Korean Government Urged to Implement Promotion Policies for Korean OTT Services

The Korean government and the National Assembly should come up with promotion policies rather than regulations to strengthen the Korean OTT industry’s competitiveness, panelists urged at a debate held at the National Assembly on July 30.

The panelists included Lee Hee-joo, head of the Planning Office at Wavve. Referring to Netflix’s explosive growth since its entry into the Korean media market in 2016, Lee said Korean users have not been properly compensated for Netflix’s service failures, with the Korean government unable to control the global OTT giant. “It’s regrettable to hear that KT is considering collaborating with Netflix after LG Uplus,” he said. “Partnering with Netflix is like letting a tiger in to catch a fox.”

In response, Kim Hoon-bae, head of KT’s new business division, stressed that the core of a platform is content and argued that Netflix is rather stimulating the Korean OTT market. “Just as Korean music streaming companies have survived, beating Spotify and Apple Music, Korean OTT platforms will also survive in the competition with Netflix.”

At the forum, some panelists said that Korean content providers have no choice but to join hands with Netflix for practical reasons. “Since there is a big difference between costs of production per episode between Korean terrestrial broadcasters and Netflix, it is natural for studios that want to produce quality content to choose Netflix,” said Kang Shin-beom, a professor at Chung-Ang University. “It is not appropriate to criticize Netflix without considering such structural problems.”