Every year, the Korean entertainment industry produces more than 100 K-dramas. In 2022, this number skyrocketed to 160 series, and its craze continues in 2023. One of the primary reasons for the production growth is the chance of a better reach through the help of streaming networks. The producers no longer depend on cable television to get ratings and revenue.
One can say that this is a direct result of the phenomenal success of Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite. As the director said in his Academy Awards speech, “When people overcome the one-inch tall barrier of the subtitles, then they can be introduced to many more amazing films.” Streaming platforms help people cross that barrier and directly affect the production growth of entertainment films and series.
Another significant impact of the platform change is upon the creative freedom of the K-drama writers and directors who are now able to address serious subjects such as high school bullying in Song Hye Kyo‘s The Glory and the psychological impacts of harassment faced in the mandatory military service through Jung Hae In‘s D.P.
Both of these series garnered significant ratings on Netflix, making them one of the top K-dramas on the platform. These K-dramas also fall under the genre of crime thriller, but neither is similar to the other.
While The Glory is a revenge series with bold and thrilling themes, D.P. falls closer to a drama series with a dash of suspense and action, which makes them appear oceans apart despite sharing the same theme of bullying and harassment at the center of it.
Another K-drama that recently garnered successful ratings is Lee Min Ki and Han Ji Min’s Behind Your Touch. This Netflix series also focuses on the crime genre. Still, it can not be any more different than the former two in terms of presentation with fantasy and romantic comedy elements.
K-dramas are getting harder to categorize in genres, and one particular one that is changing and challenging the boundaries of storytelling is a crime thriller. In this article, we will explore the expansion of crime thriller K-dramas in this generation by dappling into some of the most popular series of the past decade. So, let’s get started.
The staple crime thriller K-dramas: Detective’s tale
The more back we go into the time, the more we will discover the dutiful protagonist dealing with the darkness of the world and saving the day for all the innocent citizens in crime thriller K-dramas.
- Until the year 2015, a large part of popular crime thriller K-dramas told the stories of injustice and cruelty from the perspectives of the detectives or protagonists who are tied with delinquents with ill fates.
- The famous 2010 K-drama Crime Squad featured the offspring of a thief turned police as the protagonist. It was followed by the 2011 political crime thriller K-drama City Hunter, starring Lee Min Ho as the adopted child trained in combat to take revenge and unveil a large political conspiracy.
- The Chaser (2012) and Two Weeks (2013) featured protagonists who have suffered from the cruelty of fate trying to find the culprit. While Bad Guys (2014) followed a team of delinquents as they formed a superteam to assist the detective in cracking tough cases.
These narratives of crime thriller K-dramas focus on familiar challenges of necessity to catch the antagonist. At the same time, the time keeps pressing, and emotions of justice, fairness, duty, and family make the protagonist invested in the cases.
Crime thriller reshaping K-dramas: Genre blending
Then, it rolled in 2015, bringing with it an alteration in the storytelling of crime thriller K-dramas. Remember: War of the Son (2015) featured a lawyer with picture-perfect memory, played by Yoo Seung Ho as the protagonist defending his falsely accused father. While the base is similar to the former phase, the process of storytelling was changing.
- Although the highlighted ill-fate of past K-dramas continued in the drama, the change in ability of the protagonist was unique. Another K-drama that furthered this genre-blending was the fantasy crime thriller Signal (2016), where the 21-century criminal profiler Park Hae Ye (Lee Jae Hoon) connects with detective Lee Jae Han (Cho Jin Woong) in 1989 through a walkie-talkie.
- Following this, the crime thriller K-dramas began to take a new shape, including comedy, romance, fantasy, action, suspense, and more. Some of the best examples of this change are Witch At Court, Suspicious Partner, While You Were Sleeping, Prison Playbook, Prosecutor’s Diary, Behind Your Touch, Strong Girl Nam Soon, and more.
What’s the future of crime thriller K-dramas?
While the genre keeps blending in the crime thriller K-dramas, providing us with new scripts, entertaining characters, and unique challenges, there is another trend slowly beginning to take shape in the K-drama Land. The center of the crime thriller series is shifting to the psychology rather than the gruesome acts of the criminals.
An excellent and must-watch K-drama at the forefront of this change is Kim Nam Gil’s Through The Darkness (2022). The drama tells the story of the first criminal profiler in South Korea as he establishes an analyzing and interrogation team while dealing with various real-life serial killers.
This crime thriller K-drama focuses on the cases without glorifying the criminals and dives into the psychology of the crime. It also explores the reasoning that made humans do heinous deeds only suitable to monsters and the effects of looking into that darkness on the profilers.
Similarly, D.P. (2021-2023) reshapes the image of military delinquents, exploring the triggers that lead them on the crooked path. It also captures the psychological effects of understanding the pain of the criminals created under a faulty system. It further challenges the audience to think about how someone can ask the victims to return to their harassers.
These two crime thriller K-dramas’s recentering of storytelling is something that I hope to see more in the upcoming Korean series. As well as the genre-blending in the K-dramas that helps portray diverse, complicated, and entertaining stories.
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