K-Dramas on Netflix: A Beginner's Guide to the Best Shows

The South Korean culture pop culture wave that has been taking over the world conquers the small screen

- By SOO KIM

Movies like Parasite and Minari have been critical and commercial international hits and K-pop artists like BTS have broken records around the world. Now its K-drama’s turn. According to Netflix, South Korean-made shows like Kingdom and It’s Okay to Not Be Okay are being watched on the streaming service in more than 30 languages, including English, German, French, Swedish, Hindi, Portuguese and Bahasa Indonesia.

K-dramas have been one of the driving forces of South Korea’s entertainment industry for decades. In recent years, their quality has improved tremendously with bigger budgets and more varied characters and storylines than ever before.

The international success of Korean TV actually predates the K-pop explosion. The word hallyu (“Korean wave”) was coined in the late 1990s. The trend picked up steam in 2003, when the K-drama Winter Sonata became hugely popular in Japan. This year, Netflix announced it would be investing nearly $500 million in Korean content “to add more variety and diversity to our growing slate.”

Here are five of the most compelling Korean shows on Netflix now.

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay

The critically acclaimed romantic drama was hailed as one of the “best international television shows of 2020” by The New York Times.