10 Essential K-Drama Shows That Belong on Every Fan's Bucket List
Dyah (pronounced Dee-yah) is a Senior Author at Collider, responsible for both writing and transcription duties. She joined the website in 2022 as a Resource Writer before stepping into her current role in April 2023. As a Senior Author, she writes Features and Lists covering TV, music, and movies, making her a true Jill of all trades. In addition to her writing, Dyah also serves as an interview transcriber, primarily for events such as San Diego Comic-Con, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival.
Dyah graduated from Satya Wacana Christian University in October 2019 with a Bachelor's degree in English Literature, concentrating on Creative Writing. On March 2026, Dyah graduated with Master's degree in English Literature Studies, with a thesis on intersectionality in postcolonial-feminist studies in Asian literary works.
Born and raised between Indonesia and Singapore, Dyah is no stranger to different cultures. She now resides in the small town of Kendal with her husband and four cats, where she spends her free time cooking or cycling.
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There’s no shortage of K-dramas to watch, but choosing what to put on next can be an arduous task. With stories spanning everything from slow-burn romances to coming-of-age dramas, K-dramas have something for everyone. No longer limited by geographical boundaries, the genre has also gained considerable popularity in Western markets.
This growing global audience has encouraged K-dramas to experiment with Western influences, expanding beyond traditional melodramas into thrillers, crime dramas, and more. Of course, some shows have become fan favorites and frequently pop up in recommendations. From one of Netflix’s most popular hits to series starring some of South Korea’s biggest stars, these are essential K-drama shows that belong on every fan’s bucket list.
10 'Crash Landing on You' (2019–2020)
If there's one K-drama that takes the biggest risk in reimagining North-South Korean relations, it's Crash Landing on You. The series follows heiress Yoon Se Ri (Son Ye Jin), whose paragliding accident lands her in North Korea, where she meets army captain Ri Jeong Hyeok (Hyun Bin).
Escaping North Korea is part of the plot, but the hook is watching Se Ri build relationships with people from a different world. From her friendship with the North Korean village women to Jeong Hyeok's fellow soldiers, the K-drama shows that people are alike, regardless of how their governments portray them. Despite its inaccuracies, the series finds common ground across a politically divided country.
9 'Squid Game' (2021–2025)
With debts piling up and no way to pay them off, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) takes a chance on a mysterious competition offering a life-changing cash prize. He joins 455 other players in a series of childhood games, including Red Light, Green Light and the dalgona challenge. There's just one catch: anyone who loses is shot dead, while the prize money keeps growing with every eliminated contestant.
Fans can't talk about K-drama masterpieces without bringing up Squid Game, especially after the grip it had on global audiences. The death game TV series takes something as innocent as childhood playground games and turns it into a disturbing look at capitalism, class inequality, and the lengths people will go to when they're desperate for money.
8 'The World of the Married' (2020)
Revenge takes on a whole different meaning in The World of the Married, where Ji Seon-u (Kim Hee-ae) refuses to let her cheating husband walk away without consequences. After discovering Lee Tae-oh's (Park Hae-joon) affair with Yeo Da-kyung (Han So-hee), Seon-u turns their divorce into a cold, calculated attempt to dismantle the life he built behind her back.
If there's one revenge K-drama that makes you want to see a cheater get what they deserve, it's this one. From inviting her husband's mistress to dinner to quietly securing his assets before the divorce, Seon-u's moves are deeply satisfying to watch. But her obsession with revenge also puts her family through the wringer, making the fallout just as gut-wrenching.
7 'Dream High' (2011–2012)
Kirin High is where six aspiring performers come to prove they have what it takes to become K-pop stars. Coming from different backgrounds, from wealthy students with industry connections to newcomers from the countryside, they all share the same dream of making it in music. But talent alone won't get them there, especially when everyone is fighting for the same spotlight.
With K-pop's global popularity, Dream High is worth watching for its look at the pressures of idol training and how privilege can shape someone's chances of making it. Not everyone plans to be a star, but the students' grit to pursue music despite their circumstances makes this coming-of-age K-drama all the more relatable. Featuring the biggest K-pop stars like Bae Suzy and IU, expect stellar performances along the way.
6 ‘Winter Sonata’ (2002)
Joon-sang (Bae Yong-jun) and Yoo-jin (Choi Ji-woo) are high school students from different backgrounds who fall in love. Just as their relationship begins to blossom, Joon-sang gets into a devastating accident that leaves him with no memory of his past. Presumed dead, he eventually resurfaces a decade later, but without any recollection of the life he once shared with Yoo-jin.
The ultimate K-drama of the turn of the millennium, Winter Sonata delivers an emotional roller coaster through Joon-sang's struggle to recover his memories. While his survival brings relief, watching him slowly uncover the past he shared with Yoo-jin is heartbreaking, especially as each revelation brings back painful memories.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Fandom Should You Join? Harry Potter · Lord of the Rings · Star Wars · Star Trek
Eight honest questions about how you actually are: what you put on when you need cheering up, how deep you go into the things you love, what you argue about, what you keep on your shelf. Answer them and we will tell you where you belong. Four of the biggest fandoms on earth are taking new members, and they could not be more different from one another.
⚡Harry Potter(Wizarding World)
💍Lord of the Rings(Middle-earth)
⚔️Star Wars(A Galaxy Far Away)
🖖Star Trek(The Final Frontier)
01
What do you put on when you need cheering up? Nobody is brave about this one.
02
How deep do you go into something you love? There is no shallow end here, only different deep ends.
03
What do you and your friends actually argue about? Every fandom has one argument it has been having for years.
04
How do you feel about a room full of strangers? Every one of these comes with a very big room.
05
Where would you rather spend a week? Pick on instinct rather than on budget.
06
What do you believe about people, mostly? All four of these stories have an answer, and they disagree.
07
What is actually on your shelf? Look over at it before you answer.
08
What do you actually want from a story? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your fandom.
Membership Confirmed Your Fandom Is…
Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you would be having within a week.
Harry Potter
You belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting you.
- You are drawn to belonging, which is why this fandom sorted itself into houses within about five minutes and has never stopped.
- This is the most social of the four, and the one most likely to know which type every single person in your life would be.
- The books are built to be reread rather than analysed, and rereading is exactly what you do with things you love.
- The new HBO series is bringing the whole thing back one book at a time, which means the arguments are about to start all over again.
Lord of the Rings
You belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture.
- You like the sense that the story you are reading is only the visible part of something enormous, which is precisely how Tolkien built it.
- This fandom takes adaptation seriously to a degree that other fandoms find slightly alarming, and it has good reasons for that.
- Your favourite thing about the books is probably the bit that is not action at all, which is the walking, the songs and the long goodbyes.
- Nobody here thinks heroism belongs to the powerful, and the whole story exists to make that argument.
Star Wars
You belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity.
- You want something you can share with absolutely everybody, from a six year old to a grandparent, and this is the only one on the list that really does that.
- Nobody argues like Star Wars fans argue, and the argument has been running since roughly 1980 with no sign of resolution.
- The pull here is sensory before it is narrative, since it is the sound design, the score and the look of a used and dented galaxy.
- You would be first in the queue, in costume, with strong opinions and a genuinely good time.
Star Trek
You belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done.
- You are an optimist in a way that is currently unfashionable, and this is the only major franchise still willing to say the future might be better.
- The best episodes are the ones where nobody fires anything, which is a sentence that makes perfect sense to this fandom and to nobody else.
- Starfleet Academy brought the franchise back to a classroom in 2026, which is appropriate, because Trek has always been a bit of a seminar.
- You would want the conversation afterwards more than the episode itself, and here you will always find somebody willing to have it.
5 'As You Stood By' (2025)
Childhood friends Eun-su (Jeon So-nee) and Hui-su (Lee You-mi) live very different lives. Eun-su works in retail, selling “apology jewelry” to people looking to make amends, while Hui-su is trapped in an abusive marriage. When Eun-su learns what her friend has been going through, she refuses to keep watching from the sidelines.
As You Stood By questions people who witness abuse but choose to stay out of it, allowing abusers to carry on without consequence. After everyone else fails to step in, Eun-su and Hui-su decide to take matters into their own hands. Their actions in this recent K-drama hit may come from a desire to protect Hui-su, but that doesn't spare either woman from having to face what they've done.
4 'The Manipulated' (2025)
Park Tae-jung (Ji Chang-wook) never expects a simple act of kindness to turn his life upside down. After returning a lost phone, the food delivery driver becomes the prime suspect in a murder. His time in prison takes an even darker turn when he meets another inmate who was also set up under similar circumstances. With nothing left to lose, Tae-jung decides to fight back.
The Manipulated hits uncomfortably close to home. In an age when personal information is constantly collected and shared, even the smallest details can become weapons in the wrong hands. A name, a photograph, or a leaked piece of data can be twisted to destroy someone's life, particularly when those targeted have little power to defend themselves.
3 'Boys Over Flowers' (2009)
Boys Over Flowers is the K-drama of the late 2000s. The story begins when Geum Jan-di (Koo Hye-sun), a working-class girl, receives a scholarship to the prestigious Shinhwa High School after preventing a student from taking his own life. Her sudden arrival puts her on the radar of F4, a clique of four of the most popular boys at school.
Boys Over Flowers is practically a time capsule of the tropes that would come to define modern K-dramas: the familiar rich-boy-meets-poor-girl formula, complete with antagonistic beginnings, extravagant love triangles, and plenty of melodramatic twists. The series rarely does anything halfway, but that's part of its appeal.
2 'When Life Gives You Tangerines' (2025)
Set on 1950s Jeju Island, When Life Gives You Tangerines follows two childhood sweethearts from very different worlds. Ae-sun (IU) is a headstrong dreamer with a passion for poetry, while Gwan-sik (Park Bo-gum) is a quiet, pragmatic young man who struggles to express his feelings. Despite their differences, they find comfort in each other.
Spanning seven decades, the series explores love through life's joys and cruelties. Ae-sun and Gwan-sik's youthfulness brings warmth, but their upbringing is marked by a turbulent period in Korean history. As the years pass, their story becomes a reminder that loving someone also means learning to live with the pain of eventually losing them.
1 'Kingdom' (2019–2020)
When a mysterious plague begins spreading across Joseon Korea, Crown Prince Lee Chang (Ju Ji-hoon) grows suspicious of the circumstances surrounding his father's sudden seclusion. His investigation leads to a shocking discovery: the dead are coming back to life, threatening the empire from within.
A Korean historical drama built around a zombie outbreak may sound like an unlikely combination, but Kingdom pulls it off. Its action scenes are brutal and leave nobody spared from being eaten. But the undead aren't Lee Chang's only problem. While he tries to contain the outbreak, powerful figures at court are busy fighting over the throne, leaving the kingdom vulnerable from both within and beyond its walls.
- Release Date
- 2019 - 2020-00-00
- Network
- Netflix
- Directors
- Kim Seong-hun, Park In-je
- Writers
- Kim Eun-hee
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.