The Best K-Dramas That Are Not on Netflix

Time​ Magazine

2 days ago

For better or worse, Netflix is the king of the global K-drama phenomenon. The streamer has invested billions of dollars in South Korean TV—even if the people really driving K-drama's success appear to see little of it—and in return, 80% of subscribers watch Korean content as the streamer garners a bevy of awards for its trouble. Yet, as Netflix rushes productions an focuses on sequels, sometimes prioritizing celebrity over quality, other streamers have swooped in to fight for their piece of the pie. Which might come as a surprise to some fans, with Disney and Prime Video consistently going minimal when it comes to marketing their K-dramas in the West. But if they won't tell you about the surprisingly great K-dramas that aren't on Netflix, by gum, we will.
Given the rate at which Disney spews out content, it's no surprise that Hulu and Disney+ dominate this list, though there's a surprising amount of platform diversity as Prime Video and even Tubi capitalize on our continuing enthusiasm for South Korean media. That said, one streamer that doesn't appear is Viki—a platform devoted entirely to Asian content. An argument could be made that it deserves its own list. However, a clutch of issues, including limited versatility regarding devices and a hard-to-justify cost for general viewers in a sea of streamers offering a broader array of content, makes it increasingly hard to recommend. We also excluded shows that, while not Netflix originals, are consistently available to watch on Netflix (most notably, My Mister and Reply 1988, both justifiably regarded as two of the finest K-dramas).
Those limitations don't even remotely dent our options though. The titles listed below evoke the K-drama at its best—exploring the depths of human emotion, the power of community, and the importance of truth—and, in many ways, a level of quality that's become harder to find.
Moving (Hulu; Disney+ outside the U.S.)
You can't discuss the best K-dramas without including Moving. At the height of superhero fatigue in 2023, Kang Full—adapting his 2015 webtoon—fashioned a fresh take by asking: What if super powers sucked? Gone is the tired exceptionalism of American superheroes as Kang places them on the fringes of society. A desperate, frightened group pursued by a government that perceives a threat in their otherness.
On a personal level, Moving's allegory of superpowers as disability—cemented by disabled superhero Lee Jae-man (Kim Sung-kyun)—is an overdue approach to the genre. From a broader K-drama perspective, its focus on bringing people together, on empathy, and on dispelling the perceived barriers of our differences—led by literal power couple Bong-seok (Lee Jung-ha) and Jang Hui-soo (Go Young-jang)—elevates it above the stumbling output of the MCU and Netflix's cynical attempt to capitalize on its success with the mostly horrid The Atypical Family. As I wrote in 2023, it's almost unfair to call Moving a superhero show. It's a category of television unto itself.
Revenant (Hulu; Disney+ outside the U.S.)
2023 was a big year for Disney and K-drama—and this list, it turns out. Before Moving became a word-of-mouth sensation, Revenant offered a tour through the greatest hits of South Korean folk horror to remind us what we're missing as western horror increasingly shifts to hastily-assembled franchises like the Conjuring universe and relying on jump scares alone. You know you're in good hands when Kim Tae-ri's on-screen. Revenant doubles that surety by casting her in dual roles, as the troubled yet sensitive Gu San-yeong and the demon possessing her. Together with folklore professor Yeom Hae-sang (Oh Jung-se), San-yeong comes to understand both her own grief and the trauma death leaves behind as Revenant embraces the quiet, brooding dread that makes Korean horror genuinely unnerving. Masterly performances and production make Revenant an unnerving gem. The sympathetic eye it casts over lost souls, however, is what truly makes it an unusual joy.
Light Shop (Hulu; Disney+ outside the U.S.)
Speaking of sympathetic horror, Kang Full continues his reimagining of well-trodden genres as explorations of marginalization in 2024's Light Shop. Ju Ji-hoon and Park Bo-young lead an ensemble cast as Kang proposes that the fear with which we regard the creatures that populate our horror stories is really a manifestation of our own unchallenged biases. It's not as original an approach as Moving, but if that series is a bombastic allegory for the treatment of those who exist outside of perceived norms, then Light Shop is a quieter rejection of the othering of those we don't immediately understand. In a murky, haunted alley through which both the living and dead must travel, Jung Won-young (Ju) and his titular light shop serve as a beacon that literally shines a light on how unremoved we are from the spirits. The only difference between us and these creatures we fear, Kang suggests, is that we get to leave the alley once we exit Jung's sanctuary.
Marry My Husband (Prime Video)
Amazon has been quietly outstanding with its infrequent Korean originals. No Gain No Love and the recent Good Boy are a measure of that. But it's Prime Video's time-travel revenge-romance that, despite its crummy title, is most notable. In a hackneyed genre in K-drama, Marry My Husband blends a welcome self-awareness of its own goofiness with a rare modern deployment of a She's All That makeover to overcome the usual K-drama cliches where it counts.
When Kang Ji-won (Park Min-young) discovers her layabout husband Park Min-hwan (Lee Yu-kyun) in bed with her best friend Jeong Su-min (Song Ha-yoon), plotting what to do when Ji-won finally succumbs to the terminal cancer she's been battling, Min-hwan murders her. At the same moment, she transports into her past self—complete with thick-rimmed glasses and a ponytail so you know she's not secretly a smokeshow—from where she plans to visit her cancer upon Su-min and carve a better life after ruining her and Min-hwan by inciting the stress that made her sick in them. That might sound like a typically sadistic revenge thriller a la The Glory. Marry My Husband, however, is surprisingly subtle in exploring and ultimately challenging Ji-won's twisting morals, making her a far more sympathetic protagonist, and is relatively sensitive around the subject of health. It also has a great cat. The surest sign of Marry My Husband's quality is that it already has a Japanese remake, released on Prime Video in June.
Blood Free (Hulu; Disney+ outside the U.S.)
Ju Ji-hoon turns up again in Lee Soo-yeon's near-future Korea dominated by AI chatbots and synthetic meat. CEO Yun Ja-yu (Han Hyo-joo) navigates the political and corporate pitfalls of her synthesized flesh empire, protected (and kind of turned on) by superman bodyguard Woo Chae-woon (Ju), a former naval officer with his own mysteries to solve—including the mystery of his cold heart. As the controversy around her cheap, 'blood free' meat threatens corporate and political interests across South Korea and puts Yun's life in constant danger, both are forced closer together with both romantic and tragic consequences. Lee is the mind behind the criminally underrated Stranger (which you can find, yes, on Netflix). Her output since, including Stranger's second season, has been tepid. But in Blood Free, she rediscovers some of the chemistry and fun that made her crime caper so watchable. Whether all that fun is deliberate on Lee's part isn't always clear, but Blood Free is a goofy and surprisingly watchable sci-fi bodyguard thriller.
Live (Tubi, CJ ENM Selects—accessible via Prime Video, including a 7-day free trial)
K-dramas have a habit of lionizing the police without nuance, but Live presents a more complex picture as it follows young people exiting a punitive job market to train as police officers—led by Bae Sung-woo as their troubled instructor Oh Yang-chon. The first half-hour of Live is genuinely awful, so be warned there is, not unusually for K-dramas, a rough patch to endure before the series hits its stride. Once it does, through a relatively honest look at both the fallibility of authority and the moral ramifications of power, somehow paired with all the usual trappings of K-drama as the show interrupts its procedural with a not always believable romance subplot with the patented K-drama melodrama that goes with it, Live becomes the ne plus ultra of Korean police dramas (that aren't on Netflix) and one of the most underrated K-dramas of the past decade.
Rookie Cops (Hulu; Disney+ outside the U.S.)
If that all sounds a bit too high-brow, Disney's second Korean original 2022's Rookie Cops eschews all sense of realism for a more typical K-drama approach (including an out-of-nowhere confirmation of the afterlife). In the bright and breezy romance, Ko Eun-kang (Chae Soo-bin) joins Police University—which does not sound like a real thing—to follow her first love, only to discover once she arrives that there is, in fact, more than one boy in the world. If Live's romantic subplot felt tacked on, presumably under the duress of K-drama expectations, here the police plot is simply a vehicle to smush K-drama characters' faces together. That might sound like a knock, but Rookie Cops is a surprisingly spry police procedural even if that aspect is not the main attraction (so to speak). It might not have much to actually say about the police, but it sure is fun.
Argon (Tubi, CJ ENM Selects—accessible via Prime Video, including a 7-day free trial)
It's a rare K-drama that remains timely beyond its initial run—if at all. But in a post-truth world, and as journalism faces unprecedented challenges under corporate interference and political malfeasance across the globe, Kim Ju-hyeok's final drama before his untimely death in 2017 isn't just a reminder of how transformative good K-drama can feel, but also a peek into what now feels like an idealized rendition of the profession. HBC intern Lee Yeon-hwa (Chun Woo-hee) is re-assigned to Kim Baek-jin (Kim) and his struggling investigative program, Argon. Kim's dedication to the truth has left his career stalled, as he butts heads with his network's corrupt higher-ups and their big-city friends. But when a coveted lead anchor role opens in the network, and as he slowly trains up the idealistic Yeon-hwa as a moral successor, he starts to understand how profoundly sick his city, and his network, has become. If you're getting whiffs of 2015's Spotlight, that's not an accident. In another drama, Yeon-hwa and Baek-jin's relationship would flourish into a problematic workplace romance. Argon, a mostly romance-free series, isn't interested in that, letting Chun and Kim anchor a rare Korean glimpse of journalists as anything other than unscrupulous, which both tragically caps Kim's career and speaks of Chun's to come.
Soundtrack #2 (Disney+)
We started with the bombastic in Moving; let's end with something quieter. 'Hidden gem' is an overused term when media is more accessible than ever—though streamers' unwillingness to market non-English media in the U.S. does lend a bit more credence to the term. Buried deep in Disney+'s catalogue, and unluckily releasing in the wake of Moving, Soundtrack #2 (2023) is a stand-alone sequel series that improves on its predecessor, 2022's Soundtrack #1, in every way. A sweet, tender story about the rocky road to rekindling romance sees struggling music-lover Do Hyun-seo (Keum Sae-rok) finding her way to doing what she loves—in more ways than one—when she's hired as a piano tutor for a YouTube mogul who happens to be her ex-boyfriend, Ji Su-ho (Noh Sang-hyun). That is, if their history doesn't get in the way. This is a K-drama, so of course their history is going to get in the way. Soundtrack #2 squeezes a lot of heart into its six-episode run and, though it may not be the most original K-drama, it serves as a perfect primer for those discovering more of what K-dramas have to offer.