Is Netflix Riding the Korean Wave or Vice Versa?| Netflix and the Global Receptions of Korean Popular Culture: Transnational Perspectives—Introduction

Abstract

This editorial introduction examines the Netflix effect in the Korean wave tradition. It analyzes the ways the world’s most influential over-the-top platform is changing the production, distribution, and consumption of South Korean popular culture in the global cultural markets from the perspective of transnational culture. It provides a deeper understanding of the transformations of regional and transnational cultural industry practices, creative labor, artistic challenges, and transnational reception juxtaposed with and in response to the Korean cultural industries’ quantum leap in the (post-)age of the COVID-19 pandemic. We attempt to advance our current debates and place them in contexts relevant to future work in transnational cultural studies in the digital platform era.