Lee Tae-Hyun, CEO of the Korean streaming powerhouseWavveunderlined the evolution of the company and the Korean content globally, as well as opportunities and challenges for the coming years.
He began the session by mentioning the current moment of Korean content, referring to it as the ‘rebirth’ of content in Asia:‘I think that we are experiencing a unique moment into Korean content. When I started in this company, in terms of the local market, Netflix was at its growth point, and taking as a reference to that big one, we started operating on the first platform called Pooq, before Wavve, and also many other companies were making efforts. of content for streamers’.
The executive also referred to the players that are joining the Asian market: ‘I think the industry grows when there are more players. That is why we do not consider the rest as competition. Each one offers the best and it will be up to the audience to decide what they want to see and we prepare a programming strategy based on this’.
Tae-Hyun added: ‘I think this is why the business is growing, because there are more players, and everyone is investing quantity and quality in content. It’s easier for a company to compete when the landscape is big enough and many players participate, growing the industry’.
Regarding Wavve‘s scale in the local and international market, he said: ‘In terms of global scale, starting from the domestic market, our shareholder is our content provider at the same time. For terrestrial broadcasters such as KBS, MBC, and SBS, the content of these broadcasters is piled up one after another like daily, weekly or monthly, then basically a strong library has been built, and the goal would be to build up a little more special edgy content in the library another than those already in the local market’.
‘Regarding the international scene, there is a high possibility that journalism content or non-scripted content that works in the Korean market will not work well in the global market. The reason is that non-scripted content unlike scripted content is actually not easy to understand unless you understand the context. So, in the Southeast Asian market, programs like Running Man do really well, but for other entertainment shows it’s a bit difficult because if you don’t understand the subtitles and characters and the context of the story, you won’t be persuaded. Therefore, things that can go global would have been scripted content and dramas. Wavve is now stacking up a so-called original content library that is exclusively created on our own in addition to the library of content that we acquire’, added.
