How Netflix Became the Go-to Streamer for K-Dramas | Collider
Best Streaming Services for K-Dramas – CNET
A crown prince survives an assassination attempt but loses his memory in the process. A commoner finds him injured in the forest and takes him into his home where he nurses him back to health.
The commoner has an adopted daughter who must marry because it’s a royal decree. When the man realizes that the crown prince has no memory, he tells him that he is supposed to marry his daughter. They are married in name only.
What will happen when the prince regains his memory? Especially when he realizes that he’s not a commoner and that he was deceived.
An awesome historical fiction/romance/fantasy Korean drama series. All events take place in the country called Daeho, a place that is loaded with all sorts of wonders.
Finally, there’s a deadly assassin who can switch bodies. Technically, the switching is called soul shifting and the gift comes in handy when you’re trying to escape people who are chasing you. However, you might find yourself at a disadvantage if you shift into somebody who’s blind. Soul shifting does erase blindness.
In Joseon women are called “flowers” and when young girls in noble families reach marriageable age, their parents hire matchmakers to find them a suitable mate. Matchmakers are usually women. However, the Flower Crew consists of three (3) handsome young men who run a marriage agency in Joseon. They are young, handsome, and unmarried. It’s unusual for men to be matchmakers, but the Flower Crew has a track record of success.
Except this one time when … a young man insisted that the Flower Crew make arrangements for him to marry a woman. Both the man and the woman were commoners, i.e. not from noble families. Everything was arranged perfectly. But on the day of the wedding the bridegroom disappeared. What happened? Was he murdered? Kidnapped? Did he jilt his bride and leave her at the altar?
Who knew time travel and gender-swapping would make a great love story? A male chef from the 20th century falls from a balcony into a swimming pool. He should have died. Right? Wrong. It seems that at the same time he fell into the pool during the 20th century, a queen during the Joseon Era had jumped into a lake trying to commit suicide.
They were both in the water at the same time. Instead of dying they swapped bodies and in doing so ended up in different time periods. When the chef regains consciousness and looks in a mirror, he is shocked to see that he’s in the body of a Joseon queen.
But there’s something very odd. It appears the king doesn’t want to have a relationship with the queen. WHY? What’s going on?
The chef’s behavior – as the queen – has many of the people in the palace baffled, including the king. As time goes on the chef/queen begins to unravel the palace intrigue and the treacherous schemes. When he realizes that the king is surrounded by enemies on all sides, he is suddenly drawn to him and wants to help him survive and succeed as a good king.
Slowly, the chef begins to lose his identity and personality, and the queen’s identity and personality become dominant. The romance between the king and the queen develops. And … it’s a long and complicated story.
It’s about math. How can the storyline possibly be exciting? There’s romance too? In Seoul, Korea, there is a prestigious academy where students from wealthy families receive instruction from a star math teacher. Star as in like a celebrity star! That’s how famous the math teacher is. Only seven (7) are allowed to become part of an elite training class for top math students.
The mothers of the kids aka “Skymoms” are awful petty vicious women who will do anything to get their children into the academy. They will also do anything to keep certain students out of the academy. There was one student who had excellent math skills but her mom was not a Skymom, so the mothers got the girl kicked out of the school. The math teacher took it upon himself to tutor the student privately.
The mother of the girl who was kicked out ran a side dish store in Seoul. She and the math teacher fell in love. It turns out there is a backstory. Back before he became a celebrity star math teacher, he knew a woman who ran a restaurant and she always served him food, even though he could not pay. That woman was the mother of the mother of the girl he was privately tutoring.
The main characters, along with the support characters, all have backstories and eventually the dots on the timelines from their childhood get connected to the dots on the timelines of their present-day relationships as adults. There is even a murder mystery. Math and Murder. Who would have thought that would create an interesting storyline?
A young boy is being chased by people who intend to kill him. It’s nighttime, and it’s raining. He runs into the street and gets hit by a car. The driver of the car rushes him to a hospital where the doctors pronounce him dead. Just as the driver is about to leave, he hears a voice calling “Brother! Brother!” The young boy is alive! That’s miraculous!
The young boy is alive but suffers memory loss. The driver feels responsible so he takes the boy home and allows him to stay there until he recovers. The boy had a manuscript in his backpack and the driver happens to be a struggling writer.
He reasons with himself: the boy can’t remember anything and he desperately needs money. So he submitted the manuscript to the publisher and took credit for writing the book. He became a successful writer. But his conscious would not let him enjoy his success. He worries that if the boy regains his memory he’ll realize he stole the manuscript and then … and then … and then who knows what will happen?
Meanwhile, as the boy became more aware of himself and his surroundings, he realized that when he jumped in front of the car, he jumped through a time portal. Not only that but he had special powers. He hears voices, can feel the pain of others, and can disappear and reappear. Although he’s not sure how or why he can do those things.
The driver starts researching to find out the boy’s identity and the research reveals clues that lead to a murder case that is 27 years old. WOW! .. or … Uh oh! The situation just got very dangerous for both of them. Well! When all of this started, the young boy was running away from people who were trying to kill him.
The dead have a story to tell. But does anybody listen? The name of the company is called “Move to Heaven” and it’s a father-and-son operation. They clean up places where people have died. Everything is packed up carefully because there are precious items left behind that tell the story of their life. The items are then given to family or friends of the dead who should want to know “their story”.
Sadly the father passes away. The son has Asperger Syndrome and can not fully care for himself. So the father left a will appointing his half-brother as his son’s legal guardian. His half-brother is an ex-con who was just released from prison. At least, now that he’s out of prison he can stay at his half-brother’s home. But he does not want to be saddled with the responsibility of caring for someone with a disability. He also doesn’t want to do “trauma cleaning” and maintain the family business.
The father and his half-brother have a bad history. The newly appointed guardian felt his half-brother wronged him and knew they did not have a good relationship. So why would he make him the legal guardian of his son? His criminal friend tells him that being a guardian gives him full access to the person’s property and wealth. So the half-brother now thinks of getting the assets and taking advantage of the son. Revenge is the name of his game.
However, gaining access to the assets is not immediate. The lawyer tells the half-brother that he has 3 months to prove that he is capable of handling the responsibility. If he does not pass the test … Bye! Bye! But everybody knows that when people live and work together, a lot can happen in 3 months.
In my opinion, this series is one of the best K-dramas released during the first quarter of 2024. It’s about a married couple. Their love story starts innocently enough. The young man meets a woman where he works and he is smitten. Her work performance is so bad he is certain that she won’t be able to keep a job. He promises her that he will make enough money to take care of both of them. Then he finds out that she’s a chaebol heiress. OK! So! She’s rich!
They get married and she even gets pregnant. But she loses the baby and the relationship starts going downhill. They are both in pain from the loss but they don’t comfort each other. If that isn’t enough, they don’t well together as professionals either. She always makes decisions and as the head of the legal department, he advises against them.
He finally decides their relationship is over and plans to ask for a divorce. But before he could bring up the subject, she tells him that the doctor told her she only has 3 months to live. He decides – and it’s a heartless thought – but he decides that he can survive her for another 3 months. So he doesn’t mention the divorce.
But evil forces are at work. A mother and son are circling the wealthy family like vultures. They hatched a plan to rob the whole family and take over their businesses. Part of the plan was revealing that the husband had intended to ask for a divorce and did not love her anymore.
The wife believed that her loving husband truly cared about her health and wanted her to live. But all along he was just pretending and deceiving her. The truth is he wasn’t pretending. The critical nature of the doctor’s diagnosis had turned his heart back to “the way they used to be”. That didn’t matter now. She divorced him!
She and the man who had stolen her family’s wealth had known each other since childhood. He wanted to marry her but she wanted nothing to do with him. The fact that he and his mother had gone to such great lengths to take everything from her family made her dislike him even more!
Yes, she had divorced her husband. But there was no way she would ever marry him. Clearly, he didn’t get the “memo” because he kept thinking perhaps … perhaps … perhaps one day she will be mine. Wishful thinking or just plain delusional?
This K-drama series addresses what happens to the hearts of a married couple in crisis. If they fall out of love, can they fall back in love again? Or is it OVER?
Per Investopedia: “A startup is a new company that’s in the early stages of operations, with the potential for significant business opportunity and impact.” Many modern-day entrepreneurs start start-ups. But a lot of them don’t finish what they started. It’s a dog-eat-dog world and not every start-up survives.
A father always had a dream and believed his start-up would be successful. His wife divorced him because she did not have the patience, nor did she believe that he would ever become successful. They had two (2) daughters.
The mother took one daughter and the father raised the other. On the day when the man thought everything had finally turned around for him, and the investor was willing, he died. LITERALLY. He met with a tragic accident.
The grandmother ran a small business and finished raising her granddaughter. The grandmother was also generous to a young man who later became a well-known successful tech investor.
The two sisters did not get along. The mother had remarried a rich man and the daughter she took with her enjoyed the wealth too. Although the sister raised by the grandmother struggled, she had a wealth of her own. Her wealth was her brain. She was an intelligent, ambitious, and capable businesswoman who planned to run her own business. All she needed was to persuade an investor to give her $90,000.
Her sister who grew up with the rich stepfather felt challenged and decided she would take a chance on her start-up, without relying on her stepfather’s money. They both want to persuade the same investor.
Who is this investor anyway? When he left to make his fortune, he returned to the grandmother to show he was thankful for all she had done. He also returned because her granddaughter was his first love. But the granddaughter only knew him through letters they exchanged. He hires another man to pretend to be “her first love”.
It gets a little tricky after that. This is a fun rom-com that is both entertaining and educational. Anybody who might be thinking about a start-up will enjoy this K-drama series and they might learn a few things as well.
A successful prosecutor was once a very sick child. He had brain surgery to cure his illness. But the long-lasting effect of the surgery was that he lacked empathy. People could not figure out what he was thinking because his face was always expressionless. His behavior was kind of expressionless too. If someone tried to insult him, it did not register in his mind that it was supposed to be a provocation, so they never got a reaction out of him.
The prosecutor is not ambitiously trying to climb the ladder of success. He does not seek out high-profile cases. His superiors know that he does his job well so they assign the cases to him. That makes his colleagues jealous. But hey! That’s not his fault!
One police investigator found it very easy to work with him. Not only was he a competent prosecutor but he was trustworthy. Many of the prosecutors were not honest!
The police investigator and the prosecutor work together on the case of a man found murdered in his home, and the poor cable guy is falsely accused. The murdered man has connections with people in high places. Just before he died, he contacted the prosecutor and made a threat. He told the prosecutor to tell a certain important public official that he had no intentions of going down alone.
They successfully solved this case. The police investigator was promoted. But the prosecutor was demoted. They transferred him to an office in the countryside, assuming he would not have much work to do.
As soon as he arrived, he became involved in a serious case reported as an accidental drowning or possible suicide. He did not believe it was an accident or a suicide and got to work gathering the evidence. What can you say? The prosecutor doesn’t know how to NOT WORK!
Finally, there is a problem with procedures that is causing a rift between the Prosecutor’s Office and the National Police Agency. A team is established with people representing both sides. Since the police investigator and the prosecutor always worked well together, they were assigned to come up with proper procedures that would iron out the differences between the organizations.
The main issue was that the prosecutors had the authority to make certain decisions. The police thought they should make the judgment call. It was difficult to settle the matter because some of the prosecutors did not want to make any changes to current procedures. They were against it so much they resorted to doing things that were unethical and even illegal.
This is my list of 10 highly addictive Korean dramas to watch on Netflix.
(1) 100 Days My Prince
(2) Alchemy of Souls
(3) Flower Crew: Joseon’s Marriage Agency
(4) Mr. Queen
(5) Crash Course in Romance
(6) Miraculous Brothers
(7) Move to Heaven
(8) Queen of Tears
(9) Start-Up
(10) Stranger (aka Secret Forest)
Do you have a Netflix K-drama list?
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