Best Korean Crime and Suspense Series That You Should Not Miss
In the list of best Korean series, you not only find food and romantic stories (although they are the most popular), but there are also drama, horror, and even criminal stories full of suspense, intrigue, and dangerous situations. The truth is that Korea has surprised the world with both its series and its movies, which have become the most viewed and talked about on streaming platforms, and also the most interesting. The crime genre has a unique style (just like the Nordic or British genre) and leaves room for elements that can be supernatural and connect with culture.
Best Korean Crime and Thriller Series with Brutal Stories
A good crime thriller is one that surprises you, the one that gives you the clues lets you play with different theories and possibilities, and saves the big revelations for the last chapter. There are great series from each country that offer that, but the Korean series are especially good, and each one can leave you wanting to search for more. Not all K-dramas are romantic, and if there is one thing these productions stand out for, it is in the suspense genre. Ultra-popular series in recent years such as The Squid Game and Hellbound have demonstrated the enormous South Korean talent for making the viewer’s heart stop with their depictions of corruption, mysteries, and the most unexpected narrative twists.
Directors like Park Chan-wook of films like Oldboy and The Choice to Leave, and Bong Joon-ho of Memoirs of a Murderer and Parasite have been giving us some of the best films in the genre, but the small screen is not far behind. With plots full of questions that keep the viewer in suspense, and great performances that will chill your blood, the following series has everything so that once you start watching them you won’t be able to stop until you reach the end.
Squid Game – Netflix
Netflix’s great success of 2021, to such an extent that not even ‘Stranger Things 4 has surpassed the record of ‘Squid Game‘. Little more can be said about a series that takes the survivor challenges to the extreme and that engages from its first chapter with hundreds of players participating in children’s games, each one more macabre. Our favorite? is that of Younghee, the giant doll, with which we discover the famous English hideout in its most sadistic version. We are looking forward to new games in the future season 2 of ‘The Squid Game’.
Dr. Brain – Apple Tv+
This is a series of mystery, intrigue, murder, conspiracies, and strange experiments. Starring Lee Sun-kyun and Hee-soon Park, Dr. Brain follows a brain expert who discovers a way to connect his mind with that of people in comas, to see their memories. and discover how to help them. The doctor’s life changes when he decides to test his theory on humans, connecting his brain with that of a person who has just died and discovering memories that are connected to his family tragedy, with his wife’s suicide attempt and the supposed death. of his son who, according to the deceased’s memories, could be alive.
My Name – Netflix
Rated 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, this 8-episode miniseries stars So-hee Han, who appeared in the famous series However, who plays a desperate and frustrated teenager who has suffered a lot of bullying at school, and this pushes her to train hard to become a vengeful warrior to survive, but also to take revenge against the men involved in an incident that left her family destroyed. When his father is murdered in the hallway of their home, Yoon Ji-woo (Han So-hee) vows revenge against the culprit.
To achieve this, he teams up with an old friend of his father, the powerful criminal Choi Mu-jin (Park Hee-soon), head of a drug trafficking gang. As the years go by, he takes on the mission of infiltrating the police in the anti-drug department as a double agent. As he meets his colleagues, especially Officer Jeon Pil-do (Ahn Bo-Hyun), and makes friends, Ji-woo will question his motivations and also discover what happened to his father. My Name is a very dark and intriguing thriller, which maintains suspense until the end of the story.
The Killer Paradox – Netflix
A Killer Paradox features actors such as Choi Woo-Sik and Son Suk-ku and is a crime thriller that also has room for comedy and dark humor. The series follows a college student who kills a man by accident and discovers that the man is a criminal, realizing that he has a special ability to detect bad people and that they “deserve” punishment, so he takes this as a sign that he is on a mission. Soon, a series of murders catch the attention of a police officer, who begins an investigation in which he comes across the student and a series of challenges that he must overcome to catch the culprit.
Bloodhounds – Netflix
This 2023 series, with Woo Do-hwan and Lee Shang-Yi, is the story of two young boxers who, after accumulating some debts, join forces with a man who has a money laundering business and together they seek to destroy A moneylender who preys on the neediest and deceives them to build his fortune and power, all while trying to pay off his debts and save his families.
Extracurricular – Netflix
This crime drama might remind you of series like Elite or The Mess You Leave since its protagonists are students who get into more trouble than they can handle. Extracurricular follows Jisoo, a perfect and brilliant student who, to pay for college, makes a decision that leads him to live a criminal double life that he must keep a secret, but everything begins to fall apart when he catches the attention of a classmate and threatens to reveal their secrets and destroy everything.
Somebody – Netflix
Somebody has elements of crime and science fiction. It is the story of an app developer called Somebody, who becomes involved in a criminal investigation when a person is found murdered and the app seems to be connected to the case in some way. The developer is a friend of a local detective, who asks for her help to work on the case and try to find the murderer using the technology she created since it seems that he is using the platform to find and approach the victims. of the.
Black Knight – Netflix
Starring Kim Woo-bin, this series takes place in a future where resource scarcity has left humanity divided. The story takes place at a time when the planet is desolate, without resources, and without oxygen to breathe, so the government is forced to take control of the few resources that remain, which are distributed to the people by a group of drivers. who is in charge of the trucks that must cross dangerous areas to reach those who need those resources? But the shortage has also created division, leaving many people without options, having to resort to attacking and stealing those trucks to avoid dying of hunger, thirst, or lack of air.
Stranger – Netflix
This multi-award-winning series that has two seasons stars prosecutor Hwang Si-mok (Cho Seung-woo), who lost the ability to feel empathy as a result of an operation, and officer Han Yeo-jin (the talented Bae Doona). The complete opposite of him and it is difficult for him to emotionally separate himself from his cases. After a murder, Yeo-jin teams up with Si-mok to solve it, but they encounter multiple obstacles that reveal a deep web of corruption involving very powerful people.
It is impossible to get bored with this series that keeps you on edge throughout its two seasons. The interactions between the protagonists are a big factor in the success of this series, with both actors achieving wonderful chemistry. The context of sordid corruption, the social problems it represents, the criticism of a world where having money is everything, and the well-executed narrative twists with which it surprises us, this series has everything to establish itself as one of your favorites.
The Glory – Netflix
The Glory is a 16-episode series starring legendary actress Song Hye-kyo as Moon Dong-eun, a victim of bullying. When Dong-eun was a teenager, she was abused, burned, and disfigured by a gang of students with powerful parents. When the crime goes unpunished thanks to bribes, Dong-eun leaves school and decides to take matters into her own hands. 18 years later, Dong-eun begins her revenge plan on the five people who ruined her life, especially against the group’s leader, Park Yeon-jin ( Lim Ji-yeon ), who is now a weather reporter who behaves cruelly towards colleagues and friends and is married to Ha Do-yeong, the owner of a powerful construction company.
The entire cast of this series is wonderful in their roles, and it is very captivating to see how Dong-eun’s revenge plan develops step by step without waste. The relationship between Dong-eun and Do-yeong, without being romantic, is one of the most interesting and the graphic representation of school violence is unfortunately a common reality about which it is important to generate more conversation around it.
Sweet Home – Netflix
With a newly released second season, Sweet Home is a mix of suspense and monster horror that asks what you would be capable of doing if you found yourself in an apocalypse. Cha Hyun-soo (Song Kang) is a high school student who suffers a major family tragedy. He moves into a building alone and the day he decides to take his life, humans turned into monsters begin to appear and kill whoever they find. Trapped in the building along with the rest of the inhabitants, Hyun-soo will have to join forces with everyone to survive.
This series based on a webtoon of the same name was so popular that Netflix renewed it for a second and third season and won multiple awards. The inhabitants of the building that we will meet are varied and tell very well-developed stories, and Song Kang is wonderful as Hyun-soo, representing his vulnerability and character development throughout the episodes.
