From typical romances to the most innovative superhero show we’ve seen in years, 2023 was a great year for South Korean TV
Netflix
2023 has been a hell of a year for South Korean TV. We may not have had a megahit like Squid Game or All of Us Are Dead, but it feels like a year in which Hallyu has firmly embedded itself into the global cultural consciousness, with some of the biggest South Korean shows of the year spoken about in the same breath as Western hits.
We’ve seen major streamers start to challenge Netflix’s monopoly on K-dramas, we’ve hopefully stopped comparing every single new show to Squid Game, and we’ve been inundated with an incredible roster of shows that makes distilling them into 10 difficult, to say the least. We’ve not even included anything from Viki, the specialist K-drama streaming service, in order to keep things accessible, but honorable mentions should be given to Twinkling Watermelon and A Good Day to be a Dog. From one of the best superhero series we’ve ever seen to reminders that Korean horror remains the best, from typical romances to welcome subversions of the genre, 2023 is without a standout show because we had it so good all year.
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The Glory (Netflix)
Image Credit: Graphyoda/Netflix After the success of Little Women, The Glory was destined to be a hit. A bloody, bold revenge thriller that sees Moon Dong-eun (Song Hye-kyo) get brutal revenge on her childhood bullies, it’s everything that we love about K-thrillers: dark, bloody, and chock-full of twists. It’s a shame it was cut in two for no reason and you do sometimes have to work to root for Dong-eun as she straight up terrorizes people. But a top-tier cast and a wickedly dark tone make it an excellent addition to an already crowded list of great South Korean thrillers.
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Mask Girl (Netflix)
Image Credit: Jun Hea-sun/Netflix Mask Girl didn’t make the same waves as The Glory owing to a quiet release by Netflix. But it is an innovative and timely thriller that doesn’t deserve to fly under the radar. Its setup is typical: Lee Han-byeol’s Kim Mo-mi is an insecure office worker who secretly moonlights as a masked camgirl. It’s when her secret is revealed that the show shines. Through the use of two extra actors to play Mo-mi at different parts of her life (After School’s Nana and Go Hyun-jung), Mask Girl becomes a thrilling examination of what it means to be a woman in modern Korea.
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Divorce Attorney Shin (Netflix)
Image Credit: Netflix As a courtroom procedural, Divorce Attorney Shin is a competent legal drama. Its masterstroke, however, is casting Cho Seung-woo to play the titular Shin Sung-han, a musician who returns to South Korea to practice law. Before his star turn in Netflix’s Stranger, Cho took a break from acting to pursue musical theater and Divorce Attorney Shin takes full advantage of that, having him sing around the office, in the car, and in front of his enormous stereo in a way that humanizes Shin better than his oblique kindness ever could. It’s one reason why the series works best outside of the courtroom, especially when bringing Shin together with his best friends Jang Hyeong-geun (Kim Sung-kyun) and Jo Jeong-sik (Jung Moon-sung). You’re unlikely to see such a healthy and fun depiction of male friendship anywhere else this year.
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See You in My 19th Life (Netflix)
Image Credit: Netflix Based on the WEBTOON of the same name, See You in My 19th Life is another reminder that when it comes to time-bending tales, South Korea is king. Ban Ji-eum (Shin Hye-sun) has reincarnated nineteen times and finally tries to reconnect to her past and reunite with lost love Moon Seo-ha (Ahn Bo-hyun). As Ji-eum starts remembering more about her past lives, however, it becomes a proposition fraught with more danger than she can imagine.
It’s from Ji-eum’s otherworldly maturity — she’s technically a thousand years old — that the show draws its comedy, and Shin Hye-sun has made a habit of portraying interesting characters. In Ji-eum, she cuts a confident, dominating, and multi-faceted figure at odds with the prescriptive roles so many K-drama leads occupy. It makes for a startling dynamic between Ji-eum and Seo-ha that’s both fun and energetic. It’s a weird series, often baffling, but ultimately charming if you want a K-romance with a difference.
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Welcome to Samdal-ri (Netflix)
Image Credit: Netflix Speaking of Shin Hye-sun, she leads the latest iteration of a show South Korea has been making every year. If you’ve seen Hometown Cha Cha Cha, When the Weather is Fine, or Once Upon a Small Town, you’ve already got the gist of Welcome to Samdal-ri. Is that a bad thing? No way. We cannot get enough.
As with all these shows, it’s a setback in Seoul that sends world-renowned photographer Jo Sam-dal (Shin) hurtling back to the rural hometown she vowed to escape. There, she must reevaluate what she wants from life while reuniting with a past love who pushes her to see her erstwhile home in a new light. As a storyline, it’s not new at all. But through Shin Hye-sun’s rising star power the repetitive nature of these stories — which, again, we love — is less a rehash than a refinement, making Welcome to Samdal-ri not just the best version of this story, but one of the best romances of the year.
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Soundtrack #2 (Disney+)
Image Credit: Disney+ Hidden deep within Disney+, thanks to Disney’s refusal to promote its South Korean programming in the West, is this quiet drama about the rocky road to rekindling romance. It casts Keum Sae-rok as struggling pianist Do Hyun-seo, who catches a lucky break when the CEO of a popular YouTube channel, Ji Su-ho (Noh Sang-hyun), is forced into a period of rest and takes up piano lessons. The complication being that Su-ho is Hyun-seo’s ex, and now working with her new friend and obvious third in an impending love triangle, “K” (Son Jeong-hyuk). It’s not an unusual setup for a K-romance, but Soundtrack #2 manages to navigate the complexities of past loves becoming present with heart and soul in a six-episode package, making it feel like a surprisingly fresh take on the K-romance formula.
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Doona! (Netflix)
Image Credit: Kim Seung-wan/Netflix From the outside, Doona! looks like a typical K-romance, and in many ways it is (you can read our review here). It captures all the right clichés but, for the most part, turns them around in unexpected ways. It’s a series of two halves. The first, a startling examination of grief as Bae Suzy’s ailing K-pop idol, Lee Doo-na, retreats from the public eye only to land in a shared student house. There, she meets the earnest, somewhat clueless, and always showering (boy’s got abs) Lee Won-jun (Yang Se-jong). As their relationship develops, Doo-na’s world begins to turn again.
That bittersweet drama is somewhat derailed when Doona! falls into more typical K-romance tropes without any attempt to subvert them. What could have been a refreshingly bittersweet story of community and renewal gives way to something more clichéd. But, for its faults, Doona! is a timely and beautiful reminder of everything that makes K-romances great.
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Daily Dose of Sunshine (Netflix)
Image Credit: Yang Hae Sung/Netflix The hidden gem of the year. Unlike similar shows that examine disability and mental health in South Korea, Daily Dose of Sunshine is a sincere and sensitive look at mental illness — something all the more pertinent as suicide rates in South Korea increase. Transferred from internal medicine to psychiatry for being too nice to her patients, Jung Da-eun (Park Bo-young) slowly comes to understand the human side of mental health and grapples with her own wellbeing in the process.
Daily Dose of Sunshine doesn’t always get things right, not least when flatly reading definitions of mental illness. But more importantly it never treats these stories as inspiration, driving its narrative through a debunking of misconceptions and a recentering of the humanity of mental health. It’s at its very best when characters simply talk to each other and allow themselves to be vulnerable — all facilitated by a cast on top of its game who help weave it all into a heartfelt drama that can’t help but draw you in.
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Revenant (Disney+)
Image Credit: Disney+ Evoking a style of horror that is sadly out-of-fashion in the west, Revenant is the slowest of slow burns: a brooding ghost story with little interest in jumpscares focused instead on the human toll of lost souls, and the people they leave behind. Kim Tae-ri is already established as one of Korea’s best actors, but Revenant is a tour de force as she flips effortlessly between the frightened, defeated Gu San-yeong and the murderous spirit who possesses her. All while taciturn professor Yeom Hae-sang (Oh Jung-se) fights to save her — and conceal his own secrets. Most importantly, unlike so many horror shows nowadays, it remembers to be scary. It’s a cold, drawn-out, and genuinely creepy look at the human side of horror and if you like Dark Water or The Wailing, you’ll love Revenant. Check out our review here.
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Moving (Hulu, Disney+ outside of the U.S.)
Image Credit: Hulu Taking into account only the brutal superhero setpieces of Moving, it would still top this list. Outperforming Marvel and Star Wars in some territories, it’s evidence that “superhero fatigue” is easily cured by a well-told, transcendent, high-budget action series like this one.
It is, however, so much more than that. It’s set up as a meet cute between two superpowered pals, Kim Bong-seok (Lee Jung-ha) and Jang Hui-soo (Go Youn-jung), that’s interrupted by an American agent, “Frank” (Ryoo Seung-bum), intent on wiping out South Korea’s superpowered threats. By its end, Moving is a meditation on inequality in which our superpowered protagonists are ciphers for all those forced to live on the fringes of society. Driven by remarkable performances, especially by Ryu Seung-ryong and Han Hyo-joo, we come to understand these aren’t superheroes. They’re lonely people, isolated by their otherness, in desperate need of companionship.
Calling Moving a superhero show is unfair. It defies classification as just one thing, to the point that Moving isn’t just the best South Korean show of the year, it’s one of the best series of 2023 period.
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