While romantic K-dramas definitely create more vocal online fandoms, the best thrillerK-dramas are equally popular. Besides the popular romantic K-dramas and melodramas, South Korea also creates thriller series that will have audiences on the edge of their seats. K-dramas continue to dominate streaming platforms, just like the gripping family drama Little Women and the nail-biting revenge show My Name. The genre is also known to feature a variety of thrilling narratives and stories, from cat and mouse stories involving serial killers to shows with creepy cults.
Thanks to platforms like Netflix and Rakuten Viki, viewers can easily binge thriller K-drama with riveting plots. What makes Korean drama series so interesting is they usually aren’t bound by the same confines as their American counterparts. Many of the best K-dramas contain supernatural or fantasy elements, while others are beautiful period pieces, and K-drama thrillers are no different. K-dramas are usually more aesthetically pleasing than American programs, with attention to the smallest details, and there is no shortage of enthralling K-drama thrillers.
Mask Girl examines three different moments in the life of an insecure office worker (played by three different actors throughout the series — Lee Han-byeol, Nana, and Go Hyun-jung). She longs for everyone to love her, and she needs adulation so badly that she develops the internet personality of “Mask Girl”. However, her life spirals out of control due to a series of events surrounding her fame.
These include crime, murder, and even her own child having to suffer the consequences of the actions that she causes. It’s an incredibly dark thriller of a K-drama, more graphic than many television viewers might expect. It was also creatively set up, with each episode following a specific character in the story. Based on the Naver webtoon of the same name by Mae-mi and Hee-se, the series took place over just one season with seven episodes. Ahn Jae-hong won Best Supporting Actor at the Baeksang Arts Awards for his performance as Joo Oh-nam.
When a young woman’s father dies suddenly, she works her way up in a crime syndicate to find a way to gain revenge against those responsible for his death. Part of her work, however, involves going undercover for the criminal group inside the police force. She has to play a double agent for both sides and has a hard time figuring out where her loyalty should lie as she becomes close to both criminals and investigators.
The thriller K-drama is one that keeps up the mystery as well as whether a person is really a monster for wanting revenge. The series debuted three episodes at the 26th Busan International Film Festival and then launched on Netflix in October 2021. The series has a total of eight episodes, each checking in at just under an hour in length. Ahn Bo-hyun went on to win the Excellence Award, Actor in a OTT at the APAN Star Awards and Han So-hee was nominated for Best Actress at the Baeksang Arts Awards.
Another thriller K-drama that asks questions about monstrous humans is Beyond Evil. In the crime drama, the series sees two different detectives struggling to catch a serial killer. In order to get criminals off the streets, the detectives decide that they are willing to do anything to catch them, including breaking the law themselves. The darkness that they delve into makes them question who the real monster is — the serial killer or the ones searching for them.
The series is not based on a true story and is completely fictional, but there are comparisons to the real-life Hwaseong serial murder case. That comparison comes from the fact that the show was inspired by Memoirs of Murder, a movie by Bong Joon-ho, which was based on those murders. Beyond Evil was a huge success and scored eight nominations at the Baeksang Arts Awards in 2021. It won three of those awards, including Best Drama, Best Screenplay – Television, and Best Actor – Television for Shin Ha-kyun.
One of the best K-drama thrillers is Dark Hole, which will have viewers on the edge of their seats with a mystery, thriller, and dark fantasy story. Lee Hwa-Sun is a detective in Seoul whose life is turned upside down when she’s called by her husband’s murderer. She’s told to go to Mujishi, but there’s a problem. The residents of the town are closed off as many have transformed into heinous mutants after breathing in mysterious dark smoke from a sinkhole.
With a dire need to catch Lee Hwa-Sun’s (played by Kim Ok-vin of the hidden gem The Villainess) husband’s killer, she ventures to Mujishi and joins forces with a former cop-turned driver. This was the fifth installment of the “Dramatic Cinema” project by OCN, which combined the elements of film and drama. The season had 12 total episodes, and it originally aired in 2021. What started out as a strong K-drama horror series soon ventured into sci-fi territory while keeping the mystery strong until the end.
Among the best Netflix K-drama thrillers for supernatural mystery is Possessed. Sometimes ghosts and the paranormal world make for a more interesting storyline and series. In Possessed, two unlikely individuals meet and team up to solve crimes, leading to some nail-biting sequences. Kang Pil-Sung (Song Sae-Byeok) is a good detective but is somewhat crude and can be a bit lazy. He meets Hong Seo-Jung (Koh Joon-Hee), a woman who hides her psychic abilities from others.
In the supernatural K-drama, they partner up and take on a difficult case involving the ghost of a murderer from 20 years ago. While Kang has started learning that he can now see ghosts, he has to figure out what this means when he works with Hong, who shares the same ability, but can also read minds and sometimes control people. The series has 16 total episodes, and while it has an overall mystery they have to solve, it’s also set up as a procedural, as the two work together to solve crimes.
A sci-fi entry to the mix of K-drama thrillers is available on Netflix, as Rugal is a thriller about artificial intelligence. An elite detective’s world crumbles when he comes home to find his wife murdered by a group of men from a criminal organization. As it turns out, the detective got too close to investigating a group called Argos, and as a form of retaliation, Argos sends masked men to gouge out his eyes and then framed for his wife’s murder.
In a sci-fi twist, Kang gets equipped with artificial eyes by a group called NIS. Like most common storylines, the detective Kang Gi-beom (Choi Jin-hyuk) then becomes part of a special team called Rugal (whose members have superhuman abilities thanks to biotechnology) that seeks to take down Argos and other organized crime organizations. The action-sci-fi series streamed on Netflix in the United States and has 16 episodes. It aired in 2020 and there are no plans for another season.
In Tell Me What You Saw, Oh Hyun-Jae (Jang Hyuk) was once highly regarded as a criminal profiler known for solving uncrackable cold cases. His world is shattered when his fiancée is killed in an explosion set by a serial killer. Unable to deal with the grief, he isolates himself, until a new serial killer emerges with the same MO. While another detective is on the case, he meets Cha Soo-Young (Choi Soo-Young), a detective with a photographic memory.
She teams up with Hyun-Jae to seek retribution for his fiancée and stop the killer. With the two expert profilers working together, the series provided a fun and exciting K-drama thriller for fans of police drams. A good serial killer storyline is always intriguing to watch, which is probably why Tell Me What You Saw has such a strong following. The series has 16 episodes, each one hour in length.
Seeer is a crime series and one of the most interesting K-drama thrillers from 2019. The storyline is based on a crime that was committed 15 years prior, in which Kim Yeong-Goon’s (Seo Kang-Joon) mother was heinously murdered, and the police suspect his father of the crime. Following one of the best K-Drama tropes, his father is eventually convicted, but 15 years later, Yeong-goon is now an officer, and along with the original detective and lawyer of the case, they meet again. The two band together to uncover what really happened all those years ago.
Thanks to its many cliffhangers and binge-able nature, Seeer is still widely discussed years after its release. Star Seo Kang-joon is very different from what most K-drama fans might be used to, as he has normally taken on romance roles, but here he proves himself in the thriller genre and delivers a nuanced and brilliant performance that shows he can do it all. The series, which debuted on OCN, has 16 episodes.
Secrets from the past reappear in one of the best K-drama thrillers, Awaken. In the series, a task force created by the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency including the special team leader, Do Jung-Woo (Namkoong Min) and Gong Hye-Won (Kim Seol-Hyun), are joined by FBI Agent Jamie Leighton (Kwon Ye-Eun) as they try to figure out who is behind a string of murders. Containing some great female-led K-drama moments, the group begins to learn that the murders are tied to an event from 28 years ago.
The K-drama features a thrilling game of mental chess between the task force and the villains that will keep viewers on the edge of their seats. The series has 16 episodes and initially aired in 2020. What makes Awkaen stand out is that it is set up like a regular South Korean police thriller but soon it veers into science fiction territory thanks to several technological devices used to solve crimes. Even then, the series was well shot and it remains a solid thriller K-drama.