When Dramafever was bought out by Warner, I was a bit uneasy that they were just going to try to make a fast buck off of the Kdrama popularity or purposefully take out competition. Seems like it ended up being the latter. Dramafever is no more, and so I will have to elsewhere to finish watching Suspicious Housekeeper and Tree with Deep Roots. The good thing is Viki is still around, but probably only because it has joined with Kocowa, which is a streaming service from Korea.

The bigger picture is, this is a fight. Big fish like Netflix and Amazon are trying to get a piece of this pie of Kdrama popularity, and Asian entertainment in general. Good thing is, it’s such a big trend that likely more opportunities will open up in the future. It will be interesting to see what happens as Korea, China, and other countries all fight to come up on top now that many Americans specifically, but others around the world also, are turning from watching US entertainment only and branching out to more and more entertainment from other countries.

It already has been fascinating to watch the struggles of countries who want the world audience, but need to keep their base, the citizens of their own country, both audiences of which have very different values, cultures, and expectations. One example of the US dithering on this is Hollywood aligning and in some cases getting bought out by Chinese companies who demand censorship in the form of always showing China in a positive light no matter what. American freedom vs. Chinese RMB. Sadly, it is the RMB that often wins out, which, ironically, is perhaps why so many have started to look away from America to South Korea, Japan, and even China for better stories.