'Reborn Rich' surpasses 20% viewership, highest rating for drama series this year

Main poster for the JTBC drama ″Reborn Rich″ [JTBC]

JTBC's business drama "Reborn Rich" has surpassed the 20 percent mark to reach the highest viewership ratings for a drama series in Korea this year.

According to Nielsen Ratings Korea, the drama starring prominent actor Song Joong-ki started with a 6.1 percent viewing rating on Nov. 18 and continued its ascent to achieve 21.2 percent with its 11th episode that aired Sunday.

It broke the previous record set by "Extraordinary Attorney Woo," which ran on local cable channel ENA and was streamed on Netflix in the summer. At the time it was the highest rating for a Korean drama series this year.

"Reborn Rich," a Friday-to-Sunday program accessible on Netflix, Disney+, and Rakuten Viki, recently topped the charts in a number of Asian nations, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.

The fantasy corporate drama follows Song's Yoon Hyun-woo, who was obedient to a wealthy family before being murdered and then seeks a different life when he is reborn as Jin Do-joon, the youngest son of the family. It is based on the web-based novel by San Kyung and a webtoon with the same Korean title translated as "The Youngest Son of a Chaebol Family."

It centers on the family-run companies known as chaebol in Korea and uses news footage from the 1980s and 1990s to mix fiction with actual political and economic events, including the Korean jet explosion of 1987, the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–98, and previous presidential elections.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]