I am a mission schooled Potato Eater—you can ask any of my many friends. I speak only one language—English. I drink only one tea—English. In school, I did well in only one subject—English. You get my drift.
So, when I reveal that I am currently watching Start-Up, a 16-part Korean drama that features Nam Joo Hyuk as a computer geek who knits and the beautiful Suzy Bae in the first role that brings out her acting range, I get a) incredulous stares and b) incredulous questions such as “YOU WATCH K DRAMAAAAA? YOU???”
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: as someone who loves to write, and a playwright at some point in my life, I love a well-devised drama, and K dramas often have great structure, clever plotting and, believe it or not, nuanced characters. If you still doubt this, please watch Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite and his even better movie, The Host.
Gen Xers grew up with great plots; we expect them, we respect them. We tried to diagrammatize the time lines that Marty McFly traveled in all three Back To The Future movies. We did the same with Terminator, until our brains exploded and we decided to just watch and not think. We enjoyed the fantasy of Star Wars, the long-lasting charm of Little House On The Prairie, the OTT drama of Dallas and Dynasty…
Let me tell you, watching these 7 K dramas will bring you back some of those feels. Here’s a list that should cover all the key genres for the K drama beginner, all available on Netflix Singapore. I recommend turning on the closed captioning but listening to the dialogue in Korean.
1. Coffee Prince (2007)
Suspend all disbelief to enjoy this 2007 series starring the very popular Gong Yoo (of Train To Busan fame). In the vein of Mulan, Go Eun Chan (Yoon Eun-hye) is a tomboy mistaken for a guy by the rich Han Gyul (Gong Yoo) who hires “him” to play his gay lover so as to fob off all the single women his grandmother wants him to meet.
Sole breadwinner in her household, Eun Chan jumps at the chance to hold down a steady job working at Coffee Prince, Han Gyul’s new artisanal coffee business. A love triangle—or quadrangle—complicates matters. But the two leads are so captivating in their portrayal that, even now, 13 years down the road, the drama still enjoys great popularity, and a 2020 lookback documentary at Coffee Prince was filmed.
The emotional turmoil experienced by Han Gyul, in particular, makes for compelling watching. Also, it’s terribly funny and winsome, thanks to a director who let the cast ad lib. So likeable, you might want to watch it twice. Like me.
2. Reply 1988 (2015)
This 2015 series is an obvious choice because the 1980s were our prime years. High waisted jeans, arcade games, Rubik’s cubes were the language we spoke. The series follows the antics of a group of teens: their strengths, their quirky charm (loads and loads of it, especially from the then-22 year old Park Bo Gum), their foibles, their awkward romances.
The flash-forward to them as adults leaves you guessing which youngsters end up together. Imagine The Breakfast Club as a series. Reply 1988 also has an original soundtrack with its own fandom.
3. Voice 1 (2017), 2 (2018) and 3 (2019)
Hardcore detective drama meets horror, these series will keep you up nights. Kang Kwon-Joo (Lee Ha Na) has supernatural hearing, caused by a childhood incident. This “gift” enables her to solve crimes by listening to sounds in the background and identifying locations with eerie accuracy.
She heads the “Golden Time” team, which takes emergency calls and tries to save lives within the hour, guided by the belief that the likelihood of a good outcome diminishes greatly after that golden hour. She teams up with Moo Jin-Hyuk (Lee Jin Wook), an unpredictable detective who lost his wife to a murderer.
All manner of horrific crime is explored in Voice, which was so popular it ran for three seasons and a fourth has just been confirmed. If you liked CSI, you’ll be blown away by this.
4. Dr Romantic 1 (2017) and 2 (2020)
Hospital dramas are always great fun. Dr Romantic is one of those dramas that combines fascinating weird medical conditions with politics, romance and plot twists. Back story: Boo Yong-Joo (the superb Han Suk-Kyu) was a brilliant doctor, triple board-certified. Framed for the death of a young patient, he leaves the prestigious Geosan University Hospital and reinvents himself as Master Kim at the small Doldam Hospital, which sees an extraordinary number of emergency cases.
Apart from being a medical genius at every turn, Master Kim also enjoys taking young doctors under his wing who, like him, have faced rejection and failure, and train them to be capable and confident physicians. Thoroughly and unabashedly feel-good underdog drama. So wholesome I watched season 1 with my 14 year old, who enjoyed it immensely.
5. Crash Landing On You (2019)
This lightweight comedy proved a heavyweight contender in the popularity stakes this year. Maybe it’s because COVID was such a horror show that the world needed a lighthearted comedy, and CLOY ticked all the boxes.
South Korean fashion entrepreneur Yoon Se-ri (Son Ye-jin) lands in a tree after a paragliding adventure goes awry. Thing is, the tree is located in North Korea. Army captain Ri Jyeong-Hyeok (Hyun Bin) happens to be patrolling the area and is unwillingly and unwittingly roped into hiding Se-ri until he can find a way to return her back home. Of course, they fall in love, even as she falls in love with North Korea’s rustic charm and simplicity, while trying to maintain her cover.
Criticized by some for portraying North Korea as even the slightest bit charming, CLOY nevertheless won hearts all over the region, and catapulted the bedimpled Hyun Bin into the kind of stardom that sees his face pasted on bus panels and Internet ads for shower heads. A romantic fantasy guaranteed to transport you beyond boring reality. Who doesn’t need that?
6. Guardian: The Lonely And Great God (2016)
You can’t have a K drama list without at least one fantasy entry. Korean folklore is as rich as any other culture, but it’s elevated to another level through K drama. In Guardian, the lead character Kim Shin (Gong Yoo) is a former military general murdered by his king who impaled him with a sword. He becomes a goblin, or dokkaebi, endowed with great powers and wealth but cursed to remain tethered to earth until his “bride” pulls out the sword. Ji Eun-Tak (Kim Go-eun) is the high schooler born to be the Goblin’s bride. It’s Supernatural with a storyline, basically.
What’s great about it is the writing by award-winning scriptwriter Kim Eun-sook, and the stellar acting by an really good-looking cast, which includes Lee Dong Wook (who plays the Grim Reaper, another character in folklore that sends the dead to their eternal place of rest) and Yoo In-na, who plays Sunny, the reincarnation of Kim Shin’s sister, the queen.
7. Kingdom 1 (2019) and 2 (2020)
What happens when zombie movies and period dramas collide? You get Kingdom, the best zombie series you have ever or will ever watch—yup, even better than The Walking Dead. First of all, Korean zombies are much cooler than zombies of other origins, and they move super fast. Second of all, set in the Joseon Dynasty, the whole idea of the living dead—smart living dead—is truly creepy.
The young Queen Consort is pregnant with the old King’s baby, but the King is very ill. Prince Lee Chang wants to but is not permitted to see his father. A zombie breakout takes place, and pairing up with the court physician, the prince begins to uncover the sinister truth behind what has happened to his father, while fending off a growing tribe of zombies. Fun, right?
There are only six episodes in each season, but the production value, stellar cast led by Ju Ji-Hoon as the prince and Bae Doona as the physician and tight storytelling made Kingdom an instant classic. For Gen Xers that take their horror seriously, this cannot be left unwatched.
