Better than television: The rise of Korean web dramas

Abstract

The web dramas produced and consumed in South Korea are a short, serialized form of content produced specifically for mobile viewing platforms. Through discursive analysis, this article examines the positioning of web dramas as a step in the evolution of television and finds that they have been legitimized as a higher-quality form than television drama because of their economic potential. To begin with, web dramas have the potential to generate synergistic economic effects impacting other areas of culture, such as tourism, television, and webtoons. Second, web dramas have been represented as the best strategy for tapping into the vast Chinese market, especially during periods in which strained political relations between Korea and China prevented the export of television dramas. Moreover, web dramas have been optimized for mobile platforms through experimentation with aesthetics and topics in ways that have not been possible for television dramas. Thus, web dramas offer a window into the relationship between perceptions of quality and commercial profitability.

Keywords

Korean media Korean Wave legitimization quality television web dramas

At Broadcast Worldwide 2015, a trade show held annually in South Korea (hereafter simply ‘Korea’), the opening session at the industry conference portion of the event was titled, ‘The New Rise of Web Dramas’. The same year, the K-Web Fest, the first web-drama film festival, was also held in the country. These two large-scale industry events served as an announcement that web dramas had emerged as an important content form on the contemporary media landscape.

To be sure, short, narrative video clips circulated prior to web dramas, but it was only in 2013 that the term web drama (web deurama) began to be used to describe these clips. This type of content is widely known as ‘web series’ in other parts of the world. Web dramas¹ are generally characterized as short, serialized dramas, professional productions that have been optimized for a mobile viewing environment, specifically the smartphone screen (KOCCA, 2015). A single episode of a web drama lasts for 5–15 minutes, suited to the limited attention span of the mobile audience as the industry perceives it. The web-drama industry has been growing over the past few years. Thus, the number of titles hosted by the portal site Naver, the largest national distributor for web dramas, increased from 23 in 2014 to over 100 by 2017. Various players – including broadcast networks, independent production companies, startup companies, and even government agencies – participate in their production currently.

In this article, I examine the rise of web drama and the strong influence that the Korean Wave has had in shaping the standards of Korean television. Notions of ‘quality television’ or ‘prestige television’ have often emphasized ‘nonderivative innovative works, rather than commercially motivated imitations’ (Mittell, 2020: 14). In this process, the prestige associated with economic performance is overlooked, though television is both a commodity and a work of creative art (Meehan, 1986). Korean web dramas demonstrate this dual nature of television; thus, journalists have referred to them as ‘content that escaped from television’ (Kim, 2014; cf. Nam, 2016), and a government report praised the medium’s innovative spirit of engaging in ‘various experiments using a smaller budget than traditional television and film’ (Song and Lee, 2015: 71). Web dramas have been discussed as a solution to revive the declining ratings of television drama in Korea and as a more modern and superior alternative to traditional television drama in terms of their economic potential. In these respects, web dramas provide a glimpse into the workings of the symbolic value that economic status contributes to media legitimation.

The analysis here takes into account Korean government reports and articles in trade journals and newspapers that discuss web dramas over the period from 2014 to 2018, when their production increased significantly. I gathered these materials by searching the terms ‘web drama’ and ‘web content’ in the Korean Integrated Newspaper Database System (KINDS) and the databases maintained by the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), and Korean Communications Agency (KCA). Using the critical media industry studies approach proposed by Havens et al. (2009), I analyze the discourse of web dramas in these materials to assess the ‘ways in which economic, regulatory and institutional forces influence cultural output’ (2009: 234). In doing so, I follow the nuanced approach of Havens et al. (2009) and consider the various forces that are involved in the process of legitimation in order to demonstrate how both commercial and artistic concerns can operate in tandem as markers of quality regarding web dramas. The discussion first highlights the economic potential of web dramas and then turns to the experimental aesthetics of web dramas.

The value of quality television

Notions of quality in television have never been well defined, with the term referring to various characteristics over time, though one constant has been the understanding that quality television ‘is not regular TV’ (Thompson, 1997: 13). Shows that are aesthetically and narratively complex and typically associated with active audiences are perceived to be works of art and distinct from ‘regular’ television. This operationalization of quality as elevating ‘one concept of television at the expense of another’ (Newman and Levine, 2012: 5) builds upon a Bourdieusian understanding of cultural production. According to Bourdieu (1993), cultural production is situated within ‘concrete social associations governed by a set of objective social relations’ (quoted in Johnson, 1993: 6). He developed the concept of ‘fields’ to address both the internal factors and external factors influencing such texts. The fields in this sense are structured by power relations and characterized by the struggle for resources or capital among the members of fields. The members include not only the cultural creators but also audiences, critics, academics, and other stakeholders in a field. The struggle between the dominant and non-dominant groups within a field to maintain the structure that preserves their privileged position reveals the qualities of cultural products and the surrounding social conditions of their production and reception. However, Bourdieu draws a clear distinction between art and commerce in the field of cultural production according to which the small-scale production of autonomous art involves small amounts of economic capital but large amounts of symbolic capital, whereas mass-produced cultural products involve large amounts of economic capital but small amounts of symbolic capital (Hesmondhalgh, 2006). This corresponds with the broader social hierarchies of class, where the arts are associated with the elite and thus legitimated, but mass media content is for the lower classes and considered as lowbrow (Bourdieu, 1984). Therefore, in order for television to be legitimated as ‘(high) quality’, it must be autonomous but not commodified.

Despite the dual nature of television as both a cultural form and a commodity (Meehan, 1986), the research on quality television has concentrated on the textual traits that distinguish it from regular television. Cardwell (2007: 26) points to ‘high production values, weighty themes and careful characterisations and performances’ that depart from formulaic narratives as the attributes of quality shows. Other textual features, such as the participation of reputable artists who bring a creative vision to shows and the association with other elevated art forms, especially cinema, have also been cited as the defining features of quality (e.g. Geraghty, 2003; McCabe, 2013; Thompson, 1997). This distinction between valued and mundane textual characteristics reflects the ‘larger constructions of taste and value’ that reinforce the existing cultural hierarchies (Mittell, 2020: 15).

Overlooked in this line of research has been the symbolic value that the commercial aspects of television generate. This is not to say that previous studies have completely neglected the economy of television; rather, the symbolic value that economic status generates has often been overshadowed by the cultural dimensions. Very little is known about why certain highly rated and/or globally exported programs are celebrated for making significant cultural contributions. In fact, in most cases, the discourse about quality television has obscured discussion of the economic viability of shows because commercialization is thought to diminish artistic quality. Thus, for instance, showrunners are celebrated for their artistic visions and craft rather than their managerial skills (Newman and Levine, 2012) and for association with a niche, with elite audiences preferred over mass audiences (Burroughs, 2019; Feuer, 1987).

Scholars have pointed out that this approach to cultural production fails to account for the pervasiveness of the cultural industry today (Gozansky and Lavie, 2020; Mittell, 2020). Hesmondhalgh (2006) notes in particular that art and commerce are not as contradictory as Bourdieu makes them out to be. The workers involved in television production are situated in an industry in which political, economic, and creative motivations influence decision-making (Havens et al., 2009; Jaramillo, 2002; Lavie, 2015). Therefore, the relationship between heteronomy and autonomy is not so stark in the consideration of notions of quality; rather, ‘restricted production has become introduced into the field of mass production’ (Hesmondhalgh, 2006: 222).

Mittell (2020) explores these issues in his study of the prestige US drama Better Call Saul (2015–) by discussing the extent to which the overtly commercial strategy of the spinoff – which is built on the framework of an existing franchise – can produce a work of art. More explicitly, Lavie (2015) and Gozansky and Lavie (2020) report that producers are expected to fulfill traditional understandings of quality, such as experimenting with aesthetics and authenticity, but within the constraints of capitalism and the industry’s financial structure. In such research, scholars present case studies of efforts to balance the demands between art and commerce as examples of the construction of quality.

Very little of the growing body of work in which quality is understood as being informed by textual and industrial traits has focused on web content. Web content in the American context seems not to have achieved the recognition or quality status that is associated with television (Christian, 2018). Various legacy players have initiated web productions based on rosy depictions for future growth but later pulled back in a boom-and-bust cycle reminiscent of the dot-com era owing to economic difficulties. Thus, the value of American web content derives from the creative autonomy that provides its marginalized creators with the space to experiment with stories using limited resources rather than having to concentrate on commercial viability (Christian, 2018; Day and Christian, 2017).

The argument here is that Korean web dramas, in their experiments with a form celebrated for its economic potential, have amassed the symbolic currency to become part of legitimized media. My methodological approach is the one just described, which, in blurring the line between commerce and art, accounts for both the external and the internal factors in fields of production. Specifically, I consider the manner in which the form (internal) and commercial success (external) combine to construct the quality status of web dramas as ‘better’ than television, focusing on the prioritization of the expectations of economic capital in this process of legitimization.

The legitimation of media in Korea

Over the past few decades, Korea has built a globalization model rooted in nationalism with the strong support of a discourse fashioned by the key stakeholders (K Lee, 2008) that, in turn, has influenced the legitimization of the country’s media cultures. Exemplified by the Korean Wave, globalization has been a crucial aspect of the country’s media industry, especially following the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In 1994, a report by the Presidential Advisory Board on Science and Technology highlighted the fact that the worldwide revenue of the Hollywood film Jurassic Park (1993) was equal to that from the export of 1.5 million Hyundai cars (Shim, 2006). At the time, Hyundai symbolized Korea’s global economic status, and the comparison of the company to the film industry signaled a change in how Koreans perceived culture. Previously, culture had not been seen as a serious industry because it was considered to ‘contribute little to improving the material conditions of the people’ compared with the automobile, shipping, construction, and similar sectors (Shim, 2002: 341). Following the issuance of the presidential advisory board’s report, the government devoted considerable effort to the cultivation of Korean culture, introducing new policies to introduce corporate and investment capital into the film industry and launching new platforms for the television industry. As a result, the major domestic conglomerates involved in these ventures experienced growth in sales and revenue, from cable television providers and film and television production to theatres and music production.

The 1997 Asian financial crisis, coming a few years later, furthered the legitimation of Korea’s culture industry. As the country’s export-oriented economy was struggling to revive, the government looked to investment in culture, seeking to boost the national economy through cultural exports (Shim, 2008) and, thereby, reinforcing Korea’s distinctive blend of neoliberal and nationalist perspectives on globalization. Culture that was economically successful in the global market contributed to the domestic economy, thus elevating the status and pride of the country. For example, when baseball player Chanho Park became the lead pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers and golfer Se-ri Pak won multiple tournaments on the LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association) circuit in the late 1990s, the high salaries that they commanded in the US sports industry were cited as proof of Korea’s global competitiveness (Y Cho, 2008).

The intertwining of the effort to expand the Korean culture industry with neoliberal and nationalistic discourses has had a profound influence on the Korean Wave, which, owing to its visibility around the world, has been framed as a ‘legitimate and highly publicized cultural phenomen[on]’ (K Lee, 2008: 178). The Korean Wave started as an unexpected surge in the popularity of the country’s television dramas and popular music across Asia in the late 1990s. When reports about this spontaneous development came in, government agencies, business actors, entertainment industry firms, and policymakers capitalized on the Korean Wave as, again, a demonstration of the global power of Korean culture. In fact, S-Y Kim (2018) describes the Korean Wave as a manifestation of the post-IMF aesthetic of ethno-national pride, and JB Choi (2015) observes it as a national campaign extending beyond media content. As HK Lee (2013: 193) puts it:

Broadly referring to exporting overseas and attracting overseas users, the Korean Wave works as a powerful signifier that encapsulates the desires and interests of commercial and government actors who seek overseas markets, domestic legitimacy and public attention.

Researchers have found that the discourses surrounding the Korean Wave have often emphasized the economic value that popular culture can generate in the cultural market alongside the excellence of Korean culture in particular (HJ Cho, 2005; K Lee, 2008; Lee and Zhang, 2020). From this perspective, the sales of Korean cultural content in overseas markets are significant in themselves, while the economic impact of the Korean Wave on other industries, such as tourism, fashion, and beauty products, are all proof of the competitive edge that Korean cultural content enjoys over the cultural exports of other countries (Y Cho, 2011). Overall, the international popularity of Korean content reinforces the notion of the superiority of Korean culture and serves as a source of national pride (K Lee, 2008).

This celebratory stance regarding the Korean Wave reflects a hegemonic understanding of the phenomenon in that the opinion leaders and scholars who create and disseminate these discourses are ‘closely associated with the production of annual reports, cultural analysis, and journalistic editorials’ that emphasize the economic effects of the Korean Wave (K Lee, 2008: 182). As this notion that the Korean Wave represents a readily exportable culture becomes increasingly accepted, it evolves into a discourse of legitimation that ‘achieve[s] the status of an inescapable common sense’ (Newman and Levine, 2012: 11). Thus, the state-supported vision of globalization has become the underlying standard for measuring the success of media content.

Researchers have made almost no effort to define ‘quality’ or ‘prestige’ media content in the Korean context. The exception is a study by SG Lee (2005) on the role of journalists in elevating film as a legitimate cultural artform in the 1990s. Moreover, there have been few studies of web dramas as yet, and most have been exploratory in nature, such as identifying narrative traits (Jeon, 2015; J Lee, 2015; SY Lee, 2017), genres, and distribution strategies (Chae, 2017; Kim and Jang, 2015). This article helps to fill these gaps in the literature by examining legitimation discourses relating to web dramas and the intersection between state and industry in the shaping of this process.

Establishing web dramas

Cultivating possibilities for synergy

The government has played a key role in cultivating a mainstream approach to Korean popular culture, repackaging the commercial potential and monetary benefits of the culture industry for the nation as a source of national pride (Otmazgin, 2011). The government’s inclusion of web dramas in its development plans for culture added to their legitimacy. Thus, when web dramas were first becoming popular, the administration of President Geun-hye Park (2013–17) made clear its intention to increase support for the creative activities of the culture industry through policies and the allocation of state funds (Ryoo and Jin, 2020). The administration identified cultural areas with the potential to expand the reach of the Korean Wave, including fashion, webtoon (cartoons for web platforms), digital games, and animation, and increased financial support to and tax breaks for businesses involved in such cultural production. Accordingly, the budget of the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (MCST) increased during Park’s time in office.

Web dramas, then, were part of the government’s efforts to increase the prospects of the Korean Wave. As part of these efforts, the MCST hosted various festivals and events related to web content. For example, the ministry supported the 2015 K-Web Fest, the first web-drama film festival in Korea. KOCCA, a government agency tasked with the promotion and nurturing of the culture industry, staged competitions for production funding to support the production of web dramas. Similarly, the 2016 Gwangju World Web Contents Festival put on by the MCST in collaboration with the Gwangju Information and Culture Industry Promotion Agency and the city of Gwangju included booths that connected investors with innovative web content, events showcasing web content for industry workers and members of the public, and an academic forum on the future of web content.

The government reports issued during the period from 2014 to 2018 studied here provide insight into perceptions of the possible role of web dramas in furthering the Korean Wave. The value of web dramas appears related to their potential to reinforce existing aspects of the Korean Wave, such as realizing popular webtoons in dramatic form and enhancing corporate images through branded content. In other words, web dramas have been highlighted for their potential to increase Korea’s revenue from export of the Korean Wave, in keeping with the existing state-driven vision of legitimation.

Industry trend reports issued by the KOCCA and KCA during this period indicated the ways in which web dramas could serve as a distribution channel for business-related promotions (KCA, 2014; KOCCA, 2015). Because web dramas operated on smaller budgets than television dramas – a single episode of television cost around US $229,000 to produce at the time and a web drama around $35,000 (KCA, 2014) – sponsorship cost businesses less. Moreover, unlike television, web dramas were unregulated with respect to product placement and other blatant advertising techniques, and thus more open to promotional activities (KOCCA, 2015). This discourse was reinforced in newspaper articles quoting industry personnel asserting that web dramas were ‘much more effective than television advertisements or product placements on television dramas’ (Kim, 2017). Sponsored web dramas like Infinite Power (2013) – which promoted Samsung through a story of a new college graduate applying for a job at the corporation – were cited as examples of the creation of narratives that could ‘improve the corporate image through content, not products, and contribute towards directing [internet] traffic towards related channels such as corporate blogs’ (KCA, 2014: 80).

Also, web dramas that were part of cities’ promotional campaigns further demonstrated their ability to contribute to the country’s economy through tourism (KOCCA, 2017). For instance, Love Story of Sinjiki (2016) promotes Yeosu, highlighting a local urban legend about a mermaid and having the characters visit landmarks in the city. Sinjiki won an award at the 2016 K-Web Fest (again sponsored by the KOCCA and MCST), and a city official, observing that the drama had been invited to several overseas web festivals, stated that it would ‘be effective to promote Yeosu’s culture and tourism opportunities to local and global audiences’ (Seo, 2016).

In addition, web dramas were discussed in the context of a ‘one source, multi-use’ strategy for expanding existing popular culture media (KCA, 2014). For instance, as alluded to earlier, web dramas were able to tap into the growing audiences for webtoons. The web drama Aftermath (2014), for example, a supernatural story of a boy who gains the ability to foresee death, was based on a webtoon and attracted more than 3.5 million views within a month and increasing traffic to the original webtoon more than 10-fold (KCA, 2014; KOCCA, 2015; Yoon, 2014). According to a 2015 report, 5 of the 10 most viewed web dramas of that year were based on webtoons (Song and Lee, 2015). Some web dramas, on the other hand, directed attention toward television through transmedia storytelling. Parts of Tale of the Bookworm (2014), a mystery series about the theft of the first Korean novel Hong Gildong Jeon in the Joseon Era, were made available in a television-drama version and other parts in a web-drama version so that audiences accessed some of the narrative on television and the rest online. Thus, the web dramas built on a strong foundation of popular culture (CS Koh, 2015).

Various government and industry reports acknowledged obstacles to the longevity of web dramas while touting their potential economic value. In particular, there were concerns about the quality of the productions compared with television dramas owing to the smaller-scale budgets and lack of a clear revenue model (CS Koh, 2015; Song and Lee, 2015). Nevertheless, stakeholders remained convinced that web dramas still possessed the ‘possibility to become a [uniquely] Korean OTT video form’ (KCA, 2014: 81) because the barriers to participation in content production were lower than those for producers of television dramas, thereby opening up the market to new companies. Further, the producers of web dramas, because their distribution model was web-based rather than broadcast, maintained full control over the intellectual property rights of their work and, therefore, were able to explore new distribution channels through which to generate revenue. In the production of television drama, by contrast, the broadcast networks commonly demanded that independent production companies sign over the key copyrights in exchange for their contributions to production budgets. In fact, a 2006 report revealed that only 4.8% of Korea’s independent production companies at that time fully owned the content copyrights for broadcast content (SK Choi, 2010). Thus, web dramas were positioned as content that could further the already strong base of Korean media culture.

Value of global circulation

As has been seen, forging connections with the Korean Wave has been a favored strategy of cultural legitimation in Korea. This cultural phenomenon has been praised for its positive impact on the national economy since the ‘export-oriented economy had found a new overseas market in the midst of the national plight of the IMF-directed economic restructuring’ in the late 1990s (Shim, 2008: 28). The export value of Korean television programs increased five-fold in a decade and a half, from $71.4 million in 2004 to $362 million by 2018 (MCST, 2019). The positive impact of these successful exports on other industries went beyond these numbers. For example, the domestic economic impact of Descendants of the Sun (2016) has been estimated at $100 million owing to increased tourism to Korea, growth in jobs in related industries, and an overall contribution to the country’s international image (Jae Hyun Kim, 2016). Thus, the contribution of television to the national economy became clear as it further cemented the legitimacy of the Korean Wave as an industry.

The discourse surrounding web dramas also followed this strategy of association with global economic success. In particular, web dramas attracted attention for their success in the Chinese entertainment market. According to a 2019 MCST report, China has been the most lucrative market for the Korean Wave, with some 44.7% of Korea’s culture export revenue coming from that country in 2018, followed by Japan with 19.3% and Southeast Asia with 15.2% At the same time, China is a precarious market in the sense that the government constantly updates its policies restricting imported content in an effort to minimize its influence. In the past, the Chinese government has intervened for the specific purpose of limiting the availability of Korean content. For example, when the Korean television drama Dae Jang Geum (2003–4) achieved record ratings in China in 2005, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) tightened restrictions on the airing of foreign television shows to the point that only seven Korean dramas made their way onto Chinese screens in the following year (Park et al., 2018). Likewise, there have been concerns about rising anti-Korean Wave sentiment in China owing to the unidirectional flow of Korean content into the country. This nationalism has at times taken the form of aesthetic critique, with frequent criticism of Korean television for ‘repetitive stereotypical stories, lack of variety in subjects, too many coincidental elements’ (Jang, 2012: 107).

Under these circumstances, web dramas are positioned to revive the stagnant market for the Korean Wave. In the first place, because they are mainly distributed through streaming platforms, which are less regulated by the Chinese regulatory body, SAPPRFT (later replaced by the National Radio and Television Administration in 2018), web dramas can gain access to the Chinese market more easily than broadcast media. Also, the Chinese streaming market is expected to expand rapidly over the next couple of years. It is also in part because web dramas are contributing to the national economy by tapping into this developing market that they are coming to be viewed as a legitimate form of content.

News and industry reports and critics have been discussing the economic potential of the Chinese streaming platforms for some time. These discussions have often referenced dramatic statistics – for instance, the expectations that China’s web series market would expand rapidly from $2.6 billion in 2014 to $13 billion by 2018 (Hong, 2016; Myung Hwan Kim, 2016) and that streaming services would enroll 5.78 million subscribers (Yoon, 2019). Notably, the web drama Dream Knight (2015) came to the attention of the press and the Chinese government by attracting around 11 million views within a week of its release on the Chinese platform Youku Tudou (Kyunghyang Newspaper, 2015; Song and Lee, 2015). In fact, Dream Knight was reportedly the fourth-most-watched series in the chart on the platform, ‘overtaking some of the Korean broadcast television dramas’ that were hosted on the site (Hwang, 2015). The fact that this web drama was ranked higher than television content further boosted its prestige. A co-production between Korea’s JYP Pictures and Youku Tudou, it has been presented as a case study of success in the Chinese market. Careful planning went into the production process to ensure that Dream Knight would be well-received by Chinese audiences. Thus, it featured the K-pop boyband GOT7, which already had a strong fanbase in China since one of its members, Jackson Wang, a Hong Kong native, also had an established solo career in the Mainland. The drama’s high-school romantic fantasy storyline was crafted to appeal to the young Chinese audiences most likely to use streaming platforms (CS Koh, 2015). These audiences were perceived as being dissatisfied with state-controlled television shows and increasingly turning to the internet for content (DS Choi, 2014). Dream Knight successfully tailored its narrative to suit this audience and, as a result, became the first Korean web drama to surpass 100 million views on a Chinese streaming platform. This number is comparable to the per-episode views of popular Korean television dramas in China, such as Descendants of the Sun at the peak of its popularity (Jung, 2016).

In this context, it is instructive to consider in further detail the use of streaming platforms as a tactic for circumventing the complicated regulations to which the Chinese government subjects television series. The case of Sound of Heart (2016) exemplifies how web dramas were able to succeed in China in the midst of the 2016 crisis over the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) between Korea and China. The Chinese government argued that the US system, which Korea deployed in order to monitor North Korea, could be used for surveillance within Chinese borders. As a result, the government launched an unofficial ban on all Korean popular culture after Korea moved forward with the deployment, halting co-productions, TV program exports, K-pop concerts, and so on.

Amid the ban, Sound of Heart was one of the few Korean programs still distributed in China. A distribution agreement for this drama – a sitcom, based on a webtoon, which focuses the absurd situations that the main character encounters in his daily life – had been reached before the THAAD crisis, and the release date was honored even though it came after the retaliatory ban went into force. The ban did mean that Sound of Heart received no promotional support from the Chinese platform that hosted it, Sohu.com (Park, 2017), nevertheless it accumulated 100 million Chinese viewers, surpassing television dramas to be ranked as the most popular Korean drama on the host site (Byung Joon Kim, 2016). At the time of its release, Sound of Heart was compared to large-scale Korean Wave television productions such as Legend of the Blue Sea (2016–17) and Hwarang (2016–17; JY Koh, 2017). These television dramas starred famous Korean Wave celebrities as a means to appeal to the Chinese market but failed to secure distribution deals owing to the ban. Though the Korean Wave stars are the ‘primary commercial asset that drives the Hallyu industry’ (Fedorenko, 2017), they were unable to fulfill this function during the ban on Korean Wave. The press coverage at the time included discussion of web dramas’ success in retaining access to the Chinese market because of their ‘power based on [good] content’ (JM Koh, 2017) rather than star power. Sound of Heart, of course, did not feature top-tier Korean Wave stars, and, for this reason, did not suffer from the drawback of television dramas deemed ‘too reliant on celebrity casting’ to cross over into China (Nam, 2017). In other words, the casting of high-profile Korean celebrities was an asset to the marketing of Korean television content prior to the ban but a detriment after diplomatic relations between Korea and China deteriorated, leaving web dramas, with casts of relative unknowns, better positioned to target the lucrative Chinese market than television.

Young and mobile audiences

The government’s promotion of information technology has been tightly intertwined with the notion of Korea as an advanced, dynamic, and innovative nation (K Lee, 2008). The emphasis on technology is intended to increase opportunities for investments and exports. Accordingly, government and industry reports have regularly highlighted the growing mobile audience as a lucrative market likely to increase significantly in the coming years (Chung, 2014; KCA, 2014). The widespread proliferation of smartphones and LTE (long-term evolution) data services created an ideal environment for the revitalization of television dramas in online spaces, and web dramas filled this need as original content optimized for the smartphone screen.

In the process of revitalizing the format, these experiments with television drama have pushed the boundaries of television conventions. The audience ratings for television have been declining owing to the younger audiences’ preference for time-shifting practices, including watching web content (KOCCA, 2017). Thus, traditional television has been depicted as unable to keep pace with audience trends while web dramas are seen to ‘invoke modernist notions of “cutting-edge” originality, innovation, and radicality to promote progress’ (Caldwell, 2008: 279). This innovative spirit of web dramas was best seen in their experiments with the television-drama form. Korean primetime television dramas typically consist of 16 to 20 hour-long episodes per season. Web dramas are far narrower in scope, lasting only a few minutes per episode, in response, as mentioned, to young mobile users’ content preferences (Bae Joong Kim, 2016), and extending over fewer episodes. The most-discussed web drama in this respect was 72 Seconds (2017). As the title implies, the episodes lasted a mere 72 seconds, representing the ‘golden time’ of the attention span of the mobile audiences and being sufficiently brief for easy sharing through social networking sites, further contributing to the viewership numbers (SH Choi, 2016). An excerpt from a report by the KCA captures the general assumptions about web dramas and the mobile audience:

The changes in the viewing practices of the online video audience over the past several years contributed to the rise of web dramas. In particular, the young audiences watching online videos on PCs (personal computers) and mobile devices have increased, creating a need for content fit for their consumption patterns. (KCA, 2014: 77)

72 Seconds differed from traditional television in other ways as well, especially the use of rap-like voiceovers and jump cuts to tell a story within the limited timeframe. In a KOCCA trend report, Jinhwan Sung, the head of 72 Seconds TV, asserted that ‘this editing know-how is not something that can be documented. It is like being skilled at playing an instrument’ (Kwon, 2015: 14). Moreover, the focus in 72 Seconds on ordinary life experiences seemed to resonate well with younger audiences. Each episode features an ordinary man’s snapshot into his daily life, such as receiving a terrible haircut at a salon or being asked by his girlfriend whether he notices anything new about her appearance. This focus on the mundane differed greatly from the unattainable, fantastic worlds of television drama.

Pocket Boyfriend (2015) similarly exemplified the artistic experiments in which web dramas have been engaging. This series was filmed in a vertical aspect ratio intended to mimic the experience of receiving a video call. Each episode featured a male actor speaking directly to viewers, asking about their day in the manner of a conversation with a significant other. The decision to film in this way meant sacrificing immediate economic return, for, according to the production company, Neo Touch Point, since major platforms such as Daum and Kakao TV did not support vertical ratio videos, the drama was inaccessible to significant numbers of potential viewers (Kwon, 2015). Nevertheless, the company felt, the immersive viewing experience created by the filming technique gave viewers the best experience of the content on the mobile platform.

These examples demonstrate how and why web dramas became celebrated for innovation despite the fact they did not necessarily prove profitable immediately. There are concerns about the sustainability of revenue models because production companies have had to share the profits generated from viewership clicks with the hosting platforms, which have been insufficient to recoup the production costs (Song and Lee, 2015). Despite these economic constraints, the artistic mindset of producers is evident in their quest to find the optimal ‘new and creative narratives’ (KOCCA, 2017: 106) for mobile audiences that, ultimately, would ‘move [web dramas] from simple snack content to become high-quality, short-form videos’ that yield profits in the long term (KCA, 2019: 22).

Conclusions

Currently, the web-drama industry is continuing to grow as more influential players such as SK Telecom and CJ ENM actively engage in the production and distribution of this emergent artform. The analysis presented here of web dramas in their ascendant stage has mapped out their positioning in comparison with traditional television. Web dramas have been celebrated for their ability to expand the success of Korean popular culture, as an alternative means to tap the vast Chinese market, and for assuming a form appropriate for the young-skewing mobile audience.

The findings presented here broaden the notion of quality in television studies by bringing attention to the function of commercial viability as a marker of difference. While existing research tends to focus on ‘the artistic’ rather than ‘the economic’, the discourse about quality surrounding web dramas from 2014 to 2018 emphasized the commercialization of the art. This emphasis aligns with what Lavie (2015) calls ‘capitalistic innovation’ as a characteristic of quality. Rather than commercial success coming at the expense of creativity, these two aspects of television inform each other – that is, art and commerce are mutually reinforced in the discourses about quality. In the case of web dramas, I found the commercial prospects to be informed by a state-driven, neoliberal perspective on culture through ‘symbolic endorsement and repackaging as a source of national pride’ (Lee, 2013: 194). The Korean Wave has been shaped by the government’s instrumentalization of culture in order to equate it with economic value (Lee and Zhang, 2020), and this viewpoint extends to what is accepted as being of quality in the dominant discourses relating to web dramas. At times, the central issue regarding quality content was less economic performance and more the potential of this new medium to introduce or revitalize existing Korean popular culture.

This state’s vision has also influenced the understanding of artistic autonomy. The form taken by web drama was a result of the creators’ experiments with short-form narratives, innovative storytelling aesthetics, and thematic expansion. Their experiments, irrespective of whether they translated into immediate revenue, were seen as a necessary part of the process of developing the commercial longevity of web drama as a genre and medium. The quest to find the best artistic form for web drama was able to harness the vast growth potential of the mobile audience market so that web dramas became something more than just shorter television dramas, and the creators’ capacity for innovation served as further evidence of the capacity of Korean culture in general to continue evolving and was ultimately upheld as a point of national pride.

By documenting these processes in this study, I have shed light on the current conception of quality in web dramas. Notably, my focus has been on the discourses associated with already successful web dramas. Public discussions, on the other hand, have highlighted productions with access to large production budgets that won awards at international festivals and featured celebrities. The analysis presented here did not take into account all of the web dramas in developing this understanding of quality, and further work is necessary to determine whether this marker of quality is broadly applicable. Also beyond the scope of the present study were the perspectives of the audiences, so research is also needed to compare these perspectives with the perspective privileged by the government in its efforts to promote Korean culture. In sum, Korean web dramas represent a dynamic field for study, and it is hoped that this article will help to initiate English-language conversations about this developing artform.

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Jennifer Kang is a Postdoctoral Scholar and Assistant Professor at DePauw University in the Department of Communication and Theatre. She received her doctorate from the Department of Radio-Television-Film (RTF) at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests are global media, television studies, media industries, and the Korean Wave. Her work has appeared in Media, Culture & Society and Celebrity Studies.

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