Why is MDL Kdrama heavy?

It's actually simple, as for Japan - it's still a very closed country. Korea has been opening to the West while Japan still refuses to open completely.

For example, music: Japan is still selling DVDs and Blurays with music videos while Korea stopped doing that and turned to YouTube hence the huge views and increased popularity. It is very rare to see full Japanese music videos on YT and they are usually just teasers.

The same applies to anime and dramas, when you go to official websites, most of the access is restricted unless you live in Japan, they are not trying to promote their stuff, the marketing is bad because they do not even focus on foreigners. 

And as for MDL being Kdrama heavy, it is just the consequence of the stuff I mentioned above. Korean dramas are simply more accessible and popular.

 OldAnimeLady:

yep I only chose that title to get people to look, and again I don't know why i felt I had to post it

Why not? :D It's a good discussion topic.

will do! Earlier today I wanted to add news to the feed, made sure most of it was from this week (halloween costumes not withstanding)

I agree with the points mentioned above in terms of restricted access. For instance, with the censorship in China and lack of access to sites like YouTube which is how a lot of Korean media gets its popularity boost, since as mentioned before, they (as in drama networks in China, Taiwan, Japan) don't tend to expand and diversify their access to overseas audiences and focus more on popularity within their respective countries. Due to censorship, there's only a handful of social media sites such as Weibo which are primarily used to boost popularity in China as an example, and since it's pretty much aimed just at native Chinese speakers, that limits the reach quite a lot since there's limited access to English/International versions of the site and people don't often have accounts for the social media sites that are most in use in China (and tend to frequent more to Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, etc).

I know official sites/apps like Viki for instance do post Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese dramas too, even though the access to those is very much dependent on if the licensing is obtained and also region locks that can often be in place. 

EDIT: For me personally, it's often personal preference with regards to how each country's dramas tend to be executed. As an example, although I'm ethnically Chinese myself, I find the fact that dubbing is prominent in Chinese dramas to be a little off-putting as the voices aren't often the actor's own voice, so it can come across unnatural/odd to me. 

The South Korean government has subsidized and worked with Movie, TV & Music producers. I would say their efforts were much more coordinated compared to Japan's attempts to export culture.

As Ceki mentioned - Japan is much more insular and inward looking. Japanese customers first, Japanese customers second, Japanese customers third. It's really that bad. If you are not a Japanese customer in Japan - the message is "you don't matter". Contrast that with South Korea where sometimes they provided translators/subtitlers to put their dramas out their for foreign customers. At cost to the South Korean government and probably the studios too - they put the content out their. Now they are reaping the rewards of that long-term strategy of treating foreign customers well.

Now that South Korean culture is being viewed as having "invaded" Japan (if you listen to some of the politicians) they're desperately trying to fight back. I doubt they'll succeed. The reality is their entire mentality needs to change and I'm not sure if they're open-minded enough for that radical of a change in their entertainment industries.

South Korea did get lucky with timing so part of it is luck but they also put in time and money and showed they valued exports and foreign business (China mostly but other places too). Japan is still much too inward focused and things like anime have succeeded in spite of this. Nintendo is a good example of an open-minded Japanese leader succeeding in part by valuing customers outside of Japan.

@Knavery exactly.  the Korean government sees Korean Drama and Music as an export that makes 5 Billion dollars a year (and growing) for Korea from overseas markets.  They fund dramas, they fund the arts and they export.

The first free trade agreement regarding culture (for sale of music and television) was in the early 90s between Thailand and South Korea and was worth about 5 Million dollars.  The next was between California and South Korea a few years later) and was worth 50 Million.

When government funds arts, arts grow.

Actually, about Japanese content and streaming,  you can't find much at all on YouTube, Dailymotion, etc because Japan has some of the most strict copyright laws in the world. Have you ever tried to find an Arashi MV on Youtube?! They practically do not exist. Occasionally, you may get lucky and find a fan has uploaded something, but they will get removed promptly. Same with dramas. It is extremely hard to find streaming Japanese content of any kind.

As for the other countries and sites, there used to be a site that  streamed Mainland Chineese and Taiwanese dramas. A lot were raw but some were subbed. I think it was Sugoideas.com.

Viki has a lot of Mainland Chinese dramas now. They also have some Taiwanese dramas. I have noticed, though, that with the rise in popularity of Mainland dramas these last couple of years, Taiwanese dramas are harder to find. 

Kissasian still has the best collection of dramas that I can't find on Viki or Dramafever. 

With Thai dramas, it is also hard to find content but I have found them on Youtube and Dailymotion.

I don't have much experience with Hong Kong dramas, but I have seen some on YouTube. 

Finally, once in a blue moon, a random drama app will pop up in the Google Playstore. The ones I have found and tried over the years pretty much just access streaming sites like gooddrama or kissasian. They are usually removed pretty fast and the developers eventually lose interest in updating them, so they stop working.