JTBC’s ‘Reborn Rich’ is second-most watched show on cable channel

JTBC’s business drama “Reborn Rich” became the second-most watched show on the cable channel after airing its latest episode on Sunday.

According to Nielsen Ratings Korea, episode 14 recorded a high of 24.9 percent viewership ratings. The ratings surpassed the channel’s “Sky Castle” (2018-19) whose highest viewership rating was 23.8 percent.

“The World of the Married” which aired in 2020 is the No. 1 most-watched drama series on JTBC, with 28.4 percent viewership rating.

Viewership ratings for “Reborn Rich” has been increasing ever since the premiere. During the first week of air, the show saw over a four-point increase, from 6.1 percent on episode one to 10.8 percent on episode three.

On its third week on air, “Reborn Rich” broke this year’s record for the show with the highest viewership ratings at 19.4 percent. The previous record, which was 17.5 percent, was held by the legal drama series “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” which ran on local cable channel ENA from August to June.

“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. It has a total of 16 episodes.

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 LEE JIAN [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]