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A survey conducted in 2021 by the global language learning app Duolingo found Korean is the fastest growing language in India and among its users, Korean was the fifth most popular language accessed on the app. Some of the credit for this must go to BTS and other K-pop groups, but let’s be honest — you don’t really need to know the language to enjoy K-pop. K-dramas, on the other hand, are bound to make you wish you understood more than stray phrases like “saranghae” and “hajima” (newbies, that’s “I love you” and “don’t do that” respectively). Rich with geeky references and rooted in contemporary Korean culture, K-dramas saw a sharp spike in their popularity during the lockdown and remain audience favourites. At the heart of its appeal is excellent writing and intelligent direction.
In an age of bite-sized quickies, K-drama is the longform of the entertainment world. It sounds insane that a show with 16 to 21-hour-long episodes — occasionally, they’ll be longer. Hospital Playlist averaged at 80 minutes and its second season finale was two hours long — would have a dedicated viewership. Yet that’s exactly what K-dramas have achieved and over the past few decades, the genre has built up a distinctive aesthetic and storytelling style. Here’s a quick(ish) guide to the salient features and quirks of K-drama.
One of K-drama’s greatest gifts to popular culture is that it has revived the romantic comedy, which had languished to dreary dullness in both English and Indian entertainment. K-dramas have taken all the standard romantic tropes – enemies to lovers; the idea of a single soulmate; being forced to spend the night together; faking a relationship only to fall in love in reality — and updated them for the 21st century. Most writers of romance for television and film seem to be ashamed of telling love stories. K-drama writers are the opposite. They understand that love stories are a fantastic way to portray social attitudes and nudge audiences towards progressive thinking. They also positively revel in the silliness and absurdity, playing it up and milking it for all the laughs and all the feels. Additionally, K-dramas have also updated the stereotypes. So, for example, the stories are told from the heroine’s perspective and she’s always a firecracker. The alpha male now has a softer, vulnerable side, like Song Joong-ki’s Yoo Shi-jin in Descendants of the Sun and Hyun Bin’s Jeong-hyeok in Crash Landing on You. Every now and then, K-dramas will flip the cliché to give you a romance that makes your feminist pulse flutter. Take Into the Ring, which is (among other things) an office romance between a boss and a secretary — only the man is the secretary, and the woman is the boss.
Suggested watching: Crash Landing on You, Into the Ring, Descendants of the Sun, It’s Okay to Not be Okay, The Red Sleeve, When the Camellia Blooms, Yumi’s Cells (there are actually too many to even shortlist)
Every K-drama fan has suffered from the ‘Second Lead Syndrome’ at some point in their life. The affliction involves having a deep-rooted loyalty towards the character who didn’t bag the happily-ever-after but absolutely deserved it. Once upon a time, male secondary leads were toxic, jealous and overbearingly masculine while female secondary leads were scheming and catty — possibly to guarantee the actual leads looked better — but now, everyone’s a little more secure. Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha’s Ji Seong-hyun is considerate, sweet and open about his feelings towards the woman he loves. Even better, he strikes up a great friendship with the main lead, Hong Du-sik, even as the two bicker over the same woman. Reply 1988 turned rings around the audience by giving Kim Jung-Hwan’s character all the characteristics of a main hero – he’s brooding, tough and gets more screen time – only for him to ultimately not get the girl. In the long list of crushworthy women second leads, there’s the career-minded Sa-hee who nevertheless manages to find the time to fall in love with the (married) crown prince in Rookie Historian Goo Hae-Ryung, and the bosslady Dan-ah in Run On.
Suggested watching: Itaewon Class, Our Beloved Summer, True Beauty (and pretty much every recent romantic K-drama).
You may already know Koreans can craft a riveting zombie film (thank you, Train to Busan, 2016) but when it comes to the world of supernatural K-dramas, they’re not just about chills and thrills. These K-dramas are just a bucket load of fun. Apart from the usual witches, disgruntled spirits and vampires, writers dip into Korean folklore to present creatures like an imugi (a lesser form of a dragon) or a gumiho (a shapeshifter. Legend says it transforms into a beautiful woman to seduce boys and eat their heart, but of course in K-dramas we also have male gumihos who fall in love). Like most K-dramas, a supernatural series will usually cover a range of genres, including romance and family drama in addition to elements of horror. These generally pack substantial emotional heft, digging into overarching themes of atonement, loss and timeless love, both romantic and familial.
Suggested watching: Hotel Del Luna, Mystic Pop-up Bar, Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, Doom at Your Service, Uncanny Encounter
Possibly as a reaction to the increasingly stressful work environment in Korea, K-dramas show women excelling at some of the most obscure (and exciting) jobs. Take Run On’s Oh Mi-joo (Shin Se-kyung), who works as a subtitle translator. It’s not a job that you’d naturally associate with heroism, but the writers make sure you’ll appreciate her professional skills and personal integrity. When a victim of bullying shares his truth with the Korean media, Mi-joo spends the whole night translating his interview into English so that it can reach global audiences. (This K-drama is also a movie lover’s delight, peppered as it is with film references to everything from Batman Begins to Carol. There’s an entire segment that recreates scenes from Casablanca.) Other oddly cool professions we’ve found ourselves thinking about thanks to K-dramas include food researcher (A Business Proposal), video game music producer (Search WWW), book marketer (Romance is a Bonus Book), weather forecasters (Forecasting Love and Weather) and park rangers (Jirisan).
Suggested watching: Her Private Life, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-Joo, Strong Girl Bong-Soon, Do You Like Brahms?
K-dramas that aired before 2010 regularly featured female characters steeped in stereotypes – the second female lead was usually catty and manipulative, while the main lead was pure and gentle. The two then fought for the same man’s attention (obviously). Recent years have seen a dramatic shift in the way women interact on-screen and we couldn’t be more thankful for it. Reflecting what is many women’s lived reality, K-dramas now have at least one wholesome friendship between its female characters. Our favourite trope, by far, is the one which fixes women into a cohabitation space, nurturing conversations about everything from doing the laundry to existential dread (and not just men).
Suggested watching: Twenty Five Twenty One, Run On, Be Melodramatic, Mine
In Stranger, lead investigative prosecutor Hwang Si-mok, played rivetingly by Cho Seung-woo, undergoes a lobotomy as a child (because his brain is too big. Literally), which cuts off his ability to feel empathy. As an adult, he’s an outcast, but he’s also fearless and a genius – connecting dots that nobody in power wants him to. Which in turn makes all of us empathise with and root for an abnormal, emotionally-handicapped man. Particularly in crime K-dramas, this is a standard trope. There are a lot of protagonists who are seen as abnormal and as outcasts, who nevertheless prove to be not just good men, but also men of integrity. Through the Darkness, Korea’s take on Mind Hunter, digs its heels into what the latter only hints at – its lead detective, fascinated by the minds of serial killers, finds himself disturbingly drawn to the craft of murdering. His insight into a killer’s mind makes him an indispensable asset to the police force but also reflects deep-seated trauma. Making heroes out of anomalies is a potent statement, particularly for an Asian society (across this continent, we tend to be rigidly hierarchical and conservative in critically-important ways). K-dramas not only blur the line between madness and genius, but also further the idea that strangeness must be nurtured.
Suggested watching: Through the Darkness, Stranger, Inspector Koo
In stark contrast to its heroes, the villains of crime and suspense thrillers tend to be respectable and influential, people who are often feted by society for ostensibly playing by its rules. Take for example Ji Dong-hee in Crash Course in Romance. He is the perfect assistant and has the admiration of his colleagues when in fact there’s something far more sinister motivating his performance of being an efficient and loyal worker. Unlike Dong-hee, who is (despite his sleek wardrobe) a regular middle-class man, most bad guys in K-dramas tend to be super rich. Apart from their crafty methods of tormenting people, their wealth and public disposition allows them to stay under the radar and play the puppeteer. South Korea’s growing economic disparity – which was also the subject for the Oscar-winning Parasite (2019) – could be a reason why many K-dramas focus on power and wealth, and their corrupting influence. Money, with its all-consuming might, becomes an imaginative narrative tool to take the plot to exciting places, while also acting as a cautionary tale, lifting the veil off of seemingly well-adjusted people.
Suggested watching: Little Women, Summer Strike, The Glory, Dali and the Cocky Prince
Korea as a society has a deep respect for its history and tradition – it might be one of the reasons why sageuks (historical K-dramas) are as enduring as they are. The country’s era of monarchy still informs some of the most basic social structures of the present time, including the importance given to hierarchy. Respect for those above you – in age, social status or job title – is woven into the very fabric of their culture and language. So much so that there is actually a word for the arrogance of those in positions of power: Gapjil. The not-so-palatable side of this hierarchical culture is that gapjil is considered normal along with disrespecting those who are ‘below’ you. K-dramas regularly feature parents hitting grown children (which isn’t particularly strange to us Indians, admittedly) and CEOs physically assaulting their employees in anger, a right that they reserve due to their position. Team leaders are often rude to those who report to them and see no repercussions for savagely humiliating someone. Sometimes, such episodes are played for humour, which is very jarring, but most of the time, they’re supposed to make you feel for a downtrodden character. Workplace abuse is a serious issue in Korea and as uncomfortable as it may be to watch, it’s commendable that K-dramas find different ways to acknowledge it.
Suggested watching: My Liberation Notes, Misaeng, Summer Strike
If you’re watching a K-drama with young adults, especially one that’s set in a high school, then you can safely expect brutal bullying. The victim almost always has a disadvantaged background – an illness, a broken home or severe financial difficulties – while the bully holds a position of untouchable social or economic power. While this becomes the perfect vehicle for a satisfying revenge story (hello, The Glory), some K-dramas like to dig deeper. Take D.P., which is one of the first K-dramas to depict the toxic military hazing culture in the South Korean army, allegedly put in place to maintain discipline among the soldiers. The violence is often so horrific that it leads to soldiers deserting their post (a crime that could lead to 10 years in prison) or dying by suicide. D.P. uses the trappings of the bullying trope to offer an insightful look into the pervading toxic masculinity that the country struggles with. All in all, we do not recommend these dramas for the faint-hearted.
Suggested watching: The Glory, D.P.
Possibly the most perplexing and best known feature of K-dramas is the kiss in which the eyes are open while the lips are primly closed. The chasteness of these kisses can evoke a range of emotions for first-timers: Confusion, disgust or plain awe at how one can stand still as a statue in the middle of a kiss. This peculiarity comes from the rating system implemented by Korea Communications Commission, which gives age-related ratings to K-dramas. Anything more active than the tight-lipped chaste kiss runs the risk of the K-drama being categorised for audiences older than 15. Physical intimacy in K-dramas, or skinship as it’s called in Konglish, has benefited greatly through the OTT intervention, but we’ve got to admit a certain fondness for the OG open-eyed kisses. If not for any other reason, then the fact that it’s entirely family friendly. Unlike the love scenes of many other entertainment cultures (including ours, on occasion), there’s no chance of feeling embarrassed if someone walks in on you watching a K-drama kiss.
Suggested watching: Tell us if you want a compilation of our favourite K-drama kisses, but to start you off — any kiss scene featuring Park Min-young, Gong Yoo or Ji Chang-wook.
K-dramas are fascinated by the idea that a person is not what they appear to be, which makes sense since Far East Asian societies have a reputation for giving great importance to appearances. Whether it’s a romance or a thriller, a protagonist with an alternate identity or a secret life is a regular feature. Women turning drag to present as men is a standard device in sageuk (historical fiction a la K-drama). For example in Love in the Moonlight, the female lead pretends to be a eunuch, and in The King’s Affection, the crown prince is actually a princess. In modern K-dramas, there’s almost always some shame associated with this split existence and the show will find ways to give this character social acceptance if they’re the protagonist. For example, in this is Her Private Life, the female lead is the curator of an art gallery whose secret is that she’s the fan of a young idol (that’s a pop singer, for those of you who are yet to succumb to Konglish and K-pop). Imagine her relief when her boyfriend isn’t threatened by this secret. More sinister examples are Flower of Evil, which teases the possibility of a doting family man being a serial killer on the side, and the vigilante-themed Taxi Driver.
Suggested watching: Her Private Life, Flower of Evil, Healer, The Bridal Mask, Love in the Moonlight
K-drama fandom also has a healthy sub-culture of conspiracy theories on how character hairstyles say much about their personality (Reddit is a goldmine) and this is our humble contribution to that lexicon. True love is a transformative experience, and the hair of K-drama heroes will testify to this. In his disorderly days of singledom and solitude, the hero will always start out with floppy hair. He is still childlike and has a long way to go before coming into his own as a man. Which usually happens after he’s found the love of a good woman. How do we know this? We can see his forehead. (It’s worth noting that a star actor or idol’s forehead will send fans into a proper frenzy.) Our man finds himself some hair wax and out comes the comma hairstyle or, if he’s a real ladykiller, the hair gets slicked back. What it’s showing is a man who makes an effort to look good because of the woman in his life, which is a rather neat reversal of a trope that’s traditionally applied to women who seem to always get a glow-up because they’re in love.
Suggested watching: Crash Landing on You, Tune in for Love
You say, “Drink” and K-dramas say, “How much?” No K-drama is complete without characters shooting back multiple shots of soju – Korea’s favourite green-bottled alcoholic beverage – and making a fool out of themselves (especially in front of their crush). So enmeshed is K-dramas’ drinking culture with its characters’ social performance that it’s completely normal to get hammered with your boss on a regular basis. This makes for fun twists because once the drinks enter, know that anything is possible – an impulsive kiss, a shouting match with a hated boss and even sweet slumber on one of Seoul’s unsoiled streets. When they’re not drinking soju, our characters can be found sipping on iced americano (or Ah-Ah, as it’s referred to in Korean), regardless of the sub-zero temperatures the country finds itself in. Drinking every time a K-drama character drinks something could be its own drinking game. We do not recommend it.
Suggested watching: Honestly, every K-drama. But here are a few to start you off: Fight for My Way, Start-Up, Strong Do Bong Soon and Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo
If you’ve ever wondered what the female gaze looks like, look no further than the scene in which the male lead will take a shower, just to get fans’ pulses fluttering. K-dramas have to adhere to rather strict guidelines of propriety, but lust will always find a way. And so it is that we get the random but mandatory shower scene in which the shirtless male lead will obligingly give the audience an eyeful of his well-built torso. Frequently, the scene is played for humour, like in Vincenzo, but sometimes, the laughs are laced with a little bit of rebellion against the convention. In Yumi’s Cells, the shower scene is a fantasy that tells the audience that (contrary to expectations that ‘good’ women keep their desires repressed) feeling lusty and fantasising about a boy is entirely normal. The shower scene was replaced by a bathtub/ bathroom scene in The Red Sleeve and hilariously, it had the female lead ogle Lee Jun-ho’s bare (and wet) torso much like the audience is expected to. Occasionally, the shower scene is replaced by an extended shot of the male protagonist working out — Ju Ji-hoon is seen skipping rope in Hyena, for example — and of course, he has no shirt on his person. Amen.
If there’s one thing that feels seriously unsynchronised in K-dramas, it’s the amount of eating the characters do and their incredibly-slender figures. Food is a central part of Korean life in K-dramas. Whether it’s a home-cooked meal or snacks at a streetside shack or a fancy spread at a restaurant (or all of the above), delicious food is what brings people together. In Crash Course in Romance, the critique of consumerist and capitalist culture is articulated through the way the rich male lead finds himself unable to eat anything other than the traditional, homely Korean food that a tiny restaurant makes, following the owner’s mother’s recipes. In Mr. Queen, the body-swapped queen’s inventive recipes help her outmanoeuvre those who threaten her position in the royal court. Extraordinary Attorney Woo took the humble gimbap and made it a sensation. After Start Up, kalguksu was the comfort food that we all wanted, thanks to the joy it brought Han Ji-pyeong. Dumplings, or mandu, played a key part in Hotel del Luna. The promise of Korean beef and a Korean barbecue will bring most K-drama leads to their knees. We’re not throwing shade on farsaan or any Indian snacks — our food culture is fabulously rich and varied — but somehow, K-dramas make pork crackling and dried pollack like the best munchies ever.
Suggested watching: Mr. Queen, Dali and the Cocky Prince, Start Up, Vincenzo, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, Hospital Playlist
On one hand, K-dramas stand out for writing fantastic, complex and praiseworthy female characters, but the one area where these shows tend to stumble is with the way mothers are characterised. Matriarchs in K-dramas are pushy women, verging on being abusive with their children. Obsessed with class and success, they’re terrible role models and the blame for much of what goes wrong falls on these women’s shoulders. Good mothers, like the female leads of When the Camellia Blooms and Crash Course in Romance, are always shown as the exceptions who are treated like outcasts by the rest of society. In Crash Course in Romance, the gang of mothers are shown to be the sole reason children are pushed to perform well academically while the fathers, schools and teaching institutes are all shown as sympathetic and understanding. In earlier K-dramas, patriarchs and fathers had to shoulder some of the responsibility for toxic elements in a family (which is usually a stand-in for society at large), but in recent years, they’ve either been kept on the sidelines or been cast as a counterpoint to the irredeemably flawed mother. Take, for example, the way the lead’s mother contrasts with her father in Extraordinary Attorney Woo. Fortunately, there are many other female characters to balance the subtle misogyny that informs how mothers are written in K-dramas.
For most of us, everyday reality is not the stuff of which television shows are made. However, K-dramas have a whole sub-genre that’s just life on screen, and somehow, the writers and directors manage to turn ordinariness into riveting content. Lived-in homes, the commute to and from work, dreary office routines — all these are mined by gifted writers to talk about contemporary society in South Korea and often, the issues and insights resonate emotionally with audiences across geo-political boundaries. Many slice-of-life dramas explore feelings of melancholia and loneliness, which is something people can relate to around the world. Some have very specific settings, but explore issues that are common to all. The most poignant storyline in Our Blues was the one that followed an ageing haenyeo (deep sea divers from Jeju island) and her friend, tracing the way growing old changes the two women’s lives and relationships. Even at their saddest or most despairing moments, there’s something reassuringly beautiful about these slice-of-life dramas that makes you think about the world around you with a little more tenderness.
Suggested watching: My Liberation Notes, Our Blues, Summer Strike, Reply 1988
Maybe it’s because South Korea is a homogenous nation with a single ethnic and cultural identity, but K-dramas love the idea of exploring differences between people through the device of body swapping. The idea of one person’s spirit being trapped in another person’s body has been used in both comedy and horror films for many decades. In K-dramas, it’s a favourite trope. Usually, the body swap makes sure that unrequited dreams and aspirations are fulfilled or past wrongs are rectified. It’s also legitimate grounds for comedy. With a new spirit in the mix, the timid employee turns around and starts seducing her boss (Oh My Ghost) and the souls two middle-aged men find themselves strutting around in young, gorgeous bodies (Come Back Mister). One of the more interesting body swaps of late was in Mr. Queen. When a young celebrity chef (who is a man) enters the body of a Joseon-era queen, chaos ensues because he’s not willing to be treated the way women were in that time. Additionally, he (in her body) starts falling for the king, which is awkward because the chef was convinced he was a ladies’ man. Wittingly or unwittingly, Mr. Queen ends up being a rather poignant queer romance, which is unusual for K-dramas.
Suggested watching: Mr. Queen, Come Back Mister, Big, Oh My Ghostess
It doesn’t get much more consumerist and capitalist than K-dramas. This is a genre that’s turned brand placement into a fine art, after all. The jewellery that is given as a gift, the coffee shop two characters meet at, the restaurant chain that gives them comfort food — it’s all brand placement. (If the brand is not on board and paying for its moment in the drama, we get hilarious bits of visual effects, like when the Range Rover turned into an “Ange Rover” in Sisyphus.) K-dramas are also keenly focused on getting good ratings. Negative audience responses can even get shows pulled off air. Despite all this, K-dramas regularly push the envelope towards progressive thinking and encourage their audiences to be more idealistic. Dramas regularly encourage conversations about less talked-about topics, like Extraordinary Attorney Woo did with autism. K-dramas have also picked up prickly political topics, in the Gwangju Uprising in Youth of May. An escapist feelgood drama like Vincenzo had throwaway lines that referenced South Korea’s past history of military dictatorship.
It’s also interesting to see how K-dramas use popular formats like the love story to speak for liberal values. Take Coffee Prince, for example, which first aired more than 20 years ago. Its hero — played by Gong Yoo — has to come to terms with having fallen in love with a man (because he doesn’t know that ‘he’ is actually a woman in drag). After some agonising, he embraces his queer romance, which in turn pushes the audience to be more receptive to queerness. More recently, Mine had a lesbian woman as one of its lead characters and despite some negative feedback, the character was not vilified in any way. In fact, the scene in which she and her husband talk about her being a closeted lesbian is one of the sweetest and most accepting moments in television that we’ve seen. One of the joys of a good K-drama is that if you’re in the mood to scratch the surface of the entertaining storyline, you’ll find layers of idealism and progressive values.
Suggested watching: Coffee Prince, Youth of May, Mine