Despite lower-than-expected ratings on home ground, the first two episodes of the new KBS series “Uncontrollably Fond” attracted more than 40 million paid viewers on one of China’s biggest online video platforms, Youku Tudou, according to an announcement by the public relations company 3HW this week.

“On the first day of broadcast, there was an overflow of traffic and the server of Youku crashed,” said a company official to a local news outlet. “Also, real-time replies from viewers flooded (the site) to (the point that) they even interfered with the screen.”

Additionally, searches for the show on China’s social media site Weibo increased from 500 million to 17.6 billion after its debut. 

Distributed at $400,000 per episode, the drama has now surpassed the hit series “Descendants of the Sun” as the most expensive Korean show to be exported to China, according to a report by an industry insider.

First aired on July 6, “Uncontrollably Fond” is a romantic drama series starring actor Kim Woo-bin and singer-actress Bae Suzy.

The 20-episode drama airs locally on KBS2 every Wednesday and Thursday at 10 p.m. It is scheduled to run until Sept. 8.

By Kim Yu-young (ivykim@heraldcorp.com)