Digital Service Trade and Cultural Consumption Shocks: An Empirical Analysis of the Korean Wave in India using Google Trends and OTT Platform Data
This study quantifies the impact of the COVID‑19 shock on Indian attention to the Korean Wave. Monthly Google Trends for the ‘Korean drama’ topic in India are modelled using an interrupted time‑series (ITS) and two‑way fixed‑effects difference‑in‑differences (TWFE DiD) against close comparison topics (Japanese, Chinese, Spanish drama). The role of OTT platforms, especially Netflix, is examined as annual mediators using Statista series on Netflix India revenue and India’s paid video subscriptions. A unified causal graph motivates estimands and design choices. The ITS reveals a discrete March‑2020 level increase in search attention with partial mean reversion thereafter; TWFE DiD indicates that the Korean‑specific increment was smaller than the lift enjoyed by comparison topics. Annual mediation suggests that OTT expansion was an enabling but not a singular pathway for Korea‑specific attention. Findings are discussed in the context of India’s cultural market dominated by Bollywood but increasingly open to foreign content.
Copyright© 2025 The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the license CC-BY 4.0., which permits any further distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Article’s history: Received 21st of November, 2025; Revised 9th of December, 2025; Accepted 27th of December, 2025; Available online: 30th of December, 2025. Published as article in the Volume XX, Winter, Issue 4(90), December, 2025.
Park, Y.S. (2025). Digital Service Trade and Cultural Consumption Shocks: An Empirical Analysis of the Korean Wave in India using Google Trends and OTT Platform Data. Journal of Applied Economic Sciences, Volume XX, Winter, 4(90), 989 – 1005. https://doi.org/10.57017/jaes.v20.4(90).20
Credit Authorship Contribution Statement: The author contributed the writing, the visualisation, the validation, the supervision, the software, resources, the project administration, the methodology, the investigation, the funding acquisition, the formal analysis, the data curation, and the conceptualisation.
Conflict of Interest Statement: The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Acknowledgement/Founding: N/A
Data Availability Statement: Data available on request: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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