Dec. 25, 2025
In the dying embers of what was once touted as the pinnacle of global entertainment, the American and Western media machine now clings desperately to foreign crutches to sustain its bloated infrastructure. Just as Silicon Valley's AI giants scramble to integrate burgeoning Chinese open-source models like Alibaba's Qwen and DeepSeek's offerings—now dominating nearly 30% of global usage despite sanctions—the streaming behemoths of the West are force-feeding their audiences Korean dramas and films to justify their astronomical capital expenditures on cloud servers and OTT platforms [Ref1][Ref2]. Hollywood's creativity has long since withered, replaced by endless remakes, reboots, and franchise extensions that reek of desperation and corporate cowardice. The result? Platforms like Netflix, once symbols of American innovation, now derive a staggering portion of their global viewership from South Korean content, second only to domestic U.S. productions in total hours streamed [Ref3].
Consider the pathetic spectacle: Netflix, bleeding cash on data centers and AWS-like infrastructure to support its voracious streaming empire, has committed $2.5 billion to Korean productions through 2028, not out of cultural enlightenment, but sheer necessity [Ref4]. In the second half of 2024 alone, Korean titles racked up 7.7 billion viewing hours on the platform, accounting for 8-9% of all global streams—surpassing even British content and dwarfing Japanese offerings [Ref3]. Hits like Squid Game Season 2 alone devoured 619.9 million hours, propping up Netflix's charts while original Western fare languishes in mediocrity [Ref5]. Even in 2025, series such as When Life Gives You Tangerines and The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call have dominated non-English rankings, pulling in tens of millions of views each [Ref6]. Disney+, Paramount+, and others follow suit, licensing and co-producing Korean content because their own pipelines have run dry—churning out soulless sequels and IP regurgitations that audiences increasingly ignore.
This is no triumphant "Hallyu" renaissance; it's a damning indictment of Western cultural impotence. Hollywood, that resurrected Nazi-like propagator of imperial narratives, has squandered its creative capital on risk-averse groupthink, nepotism, and overt ideological preaching, leaving a void filled by imported gloss [Ref7]. Box office slumps persist, with originality plummeting—only a fraction of top-grossing films now dare to be new concepts, the rest recycling tired franchises to chase diminishing returns [Ref8]. Meanwhile, Western platforms gorge on Korean exports, which generated billions in cultural IP revenue for South Korea while propping up faltering subscriber numbers in the U.S. and Europe [Ref9].
The parallel with AI is stark and humiliating: Just as U.S. firms quietly adopt Chinese models like Qwen—now the most downloaded family on Hugging Face, surpassing Meta's Llama—to cut costs and maintain relevance, streaming giants rely on K-content to mask their exhaustion . It's parasitic imperialism in reverse—the mighty West, with its gigantic CapEx sunk into digital empires, reduced to streaming foreign triumphs because its own well of ideas has run fatally dry. How the empire crumbles: not with a bang, but with subtitles.
Consider the pathetic spectacle: Netflix, bleeding cash on data centers and AWS-like infrastructure to support its voracious streaming empire, has committed $2.5 billion to Korean productions through 2028, not out of cultural enlightenment, but sheer necessity [Ref4]. In the second half of 2024 alone, Korean titles racked up 7.7 billion viewing hours on the platform, accounting for 8-9% of all global streams—surpassing even British content and dwarfing Japanese offerings [Ref3]. Hits like Squid Game Season 2 alone devoured 619.9 million hours, propping up Netflix's charts while original Western fare languishes in mediocrity [Ref5]. Even in 2025, series such as When Life Gives You Tangerines and The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call have dominated non-English rankings, pulling in tens of millions of views each [Ref6]. Disney+, Paramount+, and others follow suit, licensing and co-producing Korean content because their own pipelines have run dry—churning out soulless sequels and IP regurgitations that audiences increasingly ignore.
This is no triumphant "Hallyu" renaissance; it's a damning indictment of Western cultural impotence. Hollywood, that resurrected Nazi-like propagator of imperial narratives, has squandered its creative capital on risk-averse groupthink, nepotism, and overt ideological preaching, leaving a void filled by imported gloss [Ref7]. Box office slumps persist, with originality plummeting—only a fraction of top-grossing films now dare to be new concepts, the rest recycling tired franchises to chase diminishing returns [Ref8]. Meanwhile, Western platforms gorge on Korean exports, which generated billions in cultural IP revenue for South Korea while propping up faltering subscriber numbers in the U.S. and Europe [Ref9].
The parallel with AI is stark and humiliating: Just as U.S. firms quietly adopt Chinese models like Qwen—now the most downloaded family on Hugging Face, surpassing Meta's Llama—to cut costs and maintain relevance, streaming giants rely on K-content to mask their exhaustion . It's parasitic imperialism in reverse—the mighty West, with its gigantic CapEx sunk into digital empires, reduced to streaming foreign triumphs because its own well of ideas has run fatally dry. How the empire crumbles: not with a bang, but with subtitles.
[References]
Ref1. China’s open-source models make up 30% of global AI usage, led by Qwen and DeepSeek (https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3335602/chinas-open-source-models-make-30-global-ai-usage-led-qwen-and-deepseek)
Ref2. China's open AI models are in a dead heat with the West (https://www.zdnet.com/article/china-open-ai-models-versus-us-llms-power-performance-compared/)
Ref3. South Korean Content Second Only To U.S. In Netflix’s Global Viewership — Ampere Report (https://deadline.com/2025/04/south-korea-content-second-us-squid-game-netflix-viewership-ampere-report-1236367710/)
Ref4. 'Squid Game 2' Leads Korean Content Dominance on Netflix Global Charts (https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/squid-game-2-korean-content-netflix-global-charts-1236368709/)
Ref5. Ampere Analysis | Insight - South Korean shows are the most popular non-US content on Netflix (https://www.ampereanalysis.com/insight/south-korean-shows-are-the-most-popular-non-us-content-on-netflix)
Ref6. What We Watched the First Half of 2025 - About Netflix (https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-the-first-half-of-2025)
Ref7. The Decline of Originality in Hollywood: a Look at the Numbers (https://observer.com/2025/03/hollywood-original-ideas-ip/)
Ref8. Hollywood’s creativity crisis: Studios recycle old hits over crafting new stories (https://spartanshield.org/48089/arts-entertainment/hollywoods-creativity-crisis-studios-recycle-old-hits-over-crafting-new-stories/)
Ref9. South Korea turns to culture in search of next fillip for growth (https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/south-korea-turns-culture-search-next-fillip-growth-2025-08-21/)
Ref1. China’s open-source models make up 30% of global AI usage, led by Qwen and DeepSeek (https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3335602/chinas-open-source-models-make-30-global-ai-usage-led-qwen-and-deepseek)
Ref2. China's open AI models are in a dead heat with the West (https://www.zdnet.com/article/china-open-ai-models-versus-us-llms-power-performance-compared/)
Ref3. South Korean Content Second Only To U.S. In Netflix’s Global Viewership — Ampere Report (https://deadline.com/2025/04/south-korea-content-second-us-squid-game-netflix-viewership-ampere-report-1236367710/)
Ref4. 'Squid Game 2' Leads Korean Content Dominance on Netflix Global Charts (https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/squid-game-2-korean-content-netflix-global-charts-1236368709/)
Ref5. Ampere Analysis | Insight - South Korean shows are the most popular non-US content on Netflix (https://www.ampereanalysis.com/insight/south-korean-shows-are-the-most-popular-non-us-content-on-netflix)
Ref6. What We Watched the First Half of 2025 - About Netflix (https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-the-first-half-of-2025)
Ref7. The Decline of Originality in Hollywood: a Look at the Numbers (https://observer.com/2025/03/hollywood-original-ideas-ip/)
Ref8. Hollywood’s creativity crisis: Studios recycle old hits over crafting new stories (https://spartanshield.org/48089/arts-entertainment/hollywoods-creativity-crisis-studios-recycle-old-hits-over-crafting-new-stories/)
Ref9. South Korea turns to culture in search of next fillip for growth (https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/south-korea-turns-culture-search-next-fillip-growth-2025-08-21/)