When you think of the best K-dramas, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, Under the Queen’s Umbrella, and Little Women may be on your radar. But there’s also a rich K-drama history to explore. To discuss some of the best K-dramas ever, we need to go back into the past to see how we got here.
Lasting just one episode with a run time of 15 minutes, 1956’s The Gates of Heaven was South Korea’s first Korean drama. In the following decades, Korean creatives would produce K-dramas that were loved at home, but were a niche market outside of South Korea and some Asian countries. But in the aughts, streaming sites like Viki (and the late, great Dramafever) changed all that by making Korean (and other Asian) content accessible to viewers by providing subtitles in multiple languages. Today, we have mainstream platforms like Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Prime Video, and Apple TV+ that have jumped on the K-drama bandwagon, airing (and in some cases producing) Korean content.
Of those streamers, Netflix is the most ubiquitous. In 2023, the streaming site invested $2.5 billion – doubling its previous financing of new K-content– which includes popular reality shows like the Physical 100 franchise and Culinary Class Wars. Netflix is getting a lot of K-dramas in 2025, including the highly anticipated IU and Park Bo-gum drama, When Life Gives You Tangerines.
Growing up in the United States, I didn’t watch all the shows my cousins were tuning into every week in Seoul, because it wasn’t possible back then. There was no Netflix for streaming. Rather, I watched whatever my parents rented from the local Korean grocer, who had bookcases filled with grainy (and most likely illegally-dubbed) tapes that we rewatched before returning. The oldest K-drama I recall enjoying was Love and Ambition, even though we didn’t see it for a decade after its 1987 release. Helmed by Kim Soo-hyun — the writer, not the actor — the 96-episode (!) series was immensely popular in Korea, with a cast that included future Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung (Minari).
Each of us has our own favorite K-dramas that are informed by our own personal experiences (and access). For instance, I was never able to get my hands on South Korea’s early dramas like Death Row Prisoner, which premiered in 1956. Therefore, my picks are influenced by what I’ve seen, which are primarily shows from 2000 onward.
In 2025, we can expect to see a slew of new dramas starring A-list actors like the aforementioned IU and Park Bo-gum, Kim Soo-hyun (Knock-off, Disney+), Kim Go-eun (The Price of Confession, Netflix), Lee Dong-wook (The Divorce Insurance, Prime Video), the dream-team of Gong Yoo and Song Hye-kyo (Slowly and Intensely, Netflix) and Lee Jung-jae (Squid Game 3, Netflix).
Still, I wanted to have an expert weigh in on what makes for a memorable and great K-drama. “By showing multiple relationships and the complex and interwoven lives that are filled with tension, conflict [and the] memories they create, a great K-drama gives us multidimensional characters and stories to which viewers can relate,” says Hye Jin Lee, a professor at the University of Southern California who teaches a class on Korean pop culture. “A great K-drama understands that everyone has a story and gives all the characters a chance to share them with the viewers.”
