Known as the Korean version of Thanksgiving, Chuseok will land on September 20-22 this year. Why is this important to international viewers? Because tv stations want to grab idle eyeballs, so they’ll load up all the good stuff around the holiday. This translates to FIVE dramas debuting on September 17th, the Friday before Chuseok. That is a LOT of dramas! Come see if you’ll be adding any of them to your watch list.
First off, I would like to warn you all about the dangers of copy and paste. It leads to such things like missing a change in a drama’s debut date, and then you get very disappointed when you go to watch the show and IT’S NOT THERE. For everyone who is looking forward to Lovers of the Red Sky, I apologize for spreading misinformation and I’m pleased to report that it will start on Monday, August 30th!
Lost
September 4, iQIYI
Lost is the story of two ordinary people who have worked towards becoming “something,” but haven’t achieved it and are starting to wonder why they’re even trying. Boo Jung (Jeon Do Yeon, The Good Wife) is a 40-year-old ghostwriter who doesn’t know where she wants life to take her next. Kang Jae (Ryu Joon Yeol, Reply 1988) is a 27-year-old running a role service business and suddenly is attack by the fear that he won’t be able to become anything of significance.
High Class
September 6
The top 0.1 of society — why are their lives so interesting to us? Especially when the curtain is drawn back from the perfect fronts they present to society, revealing hypocrisies and dangerous lies that could bring the entire facade crashing down. In this thriller, Song Yeo Wool is framed for her husband’s murder and loses everything. Her son is attending the same international school as “queen bee” Nam Ji Sun’s child, and her only friend is Hwang Na Yoon, a single mother. Starring Cho Yeo Jung (Cheat on Me If You Can) and Kim Jee Soo (365: Repeat the Year).
One the Woman
September 17
Cho Yeon Joo (Honey Lee, Fiery Priest) takes on the challenge of playing both a rogue prosecutor and the daughter-in-law of a chaebol family in this comedic mystery drama about memory loss and switched identities. Lee Sang Yoon (VIP) plays Han Seung Wook, a chaebol who cherishes his first love, but left Korea to stay out of the inheritance fight. He comes back to solve the mystery of his father’s murder and happens to run into his first love, whom he doesn’t want to let out of his life again.
Squid Game
September 17, Netflix
Round Six depicts a story of people who decide to become the players of a mysterious survival game that has a whopping 40-million-dollar prize at stake. Gi-hun (Lee Jung Jae, Chief of Staff) seems defeated by life after being fired from his job. He decides to join the survival game to win prize money. Sang-woo (Park Hae Soo, Prison Playbook) is Gi-hun’s childhood friend and decides to join the game after getting in trouble at work.
The literal translation of Round Six’s Korean title is ‘Squid Game’ (오징어 게임), which is the street game Gi-hun and Sang-woo played together when they were young. It’s quite a physical game that only ends when there’s a final winner, much like the survival game they play now. It’s named as such because players are to draw different geometric shapes on the ground, which, as a whole, look like a squid.
The Veil
September 17, KOCOWA
A top National Intelligence Service (NIS) agent, Han Ji Hyuk (Namgoong Min, Chief Kim), returns after a year-long absence to uncover who engineered his fall from grace. Seo Soo Yeon (Park Ha Sun, Birthcare Center) is one of Ji Hyuk’s former coworkers, a top agent, and a caring team lead for the Crime Information Center who might be able to help Ji Hyuk out.
A Gentleman and A Young Lady
September 17
Lee Young Kook (Ji Hyun Woo, Lonely Enough to Love) is a widower with three children who is still mourning the death of his wife. He decides to hire Park Dan Dan (Lee Se Hee, Hospital Playlist) as his children’s live-in tutor, but soon finds himself attracted to her bright and positive personality.
No promotional materials available yet. Stay tuned!
Yumi’s Cells
September 17
Every person on earth is run by a complex network of cells, something most people manage to ignore even though the cells are necessary for everyday functioning. Kim Yu Mi (Kim Go Eun, The King: Eternal Monarch) appears to be like every other single working woman in society, but her love cells have fallen into a coma after a painful breakup and things don’t look good.
One day, Goo Woong (Ahn Bo Hyun, Itaewon Class) enters Yu Mi’s life. Though this immature game developer is emotionally stunted, his love cells spark life in Yu Mi’s love cells, and things between the two humans start to get interesting. Will it work if their cells work overtime to bring them together?
Dali and the Cocky Prince
September 22
Classy and considerate Kim Dal Ri (Park Gyu Young, The Devil Judge) speaks seven languages and spends her time studying art, philosophy, and religion. She’s set to become the director of Chungsong Art Museum, but her way is blocked by Jin Moo Hak (Kim Min Jae, Do You Like Brahms?). Moo Hak’s family may have grown a tiny gamja-tang restaurant into a global corporation, but Moo Hak himself is far from intelligent. What will happen when Dal Ri and Moo Hak clash and maybe even fall in love?
Hometown
September 22
Set in 1999, Detective Choi Hyung In (Yoo Jae Myung, Itaewon Class) in charged with solving a murder case in his small town, and he suspects that it’s related to the terrorist attack 10 years earlier that killed his wife. The terrorist’s daughter, Jo Jae Young (Han Ye Ri, My Unfamiliar Family), was sent to live with her aunt in Detective Choi’s town after her father went to jail. She joins his investigation when her niece disappears.
Make sure you have your seat belts buckled for the 17th, drama fans! What will you be watching?
The Fangirls
Dramas with a Side of Kimchi