Top K-Dramas #6 to #10 — Hidden Gems That Conquered the World
Deep dive into K-drama ranks #6 to #10 — Crash Landing on You, Squid Game S2, When Life Gives You Tangerines, My Demon, and Vincenzo.
👈 This is Part 3 of a 3-part series.
Ranks #6 through #10 are not leftovers. Every drama on this list is a cultural landmark.
The love story that started the global wave. The sequel the world waited 3 years for. The family drama that made everyone cry in 2025. The demon who fell in love. The mafia lawyer who made crime look cool.
Let’s meet them.
#6 — Crash Landing on You (사랑의 불시착)
Crash Landing on You — tvN / Netflix (2019–2020)
🎬 ▶ Watch ‘Crash Landing on You’ Official Trailer on YouTube
📊 ~370,000,000 hours watched
This is the drama that started everything.
Before Squid Game. Before Queen of Tears. Before the world knew what a K-drama was — there was Crash Landing on You.
A South Korean heiress goes paragliding. A sudden storm sends her crashing across the border — into North Korea. A North Korean army officer finds her. Hides her. Protects her. And then, slowly, impossibly — they fall in love.
The premise sounds like a joke. But Hyun Bin and Son Ye-jin made it feel like the most real love story in the world. CLOY held the highest tvN drama rating record for five years — from 2020 until Queen of Tears finally broke it in 2024.
And then — the actors fell in love in real life too. They married in March 2022.
📋 Show Info
| Year | 2019–2020 |
| Episodes | 16 |
| Genre | Romantic Drama |
| Director | Lee Jung-hyo |
| Cast | Hyun Bin, Son Ye-jin |
| Netflix Hours | ~370,000,000 hrs (pre-2021 data period) |
| Peak Rating | 21.7% — tvN record (held 2020–2024) |
| Real Life | Hyun Bin & Son Ye-jin married March 2022 💍 |
✨ Why It Hit So Hard
CLOY worked because it was warm. North Korea as a setting was tense — but the drama chose to show humanity instead of politics. The North Korean soldiers were funny, kind, and loyal. The love was slow and earned.
It also came out at exactly the right moment — early 2020, just before COVID lockdowns. Millions of people discovered it while stuck at home, and it spread like wildfire.
💡 Fun fact: After CLOY aired, tourism searches for filming locations in Switzerland and Jeju Island skyrocketed. The Swiss village of Nendaz saw a surge in Korean visitors — fans wanted to stand where the characters stood.
#7 — Squid Game Season 2 (오징어 게임 시즌 2)
Squid Game Season 2 — Netflix (2024)
📊 619,000,000 hours watched (peak run, early 2025)
The world waited three years. On December 26, 2024 — Gi-hun came back.
Season 2 spent 14 weeks in Netflix’s global top 10. It attracted more viewers than Season 1 did. But the response was mixed — it was shorter (only 7 episodes), ended on a cliffhanger, and divided fans right down the middle.
Gi-hun has one mission: find the people running the games and destroy them from the inside. He goes back in voluntarily. What he finds is darker and more complicated than he expected.
Season 3 dropped in mid-2025 — bringing the trilogy to a close.
📋 Show Info
| Year | 2024 |
| Episodes | 7 |
| Genre | Survival Thriller |
| Director | Hwang Dong-hyuk |
| Cast | Lee Jung-jae, Wi Ha-jun, Im Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul |
| Netflix Hours | 619,000,000 hrs (14-week top 10 run) |
| Weeks in Top 10 | 14 weeks globally |
| Season 3 | Released mid-2025 |
✨ Why It Hit So Hard
The anticipation alone was enormous. Three years of theories, memes, and rewatches meant the world was ready to drop everything the moment Season 2 landed. Even a divisive ending could not stop the numbers.
💡 Fun fact: Season 2 introduced new cast members including K-pop idol T.O.P (Choi Seung-hyun) and actor Im Si-wan — both of whom became the most-discussed new characters on social media in January 2025.
#8 — When Life Gives You Tangerines (폭싹 속았수다)
When Life Gives You Tangerines — Netflix (2025)
🎬 ▶ Watch ‘When Life Gives You Tangerines’ Official Trailer on YouTube
📊 481,600,000 hours watched — biggest K-drama of 2025
Nobody in 2025 cried more than Tangerines viewers.
Set on Jeju Island across multiple decades, this drama follows two people — from childhood through old age. Through poverty. Through love. Through hardship and survival and the slow, quiet weight of a whole life lived together.
IU and Park Bo-gum star in the most emotionally overwhelming K-drama of 2025. The show amassed 481.6 million viewing hours and 36.5 million completed views — the biggest K-drama performance of the year, excluding Squid Game.
📋 Show Info
| Year | 2025 |
| Episodes | 16 |
| Genre | Family Drama, Life Story |
| Director | Kim Won-seok |
| Cast | IU, Park Bo-gum |
| Netflix Hours | 481,600,000 hrs (2025) |
| Completed Views | 36.5 million |
| Setting | Jeju Island, across multiple decades |
✨ Why It Hit So Hard
IU has always been beloved in Korea — as a singer and actress. But this role gave her the kind of generational performance that people will talk about for decades. Paired with Park Bo-gum’s quiet warmth, the drama became something rare: a show that felt like life itself.
💡 Fun fact: “폭싹 속았수다” is a Jeju dialect phrase that roughly means “you worked so hard you were completely fooled by life.” The title alone tells you everything about the drama’s emotional tone.
#9 — My Demon (마이 데몬)
My Demon — SBS / Netflix (2023)
📊 ~180,000,000 hours watched
A demon loses his powers. A chaebol heiress needs protection. They make a contract. And then — of course — they fall in love.
My Demon is not trying to reinvent the genre. It is a fantasy romance that knows exactly what it is: charming, funny, emotionally satisfying, and built around two leads with irresistible chemistry.
Song Kang and Kim Yoo-jung delivered one of the most-talked-about K-drama pairings of 2023. The show appeared in Netflix’s Top 10 in over 40 countries during its run and became the second most-consumed K-drama in Netflix’s H1 2024 engagement report.
📋 Show Info
| Year | 2023 |
| Episodes | 16 |
| Genre | Fantasy Romance |
| Director | Kim Jang-han |
| Cast | Song Kang, Kim Yoo-jung |
| Netflix Hours | ~180,000,000 hrs (estimated) |
| Countries Top 10 | 40+ countries |
✨ Why It Hit So Hard
Sometimes people just want to feel good. My Demon delivered warmth, humor, and a love story that was easy to root for. In a year of heavy dramas, its lightness was exactly what global audiences needed.
💡 Fun fact: Song Kang has been nicknamed “Netflix’s Boyfriend” — he has starred in more Netflix K-dramas than almost any other male actor, including Sweet Home, Navillera, Love Alarm, and now My Demon.
#10 — Vincenzo (빈센조)
Vincenzo — tvN / Netflix (2021)
📊 ~150,000,000 hours watched · Forbes #4 most-viewed Korean series (2021)
Vincenzo Cassano is Korean-Italian. He was adopted by an Italian family as a child and grew up to become a mafia consigliere. Now he is back in Korea — to retrieve hidden gold. But he gets tangled in something bigger: a corrupt corporation that is destroying innocent people.
So he fights back. With style. With violence. With an entire building of ridiculous tenants who become his unlikely family.
Song Joong-ki plays Vincenzo with effortless cool. The show blends crime thriller, dark comedy, and K-drama warmth in a combination no drama had achieved before. It was ranked #4 on Forbes’ list of most-viewed Korean series on Netflix in 2021.
📋 Show Info
| Year | 2021 |
| Episodes | 20 |
| Genre | Crime Comedy, Action |
| Director | Kim Hee-won |
| Cast | Song Joong-ki, Jeon Yeo-been, Ok Taec-yeon |
| Netflix Hours | ~150,000,000 hrs (estimated) |
| Forbes Ranking | #4 most-viewed Korean series on Netflix (2021) |
✨ Why It Hit So Hard
Vincenzo is funny when it should be tense, and devastating when you least expect it. It trusts the audience to keep up. And it gave Song Joong-ki his best role since Descendants of the Sun — one that reminded everyone why he became a star in the first place.
💡 Fun fact: Director Kim Hee-won also directed Queen of Tears (#2 on this entire list) — making him the only director with two dramas in the all-time Netflix K-drama top 10.
📊 Part 3 — By the Numbers
| Drama | Peak Viewers | Standout Fact |
|---|---|---|
| Crash Landing on You | ~370M hrs | Held tvN #1 for 5 years |
| Squid Game S2 | 619M hrs | 14 weeks in global top 10 |
| When Life Gives You Tangerines | 481M hrs | Biggest K-drama of 2025 |
| My Demon | ~180M hrs | Top 10 in 40+ countries |
| Vincenzo | ~150M hrs | Forbes #4 Korean series 2021 |
👉 More in This Series
- Part 1 — Full Top 10 Rankings Overview →
- Part 2 — #1 to #5: Squid Game, Queen of Tears & more →
- See all K-Drama posts →
Data: Netflix Engagement Reports · What’s on Netflix · Forbes · Netflix Global Top 10.