Korean drama ‘Hellbound’ regains global No. 1 title in just 1 day

Korean horror series Hellbound has replaced U.S. animation Arcane as the most popular Netflix series in just one day.

According to Flix Patrol, an online ranking site for OTT contents, on Tuesday, “Hellbound” topped the list in just one day after it was released on around 190 countries on Friday, stepped down to second place and regained its No. 1 title on Monday. Arcane, which rose to No.1 on Sunday, went down to second place on the following day.

An increasing number of countries are seeing “Hellbound” on their No. 1 list. There were 24 countries that had the K-drama series on the No. 1 list on Saturday, which increased to 35, including Japan, India, France, Brazil on Monday. In the U.S. and Canada, U.S. drama Cowboy Bebop, which was launched on the same day as “Hellbound,” is the No. 1 most watched series while Hellbound is ranked third.

The word of the series has even spread to China, where Netflix streaming is not currently available. The number of viewers that read a pirated version of the series exceeded 130 million on Weibo, a Chinese social media, as of 3 p.m. on Tuesday.


Hyo-Ju Son hjson@donga.com