Hit Korean series Legend of the Blue Sea, which stars Lee Min Ho and Jun Ji-hyun, and Goblin, top billed by Gong Yoo and Kim Go-eun, are renewing the interest of local viewers in Korean drama. Since their premiere last week, both series have been trending on social media and outshining their competition in rival network.
Following the local viewers’ growing fascination on K-Drama again, we are listing down some of the biggest series that Filipino audience must watch out for. Most of them have just finished airing on Korean cable networks and made record-breaking performance in terms of viewership.
Signal
The series was a critical and commercial success. In fact, it is the third highest rated drama in Korean cable television history. The drama went on to win several awards from different award-giving bodies, including Best Drama and Best Screenplay. The story, which is told in fast paced fashion, revolves around a mysterious walkie talkie that allows a detective in 1989 to communicate with a cold case profiler from 2015; with the power of fore and hindsight the two not only solve crimes but prevent them from ever taking place.
Weightlifting Fairy
Inspired by the life of a Korean Olympic gold-medalist, it is a coming-of-age story about a group of college athletes who are fighting for their dreams, experiencing and finding love in the process, and growing every step of the way. Although it’s a commercial failure based on its ratings performance, it’s gaining popularity among Hallyu fans when the drama became available for online streaming.
Strong Woman Do Bong Soon
Starring Park Bo-young, who is best known for the 2015 hit Oh My Ghostess, the series is about a young woman who was born with superhuman strength. Her strength is hereditary and passed along only to the women in her family. Her dream is to create a video game with herself as the main character. Though faced with numerous struggles, she manages to control her strength to use it for good causes.
Man to Man
From the writers of Descendants of the Sun, the action comedy is about a special bodyguard (Park Hae-jin) with a background in special investigations. He’s described as a mysterious man of many talents, and the drama is about the twisty events that he and the Hallyu star he is supposed to protect encounter. Billed as an action bromance series, the ongoing K-Drama has just been purchased by Netflix to have it internally distributed.
W – Two Worlds
Internally telecast in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Hong Kong, the drama will soon be available on Philippine free TV after ABS-CBN acquired the rights for local broadcast. Popular for its unique storyline that blurs the line between reality and fantasy where a young woman is pulled inside the parallel world of a webtoon created by his father, W – Two Worlds is a fantasy romance topbilled by Han Hyo-joo, and model actor Lee Jong-suk, who became immensely popular for his roles in hit series Doctor Stranger (2014) and Pinocchio (2014).
Doctor Crush
Starring Kim Rae-won and Park Shin-hye, the medical drama is considered as one of the biggest K-Dramas of 2016. The story introduces Yoo Hye-jung (Park Shin-hye), a headstrong girl in high school with a prickly, gangster personality. However, she changes after meeting her mentor Hong Ji-hong (Kim Rae-won), who plays a key role in transforming her life from a “hopeless” delinquent to a compassionate doctor.
Reply 1988
The third part of the Reply series displays the Korean culture and politics back in the ‘80s. It centers on family and friendship with characters that are carefully interconnected to each other. Five friends namely Jung-hwan (Ryu Joon-yeol), Sun-woo (Go Kyung-pyo), Dong-ryong (Lee Dong-hwi), Taek (Park Bo-gum) and the only girl in the group Deok-sun (Hye-ri) live on the same block with their families. The story follows the filial bond than romance between characters. Reply 1988 holds the record for being the highest rated series in Korean cable TV history.
