regina

As a key player in South Korea’s Hallyu wave, Korean dramas (popularly known as K-dramas) have led this movement which popularised Korean pop culture around the world years before the meteoric rise of K-Pop. In contrast to other major film and television industries such as Hollywood, K-dramas have a long history of being written by women. In 2018, Korea’s Broadcast Writers’ Union estimated that 94.6% of TV screenwriters were women. This may well be the driving force behind the fact that since the 1990s, K-dramas have evolved in parallel with and in reflection of the changes in attitude towards women in Korea.

In an interview with CNN, Park Sung-Eun, a veteran K-drama executive producer, stated that blatant sexism and explicit scenes of domestic violence were staples on South Korean television throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.  Subsequently, the major feminist breakthrough in K-dramas came in 2016 – 2017 thanks to two defining turning points which kicked off a ‘feminist reboot’ in Korea – the femicide of a woman in a public bathroom in Seoul’s Gangnam district which ignited large-scale public protests against violence against women in the country and the reverberation of the #MeToo movement around the world which further buoyed feminist activism against sexual predators and rape culture in Korea. This is underpinned by the rising number of Korean women eschewing the traditional route of marriage and children dictated by the patriarchy.

In K-dramas produced from 2016 onwards, themes that reflect women’s lived experiences, such as rampant gender discrimination in the workplace, the horrors of rape culture, and the monstrosity of domestic abusers, have increasingly become embedded in many K-dramas whether as a major storyline or a brief but impactful scene. While Korean television production houses remain reluctant to call such dramas ‘feminist’, change continues apace, albeit slowly. By 2024, 8 years after the start of this quiet feminist renaissance in this cornerstone of Korean pop culture, many groundbreaking feminist K-dramas have since been produced, some of which have garnered worldwide acclaim for tackling women’s issues.

We hope that our selection of 16 feminist K-dramas will not only provide thought-provoking viewing for you but also inspire you to examine traditions and social mores and take action to stop VAW in your own family, community, and workplace.

Introduction by Regina Yau. Curated, compiled, and written by Regina Yau. Additional research by Anushia Kandasivam

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Feminist K-Drama Selection #1: A Virtuous Business (2024)

A Virtuous Business is a feminist dramedy set in the rural village of Geumje in 1992, where four women—Han Jung-Seok, a housewife who divorces her cheating jobless husband; Oh Geum-Hui, a bored wealthy socialite; Lee Ju-Ri, a hairstylist who is a single mother, and Seo Young-Bok, a mother of 4 children who is looking to lift her family out of poverty—begin door-to-door sales of sex toys and other adult products. In the face of social disapproval, sexism, and misogyny, they forge a close-knit friendship group and gain the financial independence they need. This drama tackles a whole range of issues including rape culture, the stigmatisation of single mothers, toxic masculinity, victim-blaming, slut-shaming, and domestic violence. The comedy elements that are deftly incorporated into the storytelling style give it a light touch but the treatment of issues is incisive and thought-provoking, making this an engrossing watch.

A Virtuous Business is available to watch on Netflix.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #2: Avengers Social Club (2017)

This K-drama follows three women and one man from different walks of life who join forces in their common quest for revenge against the people in their lives who have wronged them: a single mother who is a fishmonger dreaming of a better life, a battered housewife with no family to turn to because she is an orphan, a daughter of a wealthy family who was betrayed by her husband, and a young man who is neglected by his parents. The close friendship that develops among the three women (Kim Jung-hye the wealthy scion, Hong Do-hee the single mother, and Lee Mi-sook the orphan) keeps the group on track as they bond in the face of adversity, showing just how instrumental community support is for successfully dealing with and escaping abuse.

Avengers Social Club is available to watch on Apple TV.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #3: Because This Is My First Life (2017)

Because This Is My First Life is billed as a romantic comedy as its basic premise revolves around and develops from a popular K-drama trope of a contract marriage between the male and female protagonists that leads to the central romance. Indeed, when Se-Hee marries his tenant Ji-Ho in a deal that offers both of them security – him a way to keep up with his mortgage and her a way to have a stable home – hijinks involving them and their group of friends ensue. However, under the seemingly frothy romance and comedy of this drama series is an incisive and sensitive look at how the patriarchy permeates everyday life for women. From the opening episode where Ji-Ho (the female protagonist) has her birthday cake moment derailed by her entitled younger brother and her sexist and dictatorial father, to Ji-Ho barely escaping sexual assault by a male friend, and her childhood friend Su-Ji dealing decisively with her office sexual harasser, Because This Is My First Life is a tour de force in how a TV series can adroitly handle feminist issues with incisive commentary layered beneath a light touch.

Because This Is My First Life is available to watch on Netflix.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #4: Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022)

Extraordinary Attorney Woo follows the adventures of autistic lawyer Woo Young-Woo and the struggles she faces as a female rookie lawyer at a large law firm. The drama was a huge hit for Netflix when it was released, lauded as a groundbreaking K-drama for its multifaceted portrayal of a neurodivergent woman navigating both a demanding career in a cut-throat profession, and her personal life in the harsh conformist South Korean society that is hostile towards anyone who is different. From domestic abuse to violence against neurodivergent women (including sexual assault and workplace bullying), this drama handles the complexities of gender-based violence issues within the context of the female neurodivergent experience with nuance. Additionally, it spotlights women’s lived experiences which include everything from the importance of female friendships to having to make a hard choice between having a career and having a child.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo is available to watch on Netflix.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #5: It’s Okay To Be Sensitive (2018)

The feminist web series It’s Okay To Be Sensitive revolves around Shin-Hye, Ye-Ji, and Chae-Ah – three female college students who are just beginning their careers and the challenges they face related to sexism, misogyny, and violence against women. As new interns in the marketing department of a company, they face everything from sexual harassment to gender discrimination in stark contrast to their two male classmates in their internship intake group. Unlike the other dramas in this list, the episodes are short, with the longest being about 15 minutes in length. The brevity works to the drama’s advantage by zeroing in on the issue being tackled with an emphasis on maximum impact while fitting in perfectly with the short online attention span of most people. You can watch the whole series here.

It’s Okay To Be Sensitive is available to watch on YouTube.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #6: Marry My Husband (2024)

What if a domestic violence victim could go back in time for a do-over of her life? This is the premise of Marry My Husband – one that sets the scene for a glorious revenge drama that is also all about female empowerment. When the heroine Kang Ji-Won is battling cancer, she catches her husband and best friend in bed together, leading to her murder by her husband. Upon death, Ji-Won somehow finds herself at her workplace in the year 2013. With a second chance at life and armed with her knowledge from her previous timeline, she sets about getting her life in order and arranging for her husband and best friend to get their comeuppance. In the process of rewriting her history, Ji-Won also pays it forward by defending a female colleague from the same tragic fate she endured. While this series is soapy to the hilt, it is thought-provoking because while nobody can turn back time in real life, it is a reminder that we need to be far more conscious about the urgency of helping abused women since there may not be a next time when they lose their lives to male violence.

Marry My Husband is available to watch on Apple TV and Prime Video.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #7: Mask Girl (2023)

Mask Girl is a webtoon adaptation about a young woman, Kim Mo-Mi, whose K-Pop idol ambitions are thwarted because her looks do not fit Korea’s beauty ideals for women. To satiate her thirst for fame, she dons a mask to become a mysterious and popular cam girl after working hours. In the course of the drama, she goes from an unassuming office drone to a criminal. Director Kim Yong-hoon could have made this a straightforward dystopian thriller but instead structures the story as an expansive and layered feminist critique of the generational effects of patriarchal violence, the horrors of domestic and sexual violence, and the systemic shackles that lock women into lives of quiet desperation that require extreme measures for breaking free.

Mask Girl is available to watch on Netflix.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #8: Military Prosecutor Doberman (2022)

At first glance, this drama about an amoral military prosecutor (Do Bae-Man) and his quest to avenge his murdered parents (both also military prosecutors) may sound like a by-the-numbers military thriller with a redemption arc and plenty of machismo. However, it is also the story of military prosecutor Cha Woo-In and her determination to take down the powerful general who ordered the killing of her industrialist father. In the course of her mission, military prosecutor Cha is revealed to be a vigilante who comes to the aid of a woman who was gang-raped by a K-Pop idol and his friends in an elite nightclub. The storyline gives off shades of the Burning Sun scandal and gets justice for a female military aide who was sexually harassed by a high-ranking officer. Additionally, the complexity in this drama comes in the form of the General Noh Hwa-Young who, in the show, is the first female general in South Korea’s modern military history and a Machiavellian villain par excellence. Her violence and thirst for power are not so much female empowerment as a reflection and critique of the violence of the Korean military’s patriarchal system that she climbed, showing how such systems need to be dismantled instead of being a blueprint for power.

Military Prosecutor Doberman is available to watch on Netflix.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #9: My ID is Gangnam Beauty (2018)

My ID is Gangnam Beauty is a college drama about Kang Mi-Rae, a freshman in college who undergoes plastic surgery on her face because she was badly bullied in high school for her looks and wants to ensure that she has a fresh start in college. This drama is essentially an acidic critique of South Korea’s stringent beauty standards and their traumatising effects on the lives of women and girls, whether they are born with looks that society deems ugly or born with acceptable looks only to face the burden of maintaining their physical appearance. In doing so, it draws the viewer’s attention to violent enforcement of such beauty standards through the peer pressure and bullying of women and girls as a form of systemic violence against women. The drama also addresses other forms of violence against women ranging from domestic violence to workplace sexual harassment, making this drama one that is undeniably feminist in intent.

My ID is Gangnam Beauty is available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, and Disney+/Hulu in selected regions.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #10: One Spring Night (2019)

One Spring Night is a slice-of-life melodrama about the Lee sisters whose parvenu father sees the business of marrying off his daughters to men with suitable credentials as a way for their family to climb the social ladder. At the heart of the story is how the sisters defy the patriarchy and navigate their way through the harsh judgements and disapproval of their parents to forge their own lives. Lee Jeong-In, the middle sister and the female protagonist, breaks up with her well-to-do financier boyfriend to begin a love match with a single father while Lee Seo-In, the eldest sister and a famous news announcer, divorces her abusive dentist husband. The fallout from their choices reveals just how deeply embedded patriarchal values are and how the misogyny, sexism, and violence against women that power it thrive on the control of women. The deliberately slow-moving pace of this drama may not be everyone’s cup of tea but those seeking a more contemplative take on these issues might want to take a look.

One Spring Night is available to watch on Netflix.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #11: Rookie Historian Goo Hae-Ryung (2019)

The only Sageuk (Korean historical drama) on our list is set in the Joseon period during which women were objectified and undervalued as second-class citizens. The titular protagonist is the courageous Goo Hae-Ryung who negotiates her way out of an arranged marriage in order to take the entrance exam for the first ever intake of female historians. Throughout this well-paced 20-episode drama, we see how Historian Goo and her three sister historians face and overcome the cultural and institutional roadblocks placed in their way by the powers-that-be in the Royal Palace and the civil service. What’s interesting about this drama is the gender role reversal that is woven through it – in particular, the male protagonist, Prince Do-Won, defies traditional and toxic masculine behaviour as he writes bestselling romance novels, looks after his love Historian Goo, and even sees her off to work as if she is the main breadwinner while he is the stay-at-home spouse.

Rookie Historian Goo Hae-Ryung is available to watch on Netflix.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #12: Something In The Rain (2018)

Something in the Rain is a Noona Romance – the Older Woman-Younger Man romantic pairing – a popular romance trope in K-Drama-land. In this drama, 30-something Jin-Ah begins a relationship with her best friend’s 20-something younger brother Jun-Hui who has just returned from the U.S. Relationships where the woman is older are still considered taboo in certain circles in conservative South Korea and the drama follows the couple as they face disapproval and pressure from their families and communities. What makes this drama worth watching is the secondary story line which chronicles the struggles that female employees face in the company where Jin-ah works, including sexual harassment, mistreatment, gender discrimination, and career sabotage from their male managers. This shines a light on the ugliness of the ingrained culture of sexism that is normalised within South Korean corporate culture.

Something In The Rain is available to watch on Netflix.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #13: Strong Woman Do Bong-Soon (2017)

If you are a fan of the superhero genre, Strong Woman Do Bong-Soon (sometimes known as Strong Girl Bong-Soon) is the feminist superhero K-Drama that you should definitely watch. The titular heroine comes from a long matrilineal line of women who are born with superhuman strength with an interesting twist – they are forbidden to use their strength for nefarious purposes, including harming innocents and using their strength for personal gain. Should they do so, they would immediately lose their power forever. While Bong-Soon’s superhero strength drives much of the humour in the story as she out-fights all the men who attack her and her community, it is the sharp examination of the sexism, misogyny, and violence against women that she and her best friend experience in daily life and within their families that takes this drama to the next level and makes Bong-Soon a female superhero to remember.

Strong Woman Bong-Soon is available to watch on Netflix and Disney+/Hulu in selected regions.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #14: Thirty-Nine (2022)

Thirty-Nine is a feminist slice-of-life drama that depicts the close friendship of Cha Mi-Jo, Hong Yi-Young, and Jang Sun-Woo – three single women in their late thirties who struggle with the challenges in their lives which are compounded by the judgement that society throws at them for being unmarried and without children as they stand at the cusp of their forties. From battling cancer to dealing with the harrowing sexual harassment and sexism in the Korean workplace, these three friends brave it all together with their friendship remaining strong and vibrant despite the strain that each of their troubles puts on it. Watch this if you are looking for a drama that handles the complexities and changing rhythms of staunch female friendships that not only empower women as they face down the patriarchy but also stand the test of time.

Thirty-Nine is available to watch on Netflix.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #15: Tomorrow (2022)

Tomorrow is a Contemporary Fantasy drama about a small squad of grim reapers whose task is to prevent suicides in South Korea where the suicide rates are one of the highest in the world. Violence against women is threaded through the entire drama with major impact on all three squad members. The leader of the squad, Goo Ryeon, was a Joseon Era noblewoman who was raped by Japanese invaders during her lifetime and committed suicide because her family and community shamed and ostracised her for being a rape survivor. Ryung-Gu, her second-in-command, lost his mother to suicide after she had been shamed for being raped. The lead character, Joon-Woong, was a freedom fighter during World War II who freed Korean comfort women from their Japanese enslavers. This is a drama that unapologetically pulls no punches when it comes to issues of violence against women. If you only have time to watch one drama from this list, make it Tomorrow (and remember to have a box of tissues at hand).

Tomorrow is available to watch on Netflix.

 

Feminist K-Drama Selection #16: Witch At Court (2017)

Ambitious prosecutor Mah I-Deum was a teenager when her mother was murdered by a powerful politician because she had witnessed him raping a friend and was on her way to meeting the prosecutor who was handling his case. After she outs her boss for sexually harassing a colleague, I-Deum is re-assigned to the special task force for sex crimes against children and women headed by the same prosecutor whom her mother was going to meet. Together, they take down the politician in a drama that is just as much about revenge as it is about justice for the women and children who survive rape and sexual assault. While this drama has a misstep in episode 2 involving the false reporting of rape, it shows just how stacked the justice system is against female survivors and just how insidious rape culture is.

Witch At Court is available to watch on Netflix.

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