The 5 best K-dramas streaming on Netflix this fall

The fall season is upon us, which means one thing: an import of new K-dramas on Netflix.

So far, 2023 has been a bit of a sleepy year for Korean dramas. While there have been some bona fide hits including The glory And King the country – no series has completely overtaken the K-drama world or hijacked the more casual international K-drama audience. But the year isn’t over yet, and Netflix has some big titles lined up as part of their fall release schedule. Here are the five upcoming Korean dramas you should be watching on Netflix this fall.

A time you called

Date of publication: September 8
Number of episodes: 12
Recommended for fans of: While you were sleeping (the K-drama, not Sandra Bullock’s 1995 romantic drama), Mr. Queen, Signal

The inspiration for time-wimey romance A time you called is called a popular Taiwanese drama Someday or one daybut Korean pop culture has its own history of combining time travel and romance to great effect. Il Marethe 2000 romantic drama film about a man and a woman sharing a house at different times would inspire the 2006 Hollywood film The house on the lake. (It also starred a young Lee Jung-jae long before that Squid game made him relatable to most Western audiences.) And it’s not particularly uncommon to come across a modern K-drama that casually incorporates time travel into the plot. (To see: The King: Eternal Monarch or Mr. Queen for particularly well-executed examples.)

Still, there’s something special about a K-drama – or any drama for that matter – that uses time travel as its central conceit, and A time you called certainly qualifies. The series stars Jeon Yeo-been (Vincento, Glitch) as Han Jun-hee, a woman mourning the death of her boyfriend, Ko Yeon-Jun (Dr. romantic 2‘s Ahn Hyo-seop) a year after the fateful incident. When Jun-hee unexpectedly travels back in time to the year 1998, wakes up in the body of an 18-year-old girl named Min-ju, and meets a boy who looks just like her dead boyfriend, a mysterious romance about time travel. follows.

Song of the bandits

Date of publication: September 22
Number of episodes: 12
Recommended for fans of: mr. Sunshine, Kingdom, My Country: The New Age

Billed as a Korean Western and a “wild action spectacle” by Netflix, Song of the bandits is one of the most anticipated K-dramas of the season. The show is set in a region of China historically known as Jiandao, where some Koreans fled to escape Japanese occupation in the early 20th century. Today, the region is known in China as Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and is home to more than 800,000 ethnic Koreans.

The series is an action drama set in the 1920s and will follow some Korean refugees who fled to the ‘lawless land’ Jiandao (aka Gando to Koreans) and band together to protect their settlement from harm. Kim Namgil (Memoirs of a Murderer, Queen Seondook) stars as Lee Yoon, a Korean who serves under the Japanese army and decides to become a bandit to protect the people of Jiandao. Girls Generation member Seo-hyun (Cursed at first) stars as Nam Hee-shin, a woman who hides her true identity while working for the Japanese-controlled railway agency. Expect a lot of intrigue and gunfights here, which could come from 2023 Mr Sunshine – or maybe good enough to talk about without comparison.

Doona!

Date of publication: October 20
Number of episodes: 8
Recommended for fans of: An emergency landing on you, Notting Hill, To my star

Adapted from a Webtoon comic of the same name, Doona! is the story of a former idol named Lee Doo-na (To start‘s Bae Suzy) who has become a recluse following her abrupt retirement from the limelight. When she meets regular college student Lee Won-joon (My country: the new eraYang Se-jong, back from compulsory military service), who lives in her apartment building, the two fall for each other.

Compared to the other recommendations on this list, Doona! is a relatively small-scale story, but that can make for the very best of K-dramas. To add to the expectation of Doona!webtoon author Min Song-ah adapts her own story for the screen, and An emergency landing on you director Lee Jung-Hyo is behind the camera.

Gyeongsang orphans

Image: Netflix

Date of publication: TBA
Number of episodes: TBA
Recommended for fans of: The terror: disgrace, Kingdom, the guest

In terms of new Netflix K-dramas coming out this fall, this is the big one. The film stars two of Korea’s most recognizable international stars: Park Seo-joon (Itaewon class, Concrete utopia), which will make its MCU debut this fall The miracles; and Han So-hee (Nevertheless, My Name, Jungkook’s music video ‘Seven’). It presumably has a hefty budget, given the cast and promotion, and has already been renewed for a second season.

The premise is pretty good too, and made through Dr. Romantic writer Kang Eun-kyung. Gyeongsang orphans is set in historic Seoul, which was occasionally referred to as “Gyeongsang” during the Joseon Dynasty and, more officially, during the Japanese occupation. It is set in the spring of 1945, at the end of Japan’s forced annexation of Korea. Gyeongsang orphans will combine real life history with supernatural drama, much in the same way The terror did two excellent seasons at AMC. It follows Park’s Jang Tae-sang, a wealthy pawn shop owner who knows everything that goes on in the city, and Han’s Yoon Chae-ok, a bounty hunter who tracks down missing people, as they battle monsters that plague the city . city. Presumably, they will fall in love in the process. (Tae-san and Chae-ok, not the monsters…we assume.)

Sweet Home season 2

Date of publication: TBA
Number of episodes: To be determined (probably 10)
Recommended for fans of: Sweet home Season 1, Hell bound, Alice in the Borderland

Of course, it’s not just new series coming to Netflix this fall. We also get the return of some already established fan favorites, including Sweet home. One of Hollywood’s most talked about influences on the Korean TV industry is a move away from the one-and-done format. Previously, Korean dramas almost always lasted one season. In the rare case that they were terribly popular, they might get a few extra “special” episodes, but for the most part they were whole separate, complete seasons. Since US-based streamers such as Netflix started investing in Korean dramas at a production level, it has become increasingly common for K-dramas to be made with multiple seasons in mind, changing the pace and shape of the traditional K-drama format.

Sweet home, the first Netflix K-drama to chart in the Top 10 in the US when it premiered in 2020, was seemingly always conceived as a multi-season show, with the first season of the horror drama leaving room for an additional story. Already considered one of the best Webtoon adaptations of all time, Sweet home follows a group of survivors trapped in an apartment complex during a zombie-like outbreak that turns humans into mutated monsters. The series has a great cast and the lead role is Song Kang (Anyway, Predict love and weather) as Cha Hyun-su, a severely depressed young man who moved into the building just before the outbreak, following the tragic deaths of his relatives. Sweet home has already been greenlit for a third season, so if you’ve yet to watch the supernatural K-drama, here’s the sign you absolutely must. The show is a breathless apocalyptic thriller that never lets viewers choose between the visceral tension of the grotesque horror and the character-driven drama of the surviving ensemble.