The Korean historical romance drama Missing Crown Prince, Episode 17 achieved a new milestone with its latest episode, reaching a nationwide average rating of 4.40 percent for the first time on Saturday night.
This marks a significant increase from its previous rating of 3.97 percent, and sets a new record for the Korean drama series.
In Seoul, the metropolitan rating for Episode 17 was 4.02 percent, slightly lower than the nationwide average but still a nice jump from Episode 16.
What has made Missing Crown Prince not only maintain but increase its audience?
In my opinion, the record-breaking ratings for Missing Crown Prince, Episode 17 can be attributed to several factors.
Firstly, the show has delivered engaging storylines and nicely-developed characters as it looks at the intrigues of palace drama and the terrible things people will do to get what they want.
While, I admit, the K-drama was a slow burn for the first few episodes, and the scripts could have been better written, the story then picked up and really began to deliver on what it hinted at early on.
The chemistry between the lead actors, Suho and Hong Ye Ji, has also been a major draw for audiences right from the beginning.
Performances too have been great, with Hong Ye Ji delivering a solid performance throughout, but especially from Exo’s Suho, who never fails to prove he isn’t “just a singer”.
After all, while he was already one of the major audience draws for his previous drama Behind Your Touch but, in Missing Crown Prince, he has surpassed his superb performance in that.
As the series approaches its final episodes then, the record-breaking ratings for Episode 17 suggest that Missing Crown Prince is likely to maintain its popularity until the end.
My guess too is we will see even higher ratings for its final three episodes.
We’ll find out about one of them tonight, as Episode 18 airs in South Korea and then streams on Viki later today.
Watch its teaser trailer (sorry, only in Korean) below.