During the six-day Lunar New Year holiday from Jan. 25 to 30, 2025, a binge-watching craze for Netflix's original drama "Trauma Center" caused the number of monthy active users on Netflix to exceed 13 million. In contrast, the box office struggled significantly, making the 'holiday special' phenomenon seem insignificant.
According to Mobile Index on 5th, Netflix's monthly active users (MAU) in January, which included the Lunar New Year holiday, was recorded at 13.71 million. This means that one in four South Koreans (51.75 million in 2024) used Netflix at least once during this period.
Netflix had stagnated at about 10 to 11 million MAUs last year but began to rise to the 12 million range in December, which is interpreted as being significantly influenced by its collaboration with Naver.
Since Nov. 26 last year, Netflix has been providing content similar to its ad-supported standard plan (5,500 won per month) to Naver Plus Membership subscribers without any extra expense.
Following the global hit "Squid Game Season 2," which was released on Dec. 26, the release of "Trauma Center" just before the Lunar New Year holiday on Jan. 24 this year also had an impact.
The story of "Trauma Center," which depicts a brilliant surgeon, Baek Kang-hyeok, who takes office at a largely ineffective trauma team in a major South Korean hospital, is receiving praise for actor Ju Ji-hoon's uncompromising performance as the bulldozer Baek Kang-hyeok, who recently showcased unique acting in 'Light Shop.'
The series is noted for vividly portraying the daily lives of medical staff who struggle to save lives in underfunded hospitals while effectively excluding unnecessary romantic subplots.
“Trauma Center” currently ranks first among Netflix series in South Korea and fourth globally (according to FlixPatrol, a global OTT statistics platform as of the 3rd).
It also secured the top spot in the weekly integrated content ranking from Jan. 27 to Feb. 2, as tallied by the OTT content integration search platform KinoLites.
On the other hand, films released to take advantage of the holiday special, such as "Hitman 2" (released on Jan. 22) and "The Black Nuns" (released on Jan. 24), only managed to claim second and third place, trailing behind "Trauma Center."
"Hitman 2" is a sequel to the 2020 film "Hitman," portraying the story of a webtoon artist who is wrongly accused as the perpetrator of a terrorist incident. The character, a webtoon artist with a special background from the National Intelligence Service, attracted interest, drawing about 1.27 million viewers (according to the Korea Film Council's integrated computer network) during the Lunar New Year holiday.
The film "The Black Nuns," which expands on the universe of the hit 2015 film "The Priests," tells the story of individuals who embark on a forbidden ritual to save a boy possessed by a powerful evil spirit. As actress Song Hye-kyo's first venture into the occult genre, it gathered 1 million viewers during this period but has received criticism for its lack of artistic quality and acting.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, holidays were considered peak times for the film industry. In 2019, just before the onset of COVID-19, the total audience during the five-day Lunar New Year holiday (Feb. 2 to 6) was 8,046,078, averaging 1,609,215 people visiting theaters daily.
However, this year, which had a longer six-day holiday, only 3,205,823 people visited theaters, averaging 534,303 people daily, which does not even reach last year's average audience (about 550,000), despite the holiday including a weekend.
Lee Seong-min, a media and film studies professor at Korea National Open University, noted, "In the past, there was a culture of watching movies in multiplex theaters while shopping and relaxing, but that formula has been disrupted. With fewer investments in new films, even when going to the theater, there's nothing to watch, and even offline activities have shifted to a lifestyle where content is comfortably viewed at home, which is believed to have impacted this situation."
Professor Lee believes that lowering entry barriers following the introduction of an advertising pricing plan on Netflix and the partnership with Naver has also contributed to this synergy.