Romance is embedded in the Hallyu World and irrespective of the Genre; every Korean drama is entangled with considerable romantic scenes. You can find romantic scenes in other (countries) dramas as well, but the impact of romance in Korean drama is a cultural and global phenomenon with unshakeable popularity! It is an undeniable truth that Romance especially the Romantic-comedy genre plays a pivotal role in contributing to the Korean Wave!
Here are the Allsorts Kdrama’s Top 5 Romantic(Comedy) Korean Dramas!
5. The Heirs:
The Heirs is all about love in School Days! Though it has some family scenes, it prominently features the lives of immature school students of a fictional famous Jeguk High School.
Kim Tan(Lee min-ho), a wealthy heir to Jeguk Group, a large Korean conglomerate meets Cha Eun-sang (Park Shin-hye), the daughter of Kim Tan’s live-in housekeeper. She goes to the famous Jeguk high school run by President Kim, Kim Tan’s father. Despite being engaged to Rachel Yoo (Kim ji-won), he started to love Cha Eun-sang.
The story portrays every episode of School lives that includes unrequited love, love, Bullying, Money, Jealousy, playful jokes, understanding, etc!
The one important character you will definitely love is the portrayal of Young-do (Kim Woo-bin). He well expressed his unrequited love for Eun-sang in an arrogant way without knowing how to win a girl’s heart! Though he always picks up eun-sang to irritate Kim tan, he soon realizes why his eyes always yearn to see eun-sang!
The next must be Yoon Chan-young character; could even a man love his girl like this? Whatever she does looks cool and cute to chan-young! That’s a fantastic depiction!
Due to ensemble cast including prominent stars Kim Eun-Sook (the writer of Heirs), Lee Min-ho, Kim Woo-bin, Park Shin-hye and Kim-ji won, Krystal Jung , Kang Ha-neul , Park Hyung-sik ,and Kang Min-hyuk . The Heirs was a huge success throughout Asia.
Lee min-ho nominated for several awards at SBS, Baeksang , etc. In addition, he won Best Asian Actor Award at Baidu Fei Dian (“The Hottest”) Awards in 2013.
Park Shin-hye and Kim Woo-bin won Popular Foreign Actress and Popular Foreign Actor award respectively at 18th Anhui TV Drama Awards.
Park Shin-hye, Kim Woo-bin and Lee Min-ho won Top 10 Stars at 21st SBS Drama Awards whereas Choi Jin-hyuk, Kang Min-hyuk, Kim Ji-won bagging the New Star Award!
Lee Min-ho won Netizen Popularity Award at 21st SBS Drama Awards while Park Shin-hye and Kim Woo-bin had been nominated for the same.
Lee Min-ho and Park Shin-hye won Best Couple Award at 21st SBS Drama Awards!
4. What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim:
Romance! Romance! Everything is Romance in WWWSK! Story is usual, Screenplay is usual with predictable flashback! As usual jealousy! But Still, Park-Park Combination, that’s remarkable!
The story revolves around the relationship between Lee Young-Joon(Park Seo-joon), the President and Vice Chairman of Yumyeong Group, and Mi-so/ Secretary Kim (Park Min-young) who works as the secretary of the vice-chairman, Lee Young-joon). Secretary Kim, though worked under Lee Young-joon for over 9 years, still finds it difficult to work with him, and when she told her plans of resignation, shocked Young-joon, realized his feelings for her and wanted her to be with him at all cost. But still, mi-so never knows that the person she desperately looking for years is with her. Meanwhile, Young-joon’s brother’s friendship with secretary Kim makes Young-joon extremely jealous and eventually adding fuel to his Narcissistic personality.
Every scene is fantabulous and his captivating ambitious nature, his jealousy and hot-tempered reactions when whoever (even) touches his girlfriend are mind-blowing!
What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim is one of the highest-rated Korean dramas in cable television history and Park Seo-joon was awarded Top Excellence Award, Actor in a Miniseries at 6th APAN Star Awards for WWWSK.
Park Min-young won K-Star Award, Actress and Best Actress of the Year at 6th APAN Star Awards and 14th Annual Soompi Awards.
3. Fight For My Way
Fight for My Way is a quite different drama, besides love, the drama portrays about four childhood friends and how they help each other in difficult situations! The four main characters have their own problems but still, support each other and want every other to be successful! The blossoming love between long time friends will be amazing to watch!
Park Seo-joon acted as Ko Dong-man, A former famous taekwondo player but had to stop because of a painful past, is now a budding mixed martial arts fighter. Later, he realized his love for his long time best friend, Choi Ae-ra (Kim ji-won), and struggles to succeed in his career and love life.
The story revolves around 4 friends who crave for success in career and love. The drama is very realistic as it depicts a normal youth’s day-to-day life. The drama is heavily appreciated for the performances of all four actors and for the storyline and choi ae-ra cute expressions!
Fight For My Way lead the slot and topped the index for 3 weeks consecutively. This drama is a breakthrough drama for Kim ji-won as a lead.
The drama has won Best Drama Award and Drama of the Year at 30th Korea Producer Awards and Brand of the Year Awards respectively.
Park Seo-joon won a number of awards at 31st KBS Drama Awards that includes netizen award, Excellence Award, Actor in a Miniseries. In addition, he received Best Star Award and Fabulous Award at 2nd Asia Artist Awards and Outstanding Korean Actor at 13th Seoul International Drama Awards.
Together with Kim ji-won, seo-joon won Best Couple Award at KBS WORLD Global Fan Awards and 31st KBS Drama Awards.
Kim Ji Won won Netizen Award – Female, Excellence Award, Actress in a Miniseries at 31st KBS Drama Awards. Ahn Jae-hong won Best New Actor award at 31st KBS Drama Awards. Song Ha-yoon won Excellence Award, Actress at 10th Korea Drama Awards.
2. Oh My Venus:
Oh My Venus portrays the love story between a normal woman with overweight issues and her infamous Trainer!
So Ji-sub acted as Kim Young-ho, a.k.a. John Kim, a personal trainer for Hollywood stars. Though he comes from a wealthy family, he has a destructive childhood drama that made him run away from his family. After many years he returns to Korea due to a scandal with a Hollywood celebrity.
Meantime, on his way back to Korea he meets Kang Joo-Eun (Shin Min-a), a 33 years old lawyer who struggles to support her family and also struggles with overweight. Young-Ho trains her in order to help her in losing weight. But soon they both realize that their feeling towards each other is more than what they think it is.
The understanding between the lead is fantastically depicted! You can see a scene where young-ho says his woman Joo-Eun that she can still wear the ring that she was wearing for the past 15 Years (note: that was given by her ex-lover of 15 Years relationship).That’s understanding! With this scene, don’t assume that it’s a serious drama! It goes totally under Romantic-Comedy category!
So Ji sub won Top Excellence Award, Actor, and Best Couple Award with Shin Min-a at KBS Drama Awards.
Shin Min-ah won Excellence Award, Actress in a Miniseries at KBS Drama Awards, and Outstanding Korean Actress at 11th Seoul International Drama Awards.
1. Coffee Prince:
Coffee Prince tells the unlikely romance between Choi Han-gyul ,a Young Food magnate and a tomboyish girl, Go Eun-chan, who cross-dress herself in order to get a job at Han-gyul’s Coffee Shop!
Choi Han-gyul (Gong Yoo ) is a never-care guy who never interested in getting a job! Choi Han-gyul’s dreams with his first love, Han Yoo-joo (Chae Jung-an) shattered when she rejected it as she only considers him as a friend and perhaps, she is in a relationship with Choi Han-sung (Lee Sun-kyun), Han-gyul’s cousin.
Meanwhile, Just to prove his capability to his family, he takes over an old and almost zero-profit coffee shop and wanted to turn it into a profitable one with the help of attractive employees! To attract the customers, he always hires only good-looking male workers, and Go Eun-chan (Yoon Eun-hye), who is always mistaken as a boy, managed to get a job by pretending as male! Without knowing her original identity, Han-gyul loves her, and eun-chan who loves him wholeheartedly pretends as a man as she doesn’t want to lose him! Han-gyul is drawn into severe confusion as he falls for a man but later becomes firm and confident in his decision without knowing her actual identity!
Things become hard when Han-sung develops feelings for Eun-chan knowing everything even before Han-gyul. in fact, eun-chan is one who is first infatuated by Han-sung and she disclosed it to him after coming to know about his relationship with Yoo-joo.
The story consists of certain influencing scenes that embrace homosexuality! Apart from the Main Lead’s relationship, you will definitely love all the sub-stories of each employee’s love affair! Especially Choi Han-gyul’s own relationship with his first love Han Yoo-joo!
With Average of 24.2% Audience Share, this 2007 drama is a massive hit in South Korea!
Lee Han-wi , Lee Eon, Kim Jae-wook and Kim Dong-wook won Most Popular Actor at 1st Korea Drama Awards.
Gong Yoo and Yoon Eun-hye won Excellence Award, Actor and Top Excellence Award, Actress at MBC Drama Awards.
Yoon Eun-hye won Best Actress (TV) at 44th Baeksang Arts Awards and Coffee Prince won Best Drama Award at 20th Korea PD Awards.
In 2011, the coffee shop was featured in the documentary Seoul’s Got Soul, a National Geographic Channel’s documentary on the Korean Wave. This shows, even after 4 Years of the release, it’s still was in people’s hearts!