18 Best K-Dramas on Netflix Right Now

After the insanely resounding success of Crash Landing on You, it seems like these days Korean dramas are now on everyone's radar, with an ever-growing list of popular titles from both previous years and 2020 now available for binging on Netflix.

Whether you're a seasoned fanatic or recent newbie wanting to see what all the recent fuss is about, you've likely heard the Korean phrase ppalli palli being spoken at least once or twice in every episode of whatever K-drama you've been watching. Translated as 'hurry hurry', this is a concept embodied in literally every aspect of Korean daily life, including pop culture trends - blink and you'll miss what's going on!

If you want to stay on top of your K-drama game and keep up with the latest shows, or just want a high-level understanding of whatever your Koreaboo friends are currently fangirl/boying about, we've rounded up the best K-dramas currently on Netflix that need to be next on your must-watch list!

Coming down from the recent high of Crash Landing On You, and missing your fave actors and actresses from that show? You can fill the void with another Son Ye-jin drama instead!

If you're familiar with the angst-filled Korean melodramas of the late '90s and early '00s (Winter Sonata anyone?), the show Something In the Rain, directed by Ahn Pan, may not feel like anything new. However despite its angst-filled focus on forbidden love and interfering parents galore, anyone's who's watched this show will all agree that it has a pretty fresh take on the typical K-drama tropes, portraying its central love story in a sensitive and heartwarming way.

The drama focuses on the relationship between the passive "airplane" Yoon Jin-ah and enterprising "pilot" Seo Joon-hee, two people who have known each other their entire lives but have until now always treated each other as family.

Jin-ah is a woman in her 30s, one of the most competent managers working at a coffee franchise headquarters, with a clear goal of where she wants to go career-wise, but pretty much a doormat and meandering in her love life. Joon-hee is her best friend's younger brother (and also best friend of Jin-ah's own younger brother), who's been living abroad in the US for the past three years, and has had secret feelings for Jin-ah that he's never managed to confess. Given their age difference, Jin-ah has never thought of Joon-hee as an adult, viewing him as a dongsaeng (Korean for 'younger sibling'), but the day he arrives back in Korea something clicks and they embark on an unpredictable and unconventional love story.

Over the past decade there have been a lot of overused tropes and motifs in K-dramas, ranging anywhere from 'flower boy' male harems, to body swapping, to paranormal possessions, etcetera etcetera ad nauseam. In 2018 however, director Ahn Gil-ho decided to refresh the K-drama landscape with more innovative ideas, creating Memories of the Alhambra - a fast-paced action series that blurs the lines between VR games and reality, set against the stunning backdrop of Granada, Spain.

From the very beginning of the show, we are thrown headfirst into the world of Jin-woo (Hyun Bin), the CEO of an investment company who is on a business trip to locate the creator of an intricate augmented reality game inspired by the medieval stories of the Alhambra Palace. He meets hostel owner Jung Hee-joo (Park Shin-hye), who is the sister of the game's creator, and both become entangled in a series of mysterious and life-endangering incidents, as the people around them become increasingly unable to distinguish between the world of the game and the actual world around them.

Based on the novel of the same name written by Jung Kyung-yoon which was later serialised into a web comic, directed by Park Joon-hwa, and produced on tvN (the cable channel responsible for many hit K-dramas), What's Wrong With Secretary Kim is a cheeky and irreverent drama that may seem a little silly on the surface, but surprisingly isn't your typical rom-com.

The story centres around the romance between Lee Young-joon (Park Seo-joon), the smart, talented but also extremely self-centered vice chairman of a major corporation, and his skillful but underappreciated secretary Kim Mi-so (played by Park Min-young). After 9 years of working under Young-joon and basically being responsible for his entire life - in one scene even acting as the messenger in his breakup with a girlfriend - the fatigue starts to take its toll on Mi-so as it hits her just how much of her life and personal identity she's sacrificed for the sake of pleasing her boss. After handing in her resignation, Young-joon is prompted to realise how helpless he is without Mi-So in his life, spurring him to do whatever he can to bring her back. Along the way, he starts to suspect that his feelings for Mi-so may go beyond simple boss-employee dynamics.

Peppered with wacky hijinks and also a surprisingly chilling backstory about child abduction, PTSD, and sibling rivalry, What's Wrong With Secretary Kim provides a thought-provoking and often-heartwrenching exploration into the nature of human relationships.

Adapted from the webcomic Kingdom of the Gods by famed scriptwriter Kim Eun-hee (who was behind the hit 2016 show Signal), Kingdom is a rollercoaster ride from beginning to end, with its second season also recently released on Netflix.

Launched in 2019 and part of an ever-growing list of Korean Netflix Originals, Kingdom has successfully tapped the zombie theme - somewhat outdated in Western media but still a fairly fresh concept in Korea (ignoring the monolith that was Train to Busan) - propelling the show into a direction previously unexplored in other dramas. The story takes place in the late 16th century Korea (known as Joseon at the time), and introduces us to Crown Prince Lee Chang, who is enmeshed in a royal conspiracy and locked in a power struggle with the ruthless Chief State Councillor Cho Hak-ju (the power-hungry father of the Lee Chang's stepmother, the Queen Consort).

Barred by Hak-ju and the Queen from seeing his ill father, the King of Joseon, the prince decides to take matters into his own hands and secretly begins to investigate the source of his father's illness. What he uncovers shocks him to the core (spoiler alert: it's a plague that brings back the dead as blood-thirsty monsters), and so begins his desperate attempts to prevent a zombie apocalypse from breaking out, and save the royal dynasty from being overthrown.

Don't overlook this drama as just a vehicle for high-concept action - each episode also thoroughly explores ideas of poverty, class discrimination and the inadequacies of modern Korean feudalism. 

Dreamers and fans of more mellow and introspective storylines, this is definitely the drama for you. A quirky, offbeat, and yet realistic rom-com, Because This Life Is Our First is pretty much a love letter to all millennials, masterfully exploring the confusion and trepidation we all feel when embarking on a new chapter in life and struggling to find their own space amidst the rising costs of urban living, and figuring out what it means to call a place 'home'.

The show revolves around Nam Se-hee (Lee Min-ki), who works in a tech start-up, and Yoon Ji-ho (Jung So-min), an overlooked rookie scriptwriter (of dramas!) trying to get a foothold in the industry. Se-hee is a bit of an emotionless perfectionist with an endless list of angry ex-roommates who have all been pushed away by his OCD behaviour and three cardinal rules for living with him.

On the lookout for a new roommate to help him chip away at his mortgage (space-wise, he only technically owns the hallway of his apartment so far), he decides to rent out a room to Ji-ho - in no particular order, hijinks, heartbreak, and hilarity ensue. In addition to Se-hee and Ji-ho, storylines around the relationships of two other couples also unfold, with the show exploring and redefining the concepts of self-love, relationships, and identity.

The second drama on our list to feature Park Seo-joon, the plot of Itaewon Class spins a full 180 degrees away from the rom-com world of What's Up With Secretary Kim, instead delving into simmering class tensions within South Korea, nepotism, and what it means for someone to create a fresh start in life after losing everything.

Itaewon Class revolves around the character Park Sae-ro-yi, a brash young man whose life is turned upside down when his father is killed in a drunk driving accident caused by the chaebol (Korean for heirs to family-owned conglomerates such as Samsung and Lotte) Jang Geun-won. Grieving and angry over the loss of his father, Sae-ro-yi attacks Geun-won and is imprisoned for three years.

After his release from jail, Sae-ro-yi opens up his restaurant DanBam in Itaewon - a popular and multicultural district in Seoul home to ex-pats and US military personnel. Alongside his manager, Jo Yi-seo (Kim Da-mi) and his staff, he aims to eventually expand DanBam into a franchise, with the goal of ultimately defeating Geun-won's food company Jangga Group.

Any casual K-drama viewer will immediately recognize the Reply series, although if you ask them to give you a quick run-down, they'll likely choose to focus more on the 'guess the husband' theme prevalent across all three shows, or the fact that all three shows recycle the same two actors for the parental figures. Each drama is so much more than these two tropes however - if you're a perpetual fan of the '90s (and late '80s), love to marathon shows like Friends when you're feeling nostalgic, and curious about what the late 20th century was like in a non-Western country, then this is the series for you.

The director behind this series Shin Won-ho was motivated to create dramas that could function as a love letter to the 80s and 90s - something that's definitely evident in every nook and cranny of the three dramas, from the clunky cassette tapes and pagers, to the accurately portrayed terrible fashion of those two decades. Each drama within this anthology predominantly takes place during its eponymous years (1997, 1994, and 1988), and revolves around a particular group of friends, with the timeline moving back and forth between their past and present selves.

Reply 1997 was the first drama that started it all (and the first major success of the channel tvN, before it started churning out shows like Crash Landing) and is set in, you guessed it, 1997. The drama centres around a female high school student Shi-won (played by Jung Eun-ji from the K-pop girl group Apink) and her five high school friends in Busan, with the plot swinging between their past as 18 year olds during the late 90s, and their present selves at a high school reunion in 2012.

Reply 1994 moves a little further back in time, showcasing the lives of six university students from various provincial areas in Korea, all living together at a boarding house in Seoul. Filmed only one year after its predecessor, Reply 1994 is a much more mature production, oscillating between the exploration of various pop culture events in Korea from 1994 onwards, and what it meant to be a young adult living on the brink of the Asian financial crisis.

Fans of the Reply series typically seem to favour the first two dramas, however also unanimously agree that Reply 1988 has the most cohesive and plot-driven narrative of the series. Set in a small neighbourhood in northern Seoul, the drama's main characters are five childhood friends, however unlike the two previous dramas in the series, 1988 takes a step back from its romance roots, choosing instead to focus more heavily on filial bonds and the love between tight-knit family and friendships during a bygone era.

In a time of great unrest and global uncertainty, Hospital Playlist is a drama that can offer viewers a valuable moment of comfort, providing a glimpse into a world that's both realistic and yet filled to the brim with warmth, wisdom, and love.

Launched in March 2020, Hospital Playlist features the ensemble cast of Jo Jung-seok, Yoo Yeon-seok (also in Reply 1994), Jung Kyung-ho, Kim Dae-myung, and Jeon Mi-do. They play five close friends in their late thirties who formed a lifelong bond after perservering through the same medical school, and are now specialising in their respective fields at Yulje Hospital. As per most medical shows, the drama does have its share of complicated jargon and pretty gross scenes (squeamish viewers, you've been warned), but compared to your standard Western medical TV series, this show is on an entirely different wavelength - not veering too heavily towards the salacious like Grey's Anatomy, nor the maverick as House, nor the comedy as Scrubs.

Created by the same director-writer duo responsible for the award-winning Reply series, Hospital Playlist explores the lives of five people who witness life and death on a daily basis, giving us viewers a peek into the frontline heroes who should never go unappreciated - seemingly ordinary people who happen to do extraordinary work in their daily lives. Definitely a drama to keep your eye on (literally), especially in light of the fact that a second season is also in the pipeline to air sometime within the next year.

If you're a big fan of small-town mysteries, love untangling conspiracy theories, or have a healthy skepticism of authority figures, then Save Me might be your K-drama version of a soulmate.

Adapted from the webcomic Out of the World and a psychological thriller through and through, Save Me is one hell of a crazy (and extremely creepy) ride from beginning to end. Set in Muji, a small sleepy town in the Korean countryside, the drama explores the insidious presence of a religious cult as it begins to pervade the minds and lives of the townspeople. Its enigmatic and sinister leader Father Baek (Jo Sung-ha) is at the centre of the cult's slow uprising, and for unknown reasons, he sets his sights on one specific girl in town, Sang-mi (Seo Ye-ji). From this point, Sang-mi's life devolves into a nightmare for the next few years, as everyone she knows and loves are either brainwashed or subjugated by the cult. In the midst of all this insanity, a close-knit group of four young men, led by Sang-hwan (Taecyeon) and Dong-chul (Woo Dohwan), who have long considered Sang-mi as their first love, are determined to rescue her from the heavy presence of Father Baek.

Though at times a little heavy-handed, Save Me is an insightful portrayal of the double-edged sword of faith/belief - explored through the cult's members who are blinded by their faith in their duplicitous leader, and the resilience of Sang-mi fervently believing in her friends' abilities to save her.

If you've been a long-time fan of A-list Korean actors Lee Min-ho and Kim Go-eun (pretty sure everyone here is all verrryyy familiar with Goblin), then The King: Eternal Monarch is hands-down for you (seriously, the stars must've aligned for this dream casting to happen).

Written by star writer Kim Eun-sook (who was behind the hit shows Descendants of the Sun and Goblin), and marking both actors' return to the small screen after nearly four years of absence, following Lee Min-ho's mandatory military service and Kim Go-eun focus on film projects, The King: Eternal Monarch is a fantasy romance drama that traverses dimensions and time. The plot centers around a door that acts as a barrier to two alternate universe versions of Korea. On one side is a the Kingdom of Corea, where Korea is still under monarchy rule and presided over by the emperor Lee Gon (Lee Min-ho); on the other side is the Korea that we know, where a detective named Jung Tae-eul (Kim Go-eun) who worked in violent crimes.

Part fantasy, part sci-fi, The King: Eternal Monarch follows Lee Gon's journey between the two parallel worlds, and his battle against demons both literal and figurative, in the struggle to close the door.

"Some mistakes cannot be erased", reads the tagline for Extracurricular which was released on Netflix in late April. Whilst high school K-dramas are by far and wide the norm in Korea (spanning back to the '90s with anthological series such as School and Sharp kickstarting the careers of relatively unknown rookie actors of those times), Extracurricular took the entertainment world by storm due to its unusual plot.

The show centres around high school student Oh Ji-soo (Kim Dong-hee) who, for the purposes of making extra money, works as a security service provider for an illegal prostitution ring that utilises girls from his school. A model student during the day, by night he commits to his side business without much thought or guilt. One day however, one of his classmates catches on to his secret, and begins to blackmail him. Soon Ji-soo starts to falter within the criminal world he willingly created, initiating an internal struggle of morals as he attempts to find a way out.

Prepare your tissues as this next show on our list can be a bit of a sobfest!

Hi Bye, Mama! is a moving story about motherhood, starring Kim Tae-hee as Cha Yu-ri, an expecting mother who unfortunately passes away during childbirth, leaving behind her grief-stricken husband, and a daughter who has never met her mother.

As the years pass by, Yu-ri's spirit remains rooted on Earth, and she finds herself stuck in a perpetual limbo, as she is forced to witness her loved ones' inability to move on from the tragedy, and unable to comfort them herself. Miraculously one day she finds herself physically returned to the mortal plane and given a literal second chance in life. Although uncertain of how or why this has happened, she is given advice by a shaman that she may be able to permanently return if she is able to regain her role as wife and mother to the family she left behind, within 49 days (typically in the Korean denomination of Buddhism, after someone dies their spirit lingers for 49 days). However, since the five years after her death, her husband Kang-hwa (Lee Kyu-hyung) has somewhat comes to terms with his loss, and is now remarried to Min-jung (Go Bo-kyul).

In a more stereotypical drama with less finesse, this would be a cut and dried plot about Yu-ri taking back the role usurped by the evil new wife/stepmother figure, however Hi Bye, Mama! plays its cards in a much more nuanced and sensitive manner, with Min-jung's character being portrayed sympathetically as a devoted mother to Yu-ri's daughter, Seo-woo, who views her as if she were her own child.

Whilst it has its moments of narrative weakness, overall Hi Bye, Mama! is a beautiful show without any villains, that serves as a reminder to its audience about the fleeting nature of living, and how important it is to spend time with our loved ones.

As a random fun fact, did you know that the actor who portrays Yu-ri's daughter Seo-woo is actually a boy?! This fact wasn't revealed to the public until mid-way through the series, surprisingly many viewers, and earning the actor, Seo Woo-jin, tons of respect for his realistic acting skills!

With a rating of 19.2% (according to Nielsen Korea), SKY Castle broke viewership records previously set by Reply 1988, attracting millions of viewers in Korea. In contrast to dramas usually popular amongst Korean (and international) audiences, this addictive series surprisingly doesn't feature any 'flower boys or girls', or popular idols and actors, but rather focuses on the parents of high school students.

Set in the eponymously titled SKY Castle, an upscale residential area, the drama is a satirical portrayal of the materialistic side of Korea's upper-class. SKY Castle revolves around a group of housewives who ruthlessly secure the successes of their families at the cost of destroying other people's lives, feuding and scheming against each other to further the careers of their husbands, and their attempts to propel their children to be the top students in Korea.

Affectionately known as the Korean version of the Time Traveler's Wife, the K-drama Tomorrow, With You tells the story of a time-taveler and his wife, as she unravels and comes to terms with the mysterious secret her husband harbours, and they navigate married life together.

Yoo So-joon (Lee Je-hoon) is an enigmatic real-estate CEO with chrono-manipulation skills, who uses subway trains to fuel his oscillating journey between past and present. His wife Song Ma-rin (Shin Min-ah) is an incredibly cheery and sassy amateur photographer, who is still a little hung up on her past achievements, believing herself to havealready passed her peak in life after her stint as a popular child actor when she was five.

The basic premise of the drama revolves around their relationship, however, contrary to standard rom-com plots, So-joon's marriage to Ma-rin is not based on love - rather, it's a calculated move he decided to take after witnessing his future-self dying, during one of his time travel stints, which pushes him to marry Ma-rin in order to avoid this fate. Despite their marriage being built on selfish pretenses, So-joon slowly begins to notice all the times when his wife is hurt due to his actions, and starts to become distressed.

Anyone who's ever been an avid fanboy or fangirl about literally anything will probably experience a lot of second-hand cringe watching Her Private Life. Based on a popular web novel Noona Fan Dot Com, this drama explores the strain of maintaining alter egos, and how our present selves can never be fully disentangled from our pasts (particularly when the past contains a lot of embarrassing regrets).

Sung Deok-mi (Park Min-young) is the chief curator at Cheum Museum of Art. However in her private life she's a fanatic fangirl of the K-pop idol group White Ocean, being particularly enamoured with Shi-an, one of its members. In a world where people expect fangirls to be predominantly crazy high schoolers, rather than adult women, she tries to protect her reputation as a competent career person, whilst also juggling her day-job with her role as manager of a White Ocean fansite. After her current boss resigns due to an embezzlement scandal, a new art director is installed at the museum - Ryan Gold (Kim Jae-wook), a standoffish retired artist with a prickly personality, liable to be ticked off by the smallest things.

Through a couple of twists and turns, a rumour gets churned out that Deok-mi is the secret girlfriend of the idol she's long fangirled over. Now, if anyone is familiar with the stereotypical depiction of fangirls, you'll understand how frightening they can be - in Korea, there is a term to describe these people, called sasaeng. Deok-mi beings to receive threats from Shi-an's fans, and in an uncharacteristic display of kindness, her boss Ryan suggests that she pretend to date him in order to ward them off. However a rival fansite manager goes one step further and lands a job as an intern in the same museum that Deok-mi and Ryan work at, in order to expose their fake relationship - leaving them with no choice but to continue their dating charade even at work.

Go Se-yeon (Kim Sa-rang) is a beautiful prosecutor, nicknamed the Wonder Woman of the legal industry, who is very much in her element and living her best life, alongside her childhood friend Cha Min (Ahn Se-ha), a humble, kindhearted, but unattractive successor to a cosmetics conglomerate. Both die under mysterious and separate circumstances, and find themselves given another chance at life by supernatural beings, who use soul-reviving beads in a magical 'abyss' to return Se-yeon and Cha Min's souls to Earth, but in different physical bodies.

Se-yeon (now played by Park Bo-young) is returns to life as lawyer at a private law firm, whilst Cha Min (now played by Ahn Hyo-seop) returns as an office manager at a law firm. The biggest difference after their resurrection is a reversal in how they look - the Abyss stones gift reincarnated bodies with appearances that reflect the person's soul. Due to her personality during her life, Se-yeon now has a plainer face and lifestyle, whilst Cha Min is now super attractive and popular with women.

After being revived, they attempt to uncover the circumstances behind their deaths alongside the investigating detective, Park Dong-cheol (Lee Shi-un), discovering a chilling trail of serial murders.

Love Alarm revolves around a disruptive piece of technology that allows any users to discover love through an app that gives notifications on whether someone within a ten meter radius has a crush on them (oh god, imagine how embarrassing it would be if this app existed in real life, in places like high schools where there's always a minefield of crushes...)

Adapted from a popular webtoon of the same name, the drama is banked on a cast of fresh young faces, led by the charismatic former child actress Kim So-hyun.

The third drama on our list to feature Yoo Yeon-seok (and second medical drama to have him in the cast) is Romantic Doctor, Teacher Kim. Don't be fooled by the word 'romantic', this one's geared more towards a philosophical concept of Romanticism, and the lofty personal morals of a man whose thinking is aligned with a more enlightened era.

Boo Yong-joo (Han Suk-kyu) is the only surgeon in South Korea with a triple-board ceritifcation in general surgery, cardiac surgery, and neurosurgery, who was once at the top of his field and headed Seoul's top medical centre, Geosan University Hospital. He resigns from his position after the traumatic death of a junior colleague, which he holds himself responsible for, isolating himself and moving to a small-town hospital named Doldam, where he becomes the Chief Surgeon.

Renaming himself Kim Sa-bu (sabu meaning 'master' in Korean), he discovers two young doctors, both with their own personal demons, and decides to personally guide them in their journeys to become better doctors, helping them reframe the way they think for the sake of their patients.

How many have you watched from this list? Prepare the popcorn and get ready for your K-drama adventure!

If you're missing Korea at the moment because of all these K-dramas you've been watching, read up on these to manage the FOMO!