‘Win-win effect!’

The MBC drama ‘The Call You‘re Calling Now’, starring Yoo Yeon-seok and Chae Soo-bin, has recently been enjoying a surge in viewership ratings, along with the popularity of the original web novel and webtoon.

‘The Call You’re Calling Now’, is a drama that tells the story of a show window couple who married without love and confirm their feelings for each other with a threatening phone call. It started on the 22nd of last month with 5.5% (Nielsen Korea) and recently soared to 7%.

The 6th episode that aired on the 14th soared to a peak viewership rating of 9.2%, raising expectations for what will unfold next.

The drama began to gain traction through word of mouth among viewers when the Yoo Yeon-seok and Chae Soo-bin duo began to realize their true feelings for each other and began to move forward in earnest.

In particular, in the episode aired on the 14th, Yoo Yeon-seok, who found out Chae Soo-bin‘s true feelings, directly and indirectly expressed his hidden “pure love”, capturing the hearts of viewers.

Thanks to this, not only the web novel based on the drama, but also the webtoon released to coincide with the first broadcast of the drama are enjoying great success. The web novel of the same name, released in November 2022, was already popular before being made into a drama, but it is gradually gaining even more attention.

According to Kakao Entertainment, the number of web novel views increased fivefold, and sales also increased 14.6fold immediately after the drama aired. The webtoon, which was produced and serialized simultaneously with the drama, also saw its views and sales increase 3.6fold and 6.9fold, respectively.

The drama, which consists of 12 episodes, has only released the first 6 episodes, but with the series being canceled one after another due to the martial law situation and the impeachment of the president, curiosity about the next story has increased, which seems to have heightened interest in the original work.

The titles of the drama ‘The Ending’ and ‘Spoiler Alert’ are representative examples of the currently trending search terms on various internet and SNS.

In addition, curiosity about the untold story hidden between Yoo Yeon-seok and Chae Soo-bin, which is a unique genre of ‘Romance Thriller’, has been added, creating a win-win effect for both the original work and the drama.


Reporter Lee Jeong-yeon annjoy@donga.com