If you’re a fan of Korean dramas, chances are 2024 kept you glued to your screen. This year was packed with unforgettable hits, including Lovely Runner, Doctor Slumpand many more that had us hooked from start to finish. We’ve rounded up our top 10 favorite K-dramas of the year, so get ready to relive the magic below!
Let’s kick things off with Doctor Slump. As one of the first K-dramas to premiere in 2024, it set the tone for an incredible year of storytelling and became an instant fan favorite!
The series premiered in January, and starred “King of K-Dramas” Park Hyung-sik and K-drama darling Park Shin-Hyemarking her first K-drama that she has starred in in over three years, since getting married and giving birth to a child. During an online press conference in January 2024, Park Shine-hye revealed why she decided to return to acting with Doctor Slump.
“I empathized with my character Ha-neul very much because I have a lot of friends who have been burnt out or depressed,” she explained. “When Ha-neul becomes depressed, she thinks that there needs to be this grand solution to her depression and that she can only overcome her burnt-out-ness through that. But I think that happiness isn’t far away, and it doesn’t rely on some big answer. I wanted to tell viewers this through playing Ha-neul.”
Park Hyung-sik had a slightly different reason for joining the medical drama — he wanted to laugh at himself, and the script of the drama made him do just that.
“Recently, I have participated in mainly serious and dark stories where it was hard to find comedy,” Park Hyung-sik said in the press conference. “Then I read the script for ‘Doctor Slump’ and found myself laughing aloud at the lines and how the characters mingle together in the story. When you mention burnout and depression as the key material for this drama, it may sound like a downer; but ‘Doctor Slump’ is like a close friend telling you that things will be alright, instead of having a serious and heavy tone.”
OK, enough of Doctor Slump. Scroll through our gallery below to uncover the best K-dramas of 2024:
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