'Honey Part-Time Job' beats 'Doctor X' to rank 4th globally on Netflix

Fifty times the hourly wage. Hyeokjun (played by Lee Jae-wook), a young man hounded by debt, pushes open the door of a shady temp agency called Geomi Inryeok. A convenience store night shift, a predawn milk delivery run, a clown-costume event gig — familiar part-time jobs that, episode by episode, transform into horror set pieces, each governed by its own unspoken taboo. Survive the shift and the daily pay goes up; the higher pay pulls Hyeokjun toward ever more dangerous workplaces. This grueling "survival-wage horror" has captivated viewers around the world.

According to Netflix, "Honey Part-Time Job" logged 5 million views — measured by total watch time divided by the show's full runtime — between its Friday release and Sunday, landing fourth on the global top-10 non-English shows chart. SBS's "Doctor X" sits at fifth. The series cracked the top 10 in 51 countries, including No. 1 in South Korea, as well as Brazil, France, Germany and India. Those figures cover only three days of viewing within a single weekly tracking period (Oct. 26–Nov. 1). On the OTT rankings site FlixPatrol, the show held second place globally in the Netflix TV category for three consecutive days through Wednesday.

The first episode draws its skeleton from the "Neapolitan Creepypasta," a genre of internet horror that lays out a list of rules — "do not do X after a certain hour" — without ever explaining why. The terror grows in the silence, filled in by the reader's imagination. A part-time workplace run on shift rules is a natural vessel for that format. Director Kim Da-min said at a press event Tuesday that the first episode borrowed from the Neapolitan Creepypasta but was not limited to it.

The structure mirrors a video game: each workplace is a stage with a boss waiting at the end, and clocking out means clearing that obstacle. Choi Hyun-wook opens the first episode, and Yoon Kyung-ho, Yoon Byung-hee and Jo Hyun-chul each make special appearances in their respective episodes, bringing their own brand of strangeness. The true nature of Geomi Inryeok and the whereabouts of Hyeokjun's missing father Minsu (played by Baek Hyun-jin) form the spine running through the series — which is why executive producer Han Jun-hee urged viewers to watch it all at once, with as little prior information as possible.

Han, who previously explored the survival of youth trapped in the military and in school through "D.P." and "Weak Hero Class 1," served as executive producer. Direction went to Kim Da-min, who wrote the screenplay for "Murderer O Nangam," while the script was co-written by Gyeong Min-seon of "Seoul Weird Stories" and Lee Shin-ji of "Concrete Utopia." Hyeokjun's predicament — accepting the next shift despite everything he has endured — is both chilling and heartbreaking. Lee Jae-wook said he spent a great deal of time thinking about what expression an ordinary person in that situation would wear, how long they would hesitate, and when they would want to run.

Director Kim said she wove throughout the show "part-time jobs that could only exist in Korea and elements that are distinctly Korean," layering the universal struggle to make ends meet onto very specific Korean workplaces. Executive producer Han also left the door open to additional seasons, hinting that a future installment could feature jobs like washing windows on the Empire State Building.