From Labor to Asset: Capital, Technology, and the Reconfiguration of Acting in Korean Drama Production

This study examines how the digital restructuring of drama production and distribution has reconfigured actors’ position in the Korean television industry within global digital capitalism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with actors and industry professionals, supplemented by document analysis, it demonstrates that global streaming platforms and advanced production technologies are transforming capital–labor relations in the Korean drama acting ecosystem by reorganizing distribution and production. The findings suggest that global streaming platforms amplify the value of globally marketable actors while shifting control over them to global capital through IP monopolization. Digital production technologies, including generative AI, further extend actors’ marketability by transforming stars into sites of intensified value extraction, converting embodied performances into data, and reorganizing performance labor under more direct technological control.