annashay 
Romantic interests lock eyes in a long pause while the musical score swells. A billionaire man has everything money can buy, except for the plucky, down-on-her-luck love of his life. Perhaps a traumatic childhood incident connects a pair of destined soulmates, or a conflicted antihero embarks on a quest for revenge. No matter what, love always triumphs — unless revenge does.
K-Dramas have developed a general reputation for their engrossing atmospheres. Although the majority have prevalent stylistic hallmarks, especially the dramas familiar to international streaming audiences, Korea’s television industry isn’t solely defined by its reliable tropes. And as much as we love, and sometimes need to, indulge in some healthy escapism, we also need to see our grounded, everyday experiences reflected onscreen. Here are the 10 most realistic K-Dramas, ranked.
10
‘When the Camellia Blooms’
Starring: Gong Hyo-jin, Kang Ha-neul, Kim Ji-seok
Accustomed to abandonment, rejection, and overall bad luck, Oh Dong-baek (Gong Hyo-jin) hopes moving to the seaside town of Ongsan will shake off the shadows of her past. But Ongsan’s tight-knit community doesn’t immediately welcome a quiet outsider, especially a 30-something single mother whose bar, the Camellia, unintentionally diverts attention away from the neighborhood’s other small businesses. Gradually, circumstances converge to draw Dong-baek out of her reclusive shell, including the threat posed by a potential serial killer and the affections of Hwang Yong-sik (Kang Ha-neul), Ongsan’s effervescent and earnest police officer.
Although evading a murderer isn’t the most relatable concept, 2019’s When the Camellia Blooms doesn’t concern itself with fulfilling tropes. Instead, it challenges the pervasive societal biases against working-class single mothers, and in so doing, represents the subtle, intersecting intricacies of small-town dynamics. Healthy and uplifting relationships grow out of conversation, empathy, and time. Despite a rocky start full of misunderstandings on both sides, Dong-baek integrates herself into Ongsan’s community and develops complex bonds with her fellow middle-aged women. The slow-burn romance between Dong-baek and Yong-sik, meanwhile, unspools with refreshing authenticity, as does our lonely, hard-working, and sacrificial heroine’s growth from introverted passivity into assured self-sufficiency.
9
‘Moment at Eighteen’
Starring: Ong Seong-wu, Kim Hyang-gi, Shin Seung-ho
Burned by the ostracization and false accusations he endured at his previous high school, 18-year-old transfer student Choi Joon-woo (Ong Seong-wu) keeps to himself. His situation at Cheonbong High School doesn’t seem any better, despite the efforts of a few supportive teachers and his kind-hearted single mother. However, Joon-woo slowly opens up to a handful of classmates facing similar challenges; together, they forge enough space to explore their identities and aspirations, seize the moment, and find joy before their fleeting teenage moments are gone forever.
Unlike the endless array of teen soap operas fueled by star-crossed love triangles, Moment at Eighteen taps into the adolescent experience in all its permutations — including the euphoria of first love, how social cliques can cause traumatizing isolation, and the courageous vulnerability required to be yourself when you aren’t entirely secure in your identity. Between bullying, socioeconomic disparity, familial abuse, and the intensely competitive Korean educational system, almost every teenager attending Cheonbong forcibly bears the weight of early maturity. But even though Moment at Eighteen is a heavier series than its high school drama counterparts, its focus on relatability over glamorization makes for a more rewarding narrative experience. Moment at Eighteen approaches our youthful years — hell on earth for some, cherished memories for others, and defining for all — with tenderness and bittersweet sincerity.
8
‘When the Weather Is Fine’
Starring: Park Min-young, Seo Kang-joon, Moon Jeong-hee
Mok Hae-won (Park Min-young) visits her small hometown every winter, but this year is different. When the cello instructor arrives at Bookhyun Village, red suitcase in hand, she has just uprooted her professional life in Seoul. Needing time and privacy to figure out her next steps, Hae-won hunkers down at her grandmother’s inn even though the reserved young woman doesn’t have a close relationship with her remaining family. As the winter months unfold, Hae-won reunites with her old classmate Im Eun-seob (Seo Kang-joon), now a local bookstore owner who, like Hae-won, holds everyone at arms’ length — except, that is, for Hae-won, his unrequited childhood crush.
Like life itself, When the Weather Is Fine is both incredibly painful and breathtakingly poignant. Character-focused, introspective, and unhurried, this series embraces both the tranquil beauty of the mundane and the cost of being human, set against a snowy mountain backdrop that vascillates between cozy and as bitingly harsh as a chill winter wind. Hae-won and Eun-seob might be made for one another, but the meditative quality of their romance takes away none of its profundity. You won’t find any grand gestures or melodramatic tropes here — just a tale about piercing loneliness, grief, domestic abuse, and how two haunted people can gently, slowly heal their wounded souls enough to find inner peace.
7
‘Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha’
Starring: Shin Min-a, Kim Seon-ho, Lee Sang-yi
Chafing against an exploitative and immoral healthcare system, dentist Yoon Hye-jin (Shin Min-a) abandons Seoul and opens an independent practice in Gongjin, the same picturesque coastal village she vacationed in with her late mother. It isn’t the easiest transition, accustomed as she is to the hustle-and-bustle of overcrowded city life and its disconnected anonymity. A fish out of water whose expensive high heels clash with Gongjin’s working-class community, it’s a good thing Hye-jin has Hong Du-sik (Kim Seon-ho), the town’s resident handyman, on her side.
Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha takes a more idyllic and wholesome view of rural neighborhoods than other dramas on this list. Having said that, life only seems simpler in Gongjin because the town’s quirky residents know there isn’t an age limitation on personal growth. Everyone who could be a mere caricature reveals their interiority — the grandmothers flourishing in their independence, the divorced couples trying to co-parent, the struggling business owners, the exhausted teachers, and a retired singer chasing his past success — and the value they place upon joy doesn’t negate their concerns about affordable healthcare and putting food on the table. Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha is a feel-good slice-of-life tale without being too escapist or cloyingly saccharin.
6
‘Fight for My Way’
Starring: Park Seo-joon, Kim Ji-won, Ahn Jae-hong
Fight for My Way follows a quartet of underdog friends whose adult lives have fallen short of their ambitious passions. A skull fracture prevented Ko Dong-man (Park Seo-joon) from pursuing his taekwondo career; now, he works as an unfulfilled and undervalued pest control employee. Choi Ae-ra (Kim Ji-won) spends her hours daydreaming about switching her department store desk for that of a television news anchor, while Kim Joo-man (Ahn Jae-hong) and Baek Seol-hee (Song Ha-yoon) work themselves to the bone and still live hand-to-mouth. None of them have wealth or influence on their side, but that shouldn’t make their dreams any less worthwhile.
Almost everyone can relate to reaching a certain age without accomplishing what you had hoped to, or having your naivety crushed by constant curveballs. Fight for My Way‘s characters aren’t a power-and-privilege fantasy; they’re normal people trying their best to not just survive, but thrive regardless of their circumstances. Being “ordinary” can be extraordinary, and these ordinary individuals can celebrate as much while still seeking meaning, satisfaction, and peace. If that means defying the arbitrary restrictions that Korea’s unbalanced capitalist infrastructure has arbitrarily placed upon them, then so be it. It’s never too late to try again, especially when you have lifelong friends by your side. Dong-man, Ae-ra, Joo-man, and Seol-hee’s shared history and easy camaraderie is where Fight for My Way shines brightest.
5
‘My Mister’
Starring: Lee Sun-kyun, Lee Ji-eun, Go Doo-shim
Park Dong-hoon (the late Lee Sun-kyun) and Lee Ji-an (Lee Ji-eun) have more in common than they realize. Dong-hoon is a kind and considerate engineer supporting his mother and his two unemployed brothers, but his divided attention has severely damaged his marriage. Ji-an is a miserable temp worker ruthlessly pursued by loan sharks and forever in search of her next meal. She has no one except her ailing grandmother, for whom she acts as sole caretaker. When circumstances bring these two coworkers and strangers into one another’s orbits, their age and experience gap doesn’t prevent them from recognizing and validating each other’s pain.
My Mister is a haunting depiction of class-consciousness, wealth inequality, vulnerability, accountability, violence, harassment, and mental health, none of which are deployed for melodrama but for unflinching honesty. Searingly intimate and cathartically raw, this drama offers no clear-cut villains or convenient deus ex machina solutions. My Mister‘s heart lies in its slow, soulful excavation of the ugly truths society would prefer we bury in the name of placation and productivity. In this series, profoundly desperate people are forced into impossible situations, and altruism is perilous. The closer Ji-an and Dong-hoon become, however, the more their healing presences become a reciprocal refuge.
My Mister
- Release Date
-
2018 – 2017
- Network
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tvN
- Directors
-
Kim Won-suk
4
‘Just Between Lovers’
Starring: Lee Jun-ho, Won Jin-ah, Lee Ki-woo
Lee Kang-doo (Lee Jun-ho) and Ha Moon-soo (Won Jin-ah) survived a catastrophic building collapse that claimed the lives of one of their respective family members. For Kang-doo, it was his father, while a leg injury he sustained in the disaster ruined his athletic prospects. In Moon-soo’s case, she emerged physically unscathed but lost her sister to tragedy and her mother to alcoholism. Already joined by a tragedy, the pair grow close a decade after the accident when they both join the construction of a new building, hoping to channel their pain into a safer future for others.
Based on the deadly Sampoong Department Store collapse of 1995, Just Between Lovers is a misleading title. Some individuals, like corporate workers wearing bespoke suits, only feel the collapse’s reverberations through the legal fallout. The small group directly affected by this tragedy, however, wear their ragged wardrobe, uncombed hair, and eternal scars through PTSD, survivor guilt, and chronic pain, all of which are compounded by common concerns like illness and fiscal inequality. Kang-doo and Moon-soo’s found-family-to-lovers bond emerges from this rubble because no one else can fully understand their inescapable grief. Their relationship is also rooted in tenderness, support, perseverance, and the vulnerability required to seize the moment despite knowing that tomorrow is never guaranteed. Just Between Lovers understands that although sorrow is inescapable, we can find ways to endure its affects without sacrificing happiness.
Just Between Lovers
- Release Date
-
2017 – 2017
- Network
-
JTBC
- Directors
-
Kim Jin-won
- Writers
-
Yu Bo-ra
3
‘Lovestruck in the City’
Starring: Ji Chang-wook, Kim Ji-won, Kim Min-seok
Dating has always been tricky, but perhaps never trickier than in the modern digital age. How do people find love in a frantically paced and densely populated city like Seoul? In Lovestruck in the City, a group of documentary journalists decide to ask that very question by going straight to the source: six urban professionals in their late 20s and early 30s. Some search for love at first sight and a fairytale ending; others are self-described “serial daters” who prefer to keep their encounters strictly physical. Their tactics for combating loneliness are just as varied as the professions they strive to balance with love.
Breaking from tradition, Lovestruck in the City channels its rom-com heart through a mockumentary format. Talking-head interviews where the characters discuss sex and intimacy are interspersed with spontaneous “off-camera” events and revelatory flashbacks. Whether they wear their hearts on their sleeves or protect themselves with emotional barriers, each of the series’ six leads harbor regrets, insecurities, desires, and the insatiable need for connection. They long for second chances, and they stumble through their lives contrasting their grandiose romantic expectations — instant soulmate connections, fireworks exploding, etc. — with a reality littered with misunderstandings, immaturity, and fear.
2
‘My Liberation Notes’
Starring: Lee Min-ki, Kim Ji-won, Son Suk-ku
The three Yeom siblings — Ki-jeong (Lee El), Chang-hee (Lee Min-ki), and Mi-jeong (Kim Ji-won) — work in Seoul and live with their parents in a suburb outside the city. Five days a week, they endure a grueling three hours of public transportation there and back. On the weekends, they fill their hours by helping their parents tend to their farm’s upkeep. Constantly exhausted and longing for a reprieve from their empty lives, the trio’s fraught quest for their liberation has been a long time coming.
An insular rural life, although frequently presented as a comforting alternative to a grueling city, isn’t rewarding for everyone. The Yeoms of My Liberation Notes can’t always pinpoint what they’re missing, but they do know that they lack something essential. No ephemeral stolen moments are enough to satisfy; all they can do is silently stare out the window during their grueling commutes. When their individual resistance emerges, it’s in different ways. Chang-hee craves financial freedom, Ki-jeong hopes that marriage can save her from monotony, and Mi-jeong wants respect without having to conform to someone else’s expectations. None of the Yeoms’ distress comes from a traumatizing past — just an indecipherable reality that’s both punishing and worth living.
1
‘Incomplete Life’
Starring: Im Si-wan, Lee Sung-min, Kang So-ra
After his dreams of becoming a professional baduk player evaporate, Jang Geu-rae (Im Si-wan) reluctantly enters the corporate world. Without an education higher than a GED or experience applicable to an office environment, Geu-rae approaches his role as an intern for the One International trading company through the lens of baduk — a strategy game filled with valuable life lessons, not least of which is a concept called “an incomplete life” or “not yet alive.”
If you know, you know. From the learning curve and the unspoken social hierarchies to corporate-specific linguistics, few series capture the rat race that is office politics with more accuracy than Incomplete Life. Whether it’s Geu-rae and his fellow wide-eyed rookies or his experienced and salaried superiors, Incomplete Life succinctly captures both the broad spectrum of clashing personalities that are shoved in-between various cubicles — arrogance, impatience, jealous agendas — and the minutia of individual, yet still largely systematic, experiences: individual growth and mentorship, the thrilling rush of a finished project, how silly some of it all can seem, and workplace sexual harassment. The series’ authenticity made it a cultural sensation in 2014. In the decade since, the drama’s ongoing relatability has confirmed its place as an irrefutable classic.
