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K-Drama/Variety

What to binge, what to skip

Korea's 《야구여왕》 Built a Women's Baseball Team Out of Olympians, Lost 36–0, and Now Has to Win 60 Per Cent or Be Disbanded
K-Drama/Variety

Korea's 《야구여왕》 Built a Women's Baseball Team Out of Olympians, Lost 36–0, and Now Has to Win 60 Per Cent or Be Disbanded

채널A's sports-variety series is managed by Choo Shin-soo on his days off, captained by an Olympic handball medallist, and has a catcher who kept goal for the unified Korean ice hockey team at PyeongChang. On 17 September a 22-year-old golfer — drafted 115th by New York in America's new women's professional league, and never signed — caught for the first time, hit her first home run and closed out the game. The team is 5–2. The sport it plays has thirty elite women registered in the entire country.

14 min read
Netflix's 《스캔들》 Is Officially a Remake of the 2003 Film. Its Director Says He Went Back to the 1782 Novel Instead.
K-Drama/Variety

Netflix's 《스캔들》 Is Officially a Remake of the 2003 Film. Its Director Says He Went Back to the 1782 Novel Instead.

All eight episodes drop at 17:00 KST on 18 September, with Son Ye-jin as the widow who runs the game, Ji Chang-wook as the rake she runs it with, and Nana as the woman they wager on. Netflix's own announcement credits Lee Jae-yong's 《스캔들-조선남녀상열지사》 as the source. Jung Ji-woo told the press conference he didn't start from that film at all, but from Laclos — and rewrote the relationships until, he says, 'a great deal changed.' Here is what is known the day before, and what has been said about it that isn't quite true.

11 min read
Korea's No. 2 Streaming Service Is One Almost Nobody Watches. It Just Made the Biggest Show on Korean Television.
K-Drama/Variety

Korea's No. 2 Streaming Service Is One Almost Nobody Watches. It Just Made the Biggest Show on Korean Television.

Coupang Play has a quarter of Korea's streaming users and six and a half per cent of its viewing time — the signature of a service people are subscribed to rather than watching. Then Kim Hye-soo and Cho Yeo-jeong turned up in a black comedy produced by the Squid Game director's studio, and it became the most-watched thing the platform has ever made. It is free to watch in Korea, licensed to Viu everywhere else, and the Western press that decides which Korean shows go global still hasn't looked at it.

11 min read
Teach You a Lesson, Explained — The Netflix Hit That a Real Politician Wants to Build (June 2026)
K-Drama/Variety

Teach You a Lesson, Explained — The Netflix Hit That a Real Politician Wants to Build (June 2026)

It's a pulpy revenge fantasy about a government bureau that disciplines out-of-line students by force — and within a week of premiering it was the most-watched non-English show on Netflix in the world. Then a newly elected superintendent proposed building its fictional agency for real. Here's what 참교육 actually is, why it hit such a nerve in Korea, and where the fantasy stops.

10 min read
Jae-seok's B&B Rules, Explained — Yoo Jae-suk's Netflix Camp Show and the Byeon Woo-seok Effect (June 2026)
K-Drama/Variety

Jae-seok's B&B Rules, Explained — Yoo Jae-suk's Netflix Camp Show and the Byeon Woo-seok Effect (June 2026)

It's Yoo Jae-suk's first Netflix variety show with his name on the marquee: a chaotic two-night camp where Korea's biggest MC plays rookie innkeeper to Lee Kwang-soo, Ji Ye-eun, and — for the first time as a variety regular — Lovely Runner's Byeon Woo-seok. Within two days of release it was #1 on Netflix in Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Here's what 유재석 캠프 actually is, and why the 'Byeon Woo-seok effect' is real.

10 min read

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