K-Romance Comes to Netflix

Thrillers like Squid Game were just the beginning. U.S. audiences are now picking up on several K-comedies and dramas about matters of the heart

-  SOO KIM

FOLLOWING THE MASSIVE SUCCESS of last year's South Korean survival thriller Squid Game, in late February Netflix followed up with another South Korean-produced hit, the meet-cute comedy Business Proposal. From late March to early April, the show was Netflix's top non-English language program and has been in the streaming service's top 10 globally since its premiere.

While horror and thriller series (such as All of Us Are Dead, Kingdom and Hellbound) have tended to be South Korea's biggest overseas TV hits, Business Proposal is the first rom-com to score big with foreign audiences. Based on a South Korean webtoon of the same name, the series follows the unexpected romance that unfolds after Ha-ri (played by Kim Se-jeong from the South Korean hit The Uncanny Counter) agrees to help her best friend out by taking the friend's place for an unwanted blind date. Things get complicated when Ha-ri realizes the surprisingly handsome blind date, Tae-moo (played by Ahn Hyo-seop from the comedy-fantasy Abyss and the melodrama Dr. Romantic) is actually the CEO of the company she works for.

While it is the biggest of Netflix's new South Korean shows, Business Proposal is far from the only one. Here are seven more comedies and dramas now on the streamer.

1 Crashing Landing on You

The daughter of a wealthy “chaebol” (a family conglomerate) and head of a luxury beauty brand, played by Son Ye-jin, finds herself in unexpected territory in Crash Landing on You. A paragliding experiment gone wrong lands her across the border in North Korea, where she runs into the captain of a North Korean army unit (played by Hyun Bin). The soldier discovers her stranded in a tree and the pair fall in love as he risks his life to smuggle her back to South Korea.