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| Korea's E-commerce company Coupang raised $4.55 billion in public offering in the U.S stock market on March 11. Yonhap |
By Lee Gyu-lee
The E-commerce company Coupang is making aggressive investments in its streaming service, Coupang Play, to step up its game in the competitive over-the-top (OTT) market in Korea, following its successful stock market debut in the U.S that raised $4.55 billion.
The company announced Monday, its plans to partner with popular educational publishers to build on its streaming service's content to specialize in education, targeting a wider age range of users.
"We hope more users will find Coupang Play useful as it will expand its educational content that can be enjoyed by both parents and their children," the company said.
Launched in December last year, Coupang Play has been offered free of charge to subscribers of its premium service WOW that offers free, overnight shipping.
"We are strengthening our educational content as a means to provide more meaningful experiences to Coupang's WOW subscribers," Kim Sung-han, the head of Coupang Play, said in a statement. "We plan to continue adding more content to meet the various needs of our users."
The platform officially launched an education section Friday and will be releasing learning content such as English-language and test prep materials from top-tier English-learning publications including Hackers, YBM, and the BBC.
The service will also offer exclusive learning videos among OTT services, including the "Scholastic Phonics Readers" series and digital textbook platform i-Scream's video materials.
The recent addition is seen as the company's attempt to gain a foothold in the heated competition in Korea's streaming services market.
Coupang Play is also gearing up to release original series. It reportedly partnered up with Chorokbaem Media, the production company behind the hit series "My Mister" and "The Penthouse: War in Life," to release the upcoming series "That Night" (direct translation).
Directed by Lee Myung-woo, the series has been garnering huge anticipation among K-drama fans as it stars A-list actors Kim Soo-hyun and Cha Seung-won. It is the Korean remake of the BBC's crime thriller series "Criminal Justice."
Korea's OTT media market, dominated by the global streaming service Netflix, is expected to become even more competitive with additional players ― U.S media giants Disney+ and Apple TV ― expected to land in the country in the not-too-distant future.
Local streaming services are also attempting to boost their content in response.
KT, which owns digital streaming services Seezn and olleh tv, announced plans to acquire licenses for over 1,000 content items and produce over 100 original series by 2023. CJ ENM, which co-runs TVING with the local JTBC network, is planning on spending 400 billion won ($355 million) on content, while KakaoTV is looking to make about 240 original series with a 300 billion won ($266 million) investment by the same year.
Broadcasters KBS, MBC, and SBS's co-OTT operation with SK Telecom, Wavve, also announced a 1 trillion won in investment plans to release original series by 2025.
