“Kingdom,” “Itaewon Class” and “True Beauty” are unveiled as the top three most mentioned Korean drama titles on global Twitter, according to recent data.
On Tuesday, Twitter released the list of the most mentioned K-drama titles on the micro-blogging platform from July 2018 to June 2021.
The data mining and analysis were conducted by Twitter and VAIV company. The big data insights were introduced with the theme of “#BeyondKpop: Globalization of K-Culture from Music to Drama, Webtoon, Movie and beyond.”
Here are the top 20 most-mentioned or talked about K-dramas among Twitter users:
- Kingdom
- Itaewon Class
- True Beauty
- Vincenzo
- Sky Castle
- Hotel del Luna
- Start-up
- Hospital Playlist
- Guardian: The Lonely and Great God
- Penthouse
- Vagabond
- Sweet Home
- Crash landing on you
- Voice
- Love alarm
- It’s okay not to be okay
- Kairos
- Arthdal Chronicles
- Extracurricular
- Stranger (Secret forest)
In Twitter’s analysis, most of the K-dramas that landed on the top ten have connections to the K-pop music scene.
It’s either the Korean series stars a member of a K-pop group or one of its soundtracks is performed by a K-pop group member.
Twitter cited “Itaewon Class,” “True Beauty” and “Vincenzo” as examples of these related preferences.
Tweets about “Itaewon Class” mentioned its official soundtrack “Sweet Night” which was sung by Kim Taehyung or V, a member of BTS.
“True Beauty” and “Vincenzo,” on the other hand, were starred by K-pop stars Cha Eun-woo (a member of the male K-pop group ASTRO) and Ok Taec-yeon (a member of the male K-pop group 2PM), respectively.
The main character of “Hotel Del Luna” is played by award-winning K-pop soloist Lee Ji-eun or IU.
“Start-Up,” “Hospital Playlist” and “Guardian: The Lonely and Great God” also have songs that were performed by popular K-pop groups and their members such as Mamamoo, Red Velvet and SEVENTEEN.
Twitter also found the popularity of K-pop reflected in the rise of conversations about Webtoon, digital comics based in South Korea.
“With K-pop reaching all-time highs, and the popularity of K-dramas surging accordingly, original webtoons are also seeing increased interest, especially for webtoons that have been turned into K-dramas,” Twitter said.
The top 20 most-mentioned webtoons are:
- True Beauty
- Sweet Home
- Tower of god
- Itaewon Class
- Noblesse
- Navillera
- Romance 101
- Omniscient reader
- Eleceed
- Dice
- Along with the gods
- Weak hero
- I love Yoo
- Windbreaker
- Annarasumanara
- Unholy blood
- Solo levelling
- Random chat
- Kubera
- Gosu
“Itaewon Class,” “Sweet Home” and “True Beauty” were among the webtoons adapted into K-dramas of the same title.
Yeon-jeong Kim, head of Twitter’s Global K-pop and K-content partnerships, stated that this data showed how Twitter became a useful channel for conversations involving Korean entertainment.
“Twitter has proven that K-pop – along with many other fandoms – thrive due to the characteristics of Twitter: live, public, and conversational. People are consuming K-content through various channels, but in the end, the conversations are being held on Twitter,” Yeon-jeong said.
“K-content has limitless potential as the fandom culture that started with K-pop has taken an interest in other forms of Korean content, which has led to the spread of the culture. Twitter will dedicate itself in the fullest to supporting the globalization of K-content and the fandom it empowers,” he added.
