New Song Kang Ho-led drama Uncle Samsik premiered on Disney+ and Hulu on May 15th and, according to Flix Patrol, is already in the Top 10 in five countries.
As you might expect, those countries are all in Asia — Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan — as well as the drama’s home country of South Korea.
The period drama even managed to hit the #1 spot on both Thursday and Friday in South Korea, and #1 in Japan on Friday before dropping to #2 today.
With Disney+ releasing Uncle Samsik worldwide, and with how good the first five episodes of the drama have been, however, it really should be ranking in the Top 10 in far more countries than this.
Then again, if you look at the Disney+ social media accounts, it is easy to see Disney did its usual abysmal job at promoting the Korean drama.
So much so, a fair number of avid K-drama fans had no idea Uncle Samsik had premiered.
International ratings for Uncle Samsik so far
I say again and again, ignore most of the low ratings you see on My Drama List, as the site has a problem with users who generally only want one thing “idol-like male leads and cute romances” in their dramas, and so love downrating anything that doesn’t fit into that box.
That’s obviously why, with just five episodes out so far, Uncle Samsik is rated a crazy low 7.8 out of 1o on the site so far.
That rating is likely to rise much higher, though, once the immature raters have moved onto another drama to downrate.
Uncle Samsik is faring a little better from users on IMDB, however, with a current 8.1 out of 10, but, again, given both the superb writing and performances from all the main leads, the Korean drama should be rated much higher than this.
The 16-episode Uncle Samsik stars the previously mentioned Song Kang Ho, in his first ever K-drama, alongside Byun Yo Han, Lee Kyu Hyung, Jin Ki Joo, and Seo Hyun Woo.
The first five episodes of the Korean drama were released on Disney+ on May 15th, with two episodes being released every week through June 19th, when a three-episode series finale will hit the streaming platform.
Watch the official Uncle Samsik trailer below, then let me just add it doesn’t go anywhere near showing just what an excellent K-drama it has turned out to be so far.