Starting with Kingdom and Love Alarm in 2019, Netflix has released dozens of original most popular K-dramas of 2024, was broadcast in South Korea and streamed in several countries on Netflix. That said, while licensed titles still make for a significant portion of Netflix’s K-drama catalog, the streamer is releasing more original Korean content every year.
Netflix’s original K-dramas are usually limited series with a relatively short number of episodes compared to the usual 16 episodes of a traditional broadcast K-drama. However, many of Netflix’s K-drama webseries have gotten more than one season, including but not limited to Sweet Home and Squid Game. Some of the most prominent Korean actors, writers, and directors have collaborated with the streaming giant recently, which is why Netflix has so many great original K-dramas.
10 Hidden Gem K-Dramas Everyone Should Watch At Least Once
Hidden gem K-dramas may not be as widely talked about, but they contain the best qualities of more well-known series, making them essential viewing.
20 Heavenly Ever After
(2025)
Heavenly Ever After takes on a very unique concept for a K-drama - or for any drama, for that matter. While there are a lot of K-dramas that deal with death or with the chance to live life again, most of those dramas involve the appearance of a Grim Reaper character on Earth or with some sort of time travel reset to explore themes of love, revenge, or a karmic cycle. Heavenly Ever After is neither of those.
Instead, it explores what happens when a couple meets again in heaven. While the woman has chosen to keep her elderly appearance from late in life, the man has been in heaven long before her, and he chose to regain his appearance from his thirties. It makes them appear as though they were at different stages in their life, but as they reconnect in the afterlife, the series explores what their lives were like before and what their afterlife can be. It also explores just what gave their lives meaning.
19 My First First Love
(2019)
My First First Love
- Release Date
- 2019 - 2019-00-00
- Network
- Netflix
- Directors
- Oh Jin-seok
- Writers
- Kim Ran
WHERE TO WATCH
My First First Love is unique among the K-drama originals from Netflix in that it actually rebooted an existing K-drama from a few years earlier called My First Time. Most of Netflix’s original K-dramas have not remade existing series. It might not be one of the streamer’s award-winners in South Korea, but it is a great tale of complicated relationships. While many K-dramas of the modern day feature romance as a sub-plot to other goings-on, My First First Love is all about romance, as the title would suggest.
The series follows a group of young people, mostly university students, who end up friends or living together, and how their lives intersect. While one of the young men has been friends with one of the young women for most of his life, the two are not romantic, but their bond tends to get in the middle of their other relationships as they fall in and out of love. They and their friends experience love and heartbreak and have to evaluate their relationships.
My First First Love is the rare Netflix K-drama to get more than one season. It gives the series the chance to explore how love changes and what people learn about the emotion as they grow up.
18 Celebrity
(2023)
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Celebrity is a South Korean drama-thriller series created for Netflix. The show follows Seo Ah-ri, a woman who enjoyed a wealthy childhood, only to lose it all after an incident caused her family to go into poverty. Years later, now working as a door-to-door cosmetics salesperson, a chance encounter with a former friend begins to lure her into the world of celebrity influencer culture on social media. However, Seo Ah-ri quickly discovers the world is more intense and dangerous than she initially expected.
- Seasons
- 1
- Streaming Service(s)
- Netflix
After a couple of memorable ing roles in It’s Okay to Not Be Okay and Sweet Home, Park Gyu-young got to lead her own Netflix series Celebrity. The series explores the impact of social media on mental health and the dangers of celebrity culture, particularly at a time when there are so many social media influencers. Park Gyu-young gives one of her best performances on this show, and while Celebrity isn’t groundbreaking, it does a good job of tackling a serious issue without coming off as preachy. It’s one of Netflix’s hidden gem K-dramas.
17 The Trunk
(2024)
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The Trunk, releasing on November 29, 2024, follows the mysterious discovery of a trunk on the shoreline, unveiling a hidden marriage service and the peculiar relationship of a couple intertwined in its secrets.
The Trunk was Gong Yoo’s long-awaited comeback almost three years after his previous Netflix show, The Silent Sea. While seeing Gong Yoo in a leading role again after so long was exciting, The Trunk did not live up to the expectations and wasn’t that different from other psychological thrillers. It is a slow-burn show with a lot of mysteries carried by the performances of its lead actors. Gong Yoo and Seo Hyun-jin lead The Trunk’s cast as two people who signed up for a fake marriage, a classic K-drama trope that gets a new spin on this show.
16 A Killer Paradox
(2024)
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Thrillers and crime K-dramas have increased in popularity since 2020, and A Killer Paradox is certainly evidence of that. The series leaves the audience on the edge of their seat, but it also gets the audience thinking about morality and whether or not the ends justify the means.
The series follows a young man who accidentally kills someone. A convenience store clerk who was recently discharged from the military defends himself when a customer attacks him, and the customer turns out to have been a serial killer. The man finds himself under investigation for murder, but he also finds himself capable of using his skills to get rid of those who would harm society, and trying to stay ahead of the investigations around him.
Fans of the American thriller Dexter will find much to love here, though the show does not delve into the darkness of a serial killer in the same way.
A Killer Paradox was nominated for three Blue Dragon Series Awards and three Baeksang Arts Awards in South Korea.
15 Parasyte: The Grey
(2024)
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Parasyte: The Grey
- Release Date
- 2024 - 2024-00-00
- Directors
- Yeon Sang Ho
- Writers
- Ryu Yong Jae, Yeon Sang Ho
Cast
Jeon So Nee-
Koo Kyo Hwan
WHERE TO WATCH
"Parasyte: The Grey" imagines a world where alien parasites begin taking over human hosts, blending horror with psychological drama. The story follows a young man who forms a symbiotic relationship with his alien parasite, leading to a morally complex journey as they confront other parasites threatening humanity. This adaptation adds a unique twist, focusing on the grey areas of survival, identity, and the essence of being human.
- Main Genre
- Sci-Fi
- Creator(s)
- Yeon Sang Ho
- Seasons
- 1
- Streaming Service(s)
- Netflix
Apart from One Piece, Netflix’s live-action anime adaptations don’t have the best of reputations. Fortunately, Parasite: The Grey was from a traditional anime adaptation. Instead of retelling the story of the Parasyte manga and using the same characters from the popular anime series, Parasite: The Grey told an original story set in that same world. Whereas most of Parasyte was set in Tokyo, Japan, Parasite: The Grey took place in Seoul, South Korea, meaning the Netflix show was following new characters in a different setting. It was a fresh, creative, and well-executed take on the world of Parasyte.
14 Gyeongseong Creature
(2023-2024)
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Gyeongseong Creature
- Release Date
- December 22, 2023
- Directors
- Chung Dong-yoon, Roh Young-sub
- Writers
- Kang Eun-kyung
Cast
-
Park Seo-joon
Han So-hee
WHERE TO WATCH
Gyeongseong Creature is an action horror-thriller television series that Kang Eun-kyung and Chung Dong-yoon created for Netflix. Set in 1945 during the Japanese occupation of Korea, Jang Tae-Sang, a wealthy informant in the heart of Gyeongseong, and Yoon Chae-ok, a highly skilled investigator, come together to face a literal creature created from the cumulative greed of humanity.
- Creator(s)
- Kang Eun-kyung, Chung Dong-yoon
- Seasons
- 2
- Streaming Service(s)
- Netflix
Starring Park Seo-joon and Han So-hee, Gyeongseong Creature has two seasons that might be better perceived as two different shows entirely. While the first season is a historical drama set in the final days of Japan’s occupation of Korea that adds a sci-fi twist to the true, horrifying story of Unit 731, season 2 brings Gyeongseong Creature to modern-day Seoul. The idea of having a 79-year time jump between seasons was interesting, but Gyeongseong Creature didn’t have much else to offer. The chemistry between Park Seo-joon and Han So-hee is strong, but their characters never live up to it.
13 Hellbound
(2021-2024)
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Netflix's Hellbound is a Korean Drama and Dark Fantasy series that is directed by Yeon Sang-ho and based on his graphic novel, The Hellbound Volume 1. The series takes place in a modern fantastical version of Korea in which strange creatures pick and choose individuals to send to Hell.
One of Netflix’s first original K-drama hits, Hellbound came out around a year after Sweet Home and delivered a similar yet equally interesting horror story with a lot of action and terrifying creatures. Exploring themes of religion and the social contract, Hellbound raised the question of what would happen if “angels of death” suddenly started appearing to sentence people to hell. Hellbound is full of mystery boxes and never gives the viewer all the answers they are looking for. However, this only adds to the show’s premise, which is how humans react to something they can’t understand or rationalize.
12 Daily Dose Of Sunshine
(2023)
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Daily Dose of Sunshine
- Release Date
- 2023 - 2023-00-00
- Network
- Netflix
- Directors
- JQ Lee
- Writers
- Lee Nam-kyu
WHERE TO WATCH
Daily Dose of Sunshine has drawn a lot of comparisons to one of the most beloved K-dramas, It’s Okay To Not Be Okay. Both series feature explorations of mental health in the modern day and shine a light on neurodivergence as well. They also both do so with great animated sequences and visual effects in the middle of their live-action storylines.
Daily Dose of Sunshine is set primarily in a psychiatric ward, following the professional and personal life of a nurse who transfers to the unit of the hospital. As she cares for patients and provides them with comfort, however, she also struggles with depression and becomes a patient herself. Her storyline provides a great way to explore the toll taken on those who work in fields dealing directly with mental health, but it also allows for a great exploration of just how depression takes hold.
Though some of the scenes in the series are harder to watch than others, Daily Dose of Sunshine is, ultimately, a comedy, and features an uplifting tale for the audience.
Daily Dose of Sunshine won two Blue Dragon Series Awards and was nominated for three Baeksang Arts Awards in South Korea.
11 The Frog
(2024)
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A mysterious woman arrives at a rental home and turns the owner's life upside-down.
- Seasons
- 1
- Main Genre
- Drama
If Song Kang is the Son of Netflix, then Go Min-si is the Daughter of Netflix. In the same year which she reprised her role as Lee Eun-yu for Sweet Home's third and final season, Go Min-si starred in her own Netflix original series, The Frog. A psychological thriller about how trauma can define one's life forever, The Frog followed two different stories that eventually intersected. Go Min-si arguably gives the best performance of her career in The Frog as a woman who has no remorse over her actions and will do whatever it takes to get what she wants.
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