The 5 best Korean dramas to watch on Netflix this spring

In April 2023, Netflix announced it would be investing another $2.5 billion in the Korean entertainment industry over the next four years. While this investment spans film, unscripted series, and scripted TV, the massively popular K-drama format is at the center of Netflix’s strategy. 

Fast-forward to 2025, and we’re starting to see the results of that continued investment. The next slew of K-dramas coming to Netflix have among them one of the most expensive K-dramas of all time, a long-awaited spinoff of a popular drama, and a show that has a fair amount to do with potatoes (Chicken Nugget, eat your heart out). Without further ado, here are the five most promising upcoming Korean dramas, some of which have already started dropping weekly, to watch and anticipate on Netflix this spring.

When Life Gives You Tangerines

Release date: March 7 to March 28
Episode count: 16 episodes
Recommended for fans of: Reply 1988, Pachinko, When the Camellia Blooms

Starring one of Korea’s most beloved celebrities (pop star IU) and helmed by one of the industry’s most consistent directors (My Mister’s Kim Won-seok), When Life Gives You Tangerines is easily one of the most anticipated K-dramas of 2025. The decades-spanning romantic drama follows its two main characters — IU’s Ae-sun and Park Bo-gum’s (Reply 1988) Gwan-sik — as they grow up on Jeju Island and try to make a life for themselves in a changing Korea. 

The Lim Sang-choon-penned (When the Camellia Blooms) story starts in the 1960s, not long after the Korean War devastated the population and left the peninsula divided, and continues to modern times. The main characters are played by three pairs of actors (including Queenmaker’s Moon So-ri and The World of the Married’s Park Hae-joon), from children to later adulthood, with the story checking back in on them at various points in their lives. Netflix is trying out a unique release model with this one, releasing four episodes every Friday in March, which makes the show — one of the most expensive K-dramas ever made — feel like an event.

The Potato Lab

Release date: March 1 to April 6
Episode count: 12 episodes
Recommended for fans of: Extraordinary Attorney Woo, zany small-town rom-coms

In this weekly rom-com watch, Mission 1: Possible’s Lee Sun-bin stars as Kim Mi-gyeong, a very serious potato researcher at the rural Potato Research Institute. When Extraordinary Attorney Woo’s Kang Tae-oh shows up as workaholic new director So Baek-ho, his myopic dedication to efficiency threatens Mi-gyeong’s potato research. However, sometimes opposites attract, and Mi-gyeong starts to develop an attraction for her beautiful but socially awkward boss. The Potato Lab is the first project for Kang following his mandatory military enlistment, and fans who loved him as legal support staffer and love interest Lee Jun-ho in Extraordinary Attorney Woo should give The Potato Lab a try. 

Weak Hero Class 1 & 2

Release date: March 25 for season 1, Q2 for season 2
Episode count: 8 in season 1, TBA for season 2
Recommended for fans of: The Glory, D.P., Skins

Weak Hero Class 1 follows Yeon Si-eun (idol turned actor Park Ji-hoon), a top student who only cares about his studies. When classroom bully Jeon Yeong-bin (Kim Su-gyeom) targets Si-eun, he is unwillingly pulled into the ruthless culture of school violence and must decide what to do about it. With the unlikely help of slacker boxer Ahn Su-ho (Twinkling Watermelon’s Choi Hyun-wook) and timid nerd Oh Beom-seok (Revenant’s Hong Kyung), Si-eun fights back.

I saw the first three episodes of Weak Hero Class 1 on the big screen at the Busan International Film Festival in 2022, and the execution of the fight scenes blew me away. Based on a webcomic, the violent coming-of-age drama has some of the most visceral action scenes I had seen in a long time. That they mostly take place between teenage boys, and often the context of classroom bullying only adds to their well-executed intensity. Weak Hero Class 1 was released in 2022, on Viki in the U.S., and found a passionate audience. However, its upcoming release on Netflix ahead of a second season will make it much more accessible to K-drama fans and others. 

Resident Playbook

Release date: April 12 to May 18
Episode count: 12
Recommended for fans of: Hospital Playlist, Grey’s Anatomy

After a series of delays, in part due to the labor strikes taken by doctors in Korea’s real-life medical system, the spinoff to popular K-drama Hospital Playlist is finally coming to Netflix.

Resident Playbook is set in the same fictional universe as Hospital Playlist, but will follow a different group of doctor-friends at a different Seoul hospital. Unlike the original series, which followed a group of doctor-friends working across different fields, the spinoff will follow residents specifically training to become OB-GYNs. Because of the country’s low birth rate — the lowest in the world, in fact — the field has become less popular, leading to a shortage of OB-GYNs. The series is led by young actress Go Youn-jung, who has given memorable performances in Sweet Home, Alchemy of Souls, and Moving. 

Tastefully Yours

Release date: Q2
Episode count: 10
Recommended for fans of: When the Camellia Blooms, Jinny’s Kitchen season 2, Business Proposal

From co-director of Weak Hero Class 1 Park Dhan-hee comes a decidedly different genre. Tastefully Yours is a “kitchen romance” starring Squid Game season 2 actor Kang Ha-neul as Han Beom-woo, the heir to Korea’s top food corporation and the owner of one of Seoul’s most successful fine dining restaurants, and The Frog’s Go Min-si as Mo Yeon-joo, a chef who runs a struggling restaurant in the remote countryside. Yeon-joo values quality above all else, refusing to use anything but the best ingredients and serving only one table at a time, while Beom-woo cares about success (and securing his role as successor over his brother) over taste. When the two end up running a restaurant together in Jeonju, they begin to fall in love. The chaebol heir-falls-for-girl-next-door trope is a backbone of the industry. Could Tastefully Yours be the next classic series in this rich (no pun intended) K-drama tradition?