A top Korean media and AI policy expert warns that the country's domestic broadcasting industry is in structural collapse — even as K-content dominates global streaming charts. The problem, he says, is a regulatory system designed for foreign platforms to win.
Squid Game generated an estimated two trillion Korean won for Netflix. BTS's upcoming concert at Seoul's Gwanghwamun Plaza will be streamed live — not by a Korean broadcaster, but by Netflix. K-pop Demon Hunters, a Sony-produced, Netflix-distributed franchise built on Korean cultural IP, carries an estimated brand value of 1.4 trillion won(roughly 1.0 billion dollars). The production fees paid to Korean creators were a fraction of that.
These are not the complaints of an industry outsider. They are the diagnosis of Samseog Ko — a man who spent three decades at the center of Korea's media and communications policy establishment — delivered Monday morning on one of Korea's most influential public radio programs.
"Korea's content influence is on par with Hollywood," Ko said. "We are a content G2. But we have no platform power to back that up, and the policy framework is failing the industry at every level."
Ko, Distinguished Professor at Dongguk University's AI Convergence College and a member of Korea's Presidential Committee on National AI Strategy, was speaking on BBS — the Buddhist Broadcasting System — on its flagship morning current-affairs program, "Geum Tae-seop's Morning Journal."
His verdict: the country that gave the world Squid Game and BTS is watching its own broadcasting ecosystem quietly die, and almost nobody in authority is focused on the right problem.
The Numbers Behind the Paradox
The contradiction Ko laid out for BBS listeners is visible in the data. Korean terrestrial broadcasters' advertising revenue has fallen below two trillion won annually for the first time on record — roughly half of what it was a decade ago. The film industry has been hit even harder: Korea produced 120 to 130 films per year before the pandemic. By 2024, that figure had dropped to approximately 30. By 2025, it is on track for around 20. In under three years, the industry lost more than 80 percent of its output.