of preparation, once finished editing an episode only after its scheduled air time; MBC extended its live news to fill the gap.¹ Writers sometimes sent scripts a page at a time, the "one-page script" (쪽대본). See How a K-Drama Gets Made for how that live-shoot system works.

The first exceptions were pre-produced dramas. Bicheonmu (비천무) was the first to complete filming and editing before it was shown, but it waited two years and seven months for a slot because of a dispute over overseas rights. On January 17, 2008, SBS signed to air two more from the producer JS Picture.¹

China was the push. A September 3, 2014 notice tightened supervision of foreign dramas on Chinese streaming sites, and China's TV rules already required whole seasons to be reviewed before any episode aired.² To air in China at the same time as in Korea, KBS2's Descendants of the Sun had to finish filming first. It wrapped in December 2015 and premiered on February 24, 2016, the first Korean drama simulcast in China, on iQIYI.³⁴

It was the first major success of fully pre-produced drama, with a 38.8% nationwide rating for its final episode. Other producers adopted the model that year, though several later pre-produced dramas underperformed, giving rise to the term "pre-production jinx".⁴⁶

Netflix launched in South Korea on January 7, 2016, as part of an expansion into 130 more countries.⁵ The three terrestrial networks, KBS, MBC and SBS, at first informally agreed not to sell newly aired series to it. That ended in 2018, when SBS sold The Hymn of Death (사의 찬미), which streamed worldwide the same day it aired from November 27. Netflix was also paying for production: it covered at least 65% of the ₩43 billion cost of tvN's Mr. Sunshine (2018), and the whole ₩13 billion budget of MBC's Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung (2019).¹¹¹²

Netflix ordered Kingdom on March 5, 2017 and released it on January 25, 2019 as its first original Korean series, a six-episode zombie thriller set in the Joseon era.¹³¹⁴ Writer Kim Eun-hee (김은희) later said she had set the project aside because zombies and a Joseon setting would push up its cost, until she heard Netflix was coming to Korea.²¹

Drama-making moved into dedicated studios. Studio Dragon (스튜디오드래곤) was spun off from CJ E&M's drama division on May 3, 2016.⁷ By its 2017 stock-market debut it said it made 20 to 25% of the drama titles in the Korean market, and unlike its peers it owned the intellectual property of its shows, so it could profit from overseas sales and remakes.⁸ On November 22, 2019, CJ ENM and Studio Dragon signed a multi-year production and distribution deal with Netflix, the first long-term agreement Netflix had made with a Korean content company.¹⁷

A revised Labor Standards Act cut the maximum working week from 68 hours to 52 from July 2018. Broadcasting and film production, previously exempt, were limited to 40 hours a week plus 12 of overtime.¹⁰ In March 2019, the Korea Times reported that the limit "has not been applied in practice in the entertainment field yet". That month, on March 21, episodes of SBS's Big Issue aired with colour bars and unedited footage, and SBS suspended the show for a week "to secure enough time for shooting and editing".¹⁶

Squid Game was filmed from June to October 2020 and released, all nine episodes at once, on September 17, 2021.¹⁹ Its first season has 265.2 million views, the most of any non-English Netflix series in its first 91 days.²⁶ Director Hwang Dong-hyuk (황동혁) had said Korean investors and broadcasters turned the project down for about a decade before Netflix approved it. Industry insiders told Yonhap that in such deals Netflix takes on the entire cost and pays local producers a 10–30% margin in return for global rights to the show.²⁰

On April 24, 2023, Netflix committed US$2.5 billion over four years to Korean series, films and unscripted shows, about twice what it had announced in total since arriving in 2016.²²

Shooting during the run also leaves room to change course mid-season. On OCN's The Uncanny Counter (경이로운 소문), writer Yeo Ji-na left after episode 12 in January 2021. OCN said she and the production team had differed over the final storyline and that she left by mutual agreement. Director Yoo Seon-dong wrote episode 13 and Kim Sae-bom finished the 16-episode season.¹⁸

By 2025, shared credits were becoming normal, a departure from "the long-standing tradition of a single writer conceiving and scripting an entire drama". U+TV's Hunter with a Scalpel was co-written by four rookie writers, and a vice president of its producer called it "likely Korea's first drama to be fully developed through a structured writers' room".²⁵

Then output fell. In April 2024 the Korea Drama Producers Association expected about 100 dramas that year from streamers and broadcasters, roughly 30% fewer than in 2022, as production costs rose.²³ Seasons shrank too: from 24 episodes to 20, then 16 for many years, and by 2025 often 12. Netflix's The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call, planned as ten 60-minute episodes, was recut into eight of 45 minutes.²⁴