Red Hot Lee Jun Ki Fields Offers as Joseon Gunman Leads the Chinese Online Viewcount of Summer 2014 K-dramas

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• Awesome!!! My love for LJK grew over time. I really wasn't too much into his acting. Until TBDAW. I am really surprised that JG is so much more ahead. Wow!

• so happy for him, he strikes me as a young intelligent man who contemplates a lot before he chooses a project. which in turn makes me watch all his stuff because I trust it to be good.

• Good for him. But the amount of hits for his drama in China can't compare to You From Another Star. That drama received over 2 billion hits.

  • There is no need to state the obvious that YFAS is the biggest hit this year from Korea but then the statistic you quoted doesn't even make sense as a comparative marker here. The hits above are for dramas that premiered this summer and aired for 3 months . YFAS has had 2 billion hits since it premiered 9 months ago. It's an apples to oranges comparison.

    • Yeah, it doesnt even make any sense...by comparing to the drama that finish 9 months ago. LOL

    • According to the Wall Street Journal, YFAS had well over 14.5 billion views during its run in Mainland China. This article is from last February: http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/02/26/koreanhttp://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/02/26/korean-tv-show-sparks-chicken-and-beer-craze-in-china/

    • 14.5 billion views? I think it's probably 1.45 billion. People always seem to get this wrong... 1 yi in Chinese means 100 million, not 1 billion...

    • @ Kia

      That's still besides the point to bring up YFAS's undisputed and fantastic success in this drama in the first place, yes? It's the purview of a smug fan needing to put unrelated others down.

      Also @anon is absolutely right. YFAS during its 3 month run got 1.45 billion views in China, which is staggering and likely hard to ever reach. But it's not 14.5 billion since currently the Earth's entire population is 7.5 billion human beings. It's weird to see a NYT's reporter make such a mistake in just using the Chinese numerical name of 14亿 as 14 billion. In Chinese 1亿 equals 100 million therefore 10亿 equals 1 billion so for YFAS the 14亿 is 1.4 billion.

    • @ockoala - erm not really? Since you're countering that YFAS was aired 9 months ago and is apparently thus comparing apples to oranges, Kia is just pointing out that the drama broke a way bigger number than that in its 3 months airing compared to JG. I see no 'smug' fan here. Just someone stating facts.

    • @Emil

      My response to Kia was not calling Kia's additional information smug, I meant @Sandra's original comment in bringing YFAS up in this comment thread was smug and pointless regardless of whether the statistic Sandra quoted was for a 3 month or 9 month airing. It was nice of Kia to clear up that the statistic was for YFAS's run but this post was about the summer 2014 K-dramas and its view count. YFAS did not air in the summer and is not competing with any of these dramas. And the article did not claim JG or any dramas that aired this summer was the most viewed K-drama ever in China and required @Sandra to correct it by bringing up how much more YFAS was viewed.

      That was what I was referring to as smug, the bringing up of unnecessary and unrelated success of YFAS simply to make a point that isn't even relevant. If we want to talk about the most successful Kdrama export of all time in China or anywhere else, and in domestic Korea, then we will forever and ever still be bringing up Dae Jang Geum in every conversation. That's just silly.

    • Wow, interesting. I was not being smug. I just stated a fact about online viewing of the two dramas.

      The main reason I thought of YFAS in connection with Lee Jun Ki is because he wants to star in a sequel to YFAS.

      http://star.mk.co.kr/new/view.php?mc=ST&no=1201410&year=2014

    • @Sandra At first, you needed to understand about this article. It's about the view counts of k-dramas aired this summer. Second, is there any rumours or the confirmed news for the sequel of YFAS? No.
      Lee Jun Ki gave his opinion on choosing rom-com genre plots, and this year's rom-com hit is YFAS so he just stated it by being humble. Isn't he too nice he could do that? He won't choose of any sequel if he gets those offers since he's one of the actors in position to choose the scripts he wants to do among many offers.

      Why trying hard to compete against one another, a rom-com and a historical-action genre? It's more hilarious to see someone took this statement seriously while there's any news of planning that sequel.

    • Typo: ...It's more hilarious to see someone took this statement seriously while there's **NO** news of planning that sequel.

• 'JG is about to break 400 million views'

  I make one slight correction to your post above

  • I went math brain dead for a moment. It's been fixed, thanks for pointing it out.

• Great! All the best to Lee Jun Ki on his next project! He is one talented, sincere, hard-working actor who does his best in every project he picks. I wish him well. :)

• Look what came number 4! Marriage Not Dating power woot woot!! No big name stars, airing on cable and yet it's ahead of A-list ladden network dramas.

• i wonder if the china market is truly lucrative, i mean isn't streaming free? i know in the japanese market, they will not only watch but actually buy the dvd if they love the drama...i have a feeling that the chinese market is somewhat overated because there are plenty of sites without commercials where you don't have to pay a dime to watch

  • It's definitely more lucrative than the Japanese market. They're paying USD200k per episode for exclusive rights to broadcast Rain's current drama. That's enough to pay off the pay of the celebrities already. Plus, obviously those video-streaming sites earn from playing advertisements from their country.

• I guess LSG's You're surrounded missed out Summer hit as it started in April, it did 55 million which is above Josen and I think was 50 million when it ended. Josen is behind it int the list below.

  http://v.qq.com/rank/detail/2_-1_-1_-1_1_4.html

  The surprising thing though, the counts are high but there no big huge leap for the actors unlike YFAS and Heirs. I heard LSG may be doing China Fanmeets soon, so that could be a result of this. Heirs is still ranking in QQ weekly which is incredible.

  • First of all, (based on the link you gave), YAAS is not 55 million, but 5.5 million. It's explained in the comment above. After that is Joseon Gunman with 3.9 million, and then comes Heirs.

    Secondly, LJK is actually receiving numerous offers from China

    http://stage.kpopfighting.com/2014/09/19/lee-jun-ki-revealed-to-have-received-many-casting-offers-from-china/

    http://www.kpopstarz.com/articles/114207/20140919/lee-jun-ki.htm

    And LJK is doing fan meets in China for years now. Two of them are already scheduled for this year.

    • No, it's over 500 million. It hit it quite a while ago. Both YAAS and Dr. Stranger didn't get counted on this, but both dramas beat everything on this list. Though JG is still impressive.

  • Hi,
    About this, "Heirs is still ranking in QQ weekly which is incredible." What is QQ, please? Thanks!

  • ockoala... Yup,its really impressive for a Saeguk drama to leading and gets nearly 400 million views in just 3 months premiered.

    rinodino...As ockoala state above are for dramas that premiered this summer and aired for 3 months so it has nothing to do with LSG's drama, Youre surrounded since it premiered 5 months ago.

  • Thanks for the link. Woooo...JG is above and has more views than Heirs and its even more surprising that JG only 3 months premiered and Heirs 12 months ago...

    • Heirs is shown on many sites. This is only 1 site. The numbers for heirs is much much bigger.

  • Lee Jun Ki is a big Hallyu Star in China and has done so many concert-like fanmeets there.

    iukey93.wordpress.com/2014/08/02/hot-hallyu-wave-popularity-rank-according-to-weibo/

• One thing though, most of the dramas that aired after The Heirs benefited from it's popularity. Korean drama on line enjoyed much higher viewership since Heirs and then the followup megahit of YFAS.

• The numbers are staggering. You see why Asian entertainment sets its sights on the Mainland market. The audience is so open and eager to watch.

  When people ask me why I watch those shows, I tell them I am with the majority of the world that does. It amazes me still that in their minds anything that isn't in English, isn't.