As expected, actress IU and Byeon Woo-seok, who grant in the drama 'Perfect Crown,' drew high expectations from viewers.
According to Nielsen Korea's ratings on the 11th, the first episode of MBC's Friday-Saturday drama Perfect Crown (writer Yoo Ji-won, director Park Jun-hwa, Bae Hee-young), which aired on the 10th, recorded a 7.8% viewership rating (nationwide households).
This is 3.4 percentage points higher than the previous work In Your Radiant Season's highest and premiere rating of 4.4%. Also, the predecessor to In Your Radiant Season, The Judge Returns, was a hit with a peak rating of 13.6%, but its first episode recorded 4.3%, which proves that viewers' expectations for Perfect Crown were high.
Perfect Crown is a drama set in a constitutional monarchy Korea that tells a status-breaking romance about a woman who is a chaebol who has everything but is annoyingly of commoner status and a sad man who is the king's son but cannot have anything.
This drama drew attention with the casting of guaranteed-hit star IU and Byeon Woo-seok, who enjoyed phenomenon-level popularity from the drama Lovely Runner.
As if to prove such expectations, viewers' interest was hot even before the broadcast. Two weeks before the first broadcast, FUNdex, the index released by Good Data Corporation, a K-content competitiveness analysis firm, ranked the drama first in TV-OTT drama buzz for the fourth week of March 2026, up one spot from the previous week.
It was the first time since the survey began that a drama that had not yet started broadcasting ranked first overall in TV-OTT drama buzz. Perfect Crown especially ranked first in VON (community response, Voice of Netizen) and SNS among the indicators that make up buzz.
Also, IU (playing Seong Hee-ju) and Byeon Woo-seok (playing Prince Ian), who will play the want-to-be royal couple, were listed third and fourth respectively in the TV-OTT drama cast buzz rankings.
Not only that, but it drew explosive expectations, such as selling out advertisements even before the broadcast. And that was reflected directly in the ratings. The first episode recorded as much as 7.8%.
In the first episode on the 10th, IU and Byeon Woo-seok showed a combination beyond expectations and carried the story, raising expectations for further rating increases.
[Photo] Provided by MBC, broadcast capture
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