Top 100 Korean Films You Should Watch

Korean movie is one of the reasons why the Korean wave has been surging its popularity. Most of us are familiar with their films from romance and comedy. But there’s more than that. From romance, of course to action, suspense, drama, horror, and downright mindfucks. Korean films have a unique storytelling style of their own.

So when you crave for a me-time or you want to slouch in your room with your loved one during this quarantine season, here’s a list of top 100 must-watch Korean films that we felt you should have on your foreign movies bucket list:

100 Days with Mr. Arrogant

A cute, poor, Korean high school senior’s dumped by her boyfriend so she kicks a beer can hitting a handsome driver, who “crashes” his convertible. He insists on 3M won/USD3000 in damages. She can work it off over 100 days. Comedy follows.

Be With You

Woo Jin takes care of his son Ji Ho alone after his wife Soo A passed away. Before she passed away, she promised she would be back on a rainy day one year later. One year later, Soo A appears again, but she does not remember anything.

A Man and a Woman

Sang-min comes to Finland to send her autistic son to a special camp, but she feels extremely alienated in snow covered-white Helsinki. Ki-hong is an architect working in Finland on dispatched duty. His family is not so perfect either with a daughter having child depression and mentally unease wife. The two meet for the first time at the gathering point of this special camp. They get to have a short trip to the camp together in silence but start to feel comfortable and connected to each other. On their way back to Helsinki, with the road blocked from heavy snow, Sang-min and Ki-hong are isolated in a cabin by the forest and lake. Carried away by irresistible passion, they spend a night together. But the next day, they go separate ways without asking each other’s name

A Millionaire’s First Love

Jae-Kyung (Hyun-Bin ) is a tough guy, who is a high school senior,If he turns 19 years means, he could be a millionaire by inheriting his deceased grandfather’s wealth. Unfortunately his family lawyer informs Jae-Kyung about the will from his grandfather. In his will grandfather stated he can only become a millionaire after he graduates from Boram High School,a countryside local school. He has no other choice to avoid. Life became worse there and he can’t use his money or make friends. In his class, he meets Eun-Hwan (Lee Yeon-Hee)a pretty girl. She’s some kind of different from others. Things change Jae-Kyung’s mind and became close to their new friends. Eventually he fell in love with Eun-Hwan and things become strong after he knows about her secrets. 

200 Pounds of Beauty

A talented but obese girl, who ghost-sings for a not-so-talented pop star, undergoes extensive plastic surgery to become a slender beauty with a new identity.

Someone Special

A struggling for love, Baseball players discovers he has terminal illness and meets a girl who has had a crush on him since times immemorial. The twists and turns of events bring them together.

Daddy you daughter me

After a car accident, a Korean dad and daughter switch bodies. They decide to switch lives as well and not tell mom/wife. Dad goes to high school and Do-yeon to her dad’s office. They become close again.

A Moment To Remember

A Korean love story about a young couple’s enduring love, which is tested when 27 year old Sun-jin is diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease.

A Taxi Driver

A widowed father and taxi driver who drives a German reporter from Seoul to Gwangju to cover the 1980 uprising, soon finds himself regretting his decision after being caught in the violence around him.

A Werewolf Boy

Summoned by an unexpected phone call, an elderly woman visits the country cottage she lived in as a child. Memories of an orphan boy she knew 47 years ago come flooding back to her.

Alice- Boy from Wonderland

Hye(Female, 27) has suffered from severe nightmares since she was a child. They actually happens in reality and finally endanger her life. According to a shaman’s advice, she decides to return a private resort called ‘Wonderland’. It was the summer villa for her family 24 years ago. There are a mysterious and enchanting man, Hwan(24), a beautiful woman, Sue(25), and a white rabbit, Myo-doll, waiting for her. Within 15 days in Wonderland, she should find what she lost to stop her nightmares. If she can’t everybody will die.

Always

A former boxer turned parking lot attendant finds hope in the love of the blind telemarketer who walks into his booth one day.

Burning

Jong-su bumps into a girl who used to live in the same neighborhood, who asks him to look after her cat while she’s on a trip to Africa. When back, she introduces Ben, a mysterious guy she met there, who confesses his secret hobby.

Cheese in the trap

Hong Seol is an ordinary university student. She is busy working part-time jobs to pay for her tuition fee and living expenses. Yoo Jung is her senior at the same university. He seems perfect. He comes from a wealthy family, he has a kind attitude to others and he is handsome, but Hong Seol does not feel comfortable with Yoo Jung. Suddenly, Yoo Jung comes and talks to her. He wants to go out on a date.

Along With the Gods- The Two Worlds

Having died unexpectedly, firefighter Ja-hong is taken to the afterlife by 3 afterlife guardians. Only when he passes 7 trials over 49 days and proves he was innocent in human life, he’s able to reincarnate, and his 3 afterlife guardians are by his side to defend him in trial.

Along With the Gods- The Last 49 Days

In the afterlife, one guardian helps a man through his trials, while his two colleagues help a former guardian on earth.

Christmas in August

Hahn Suk-Kyu suffers from a fatal disease. He meets Shim Eun-Ha and falls in love with her. What will be the fate of this love – will it be a tragic ending?

Daddy Long Legs

Daddy-Long-Legs is a 2005 South Korean romance film. It was one of four Korean movies screened at the 2006 International Fajr Film Festival in Iran. The story is loosely inspired by the novel Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean

Daisy

A beautiful painter, Hye-young, juggles two mysterious suitors — one is a hit man, and the other is an Interpol officer chasing the killer.

Fabricated city

After Kwon, an exceptional gamer, is wrongly framed for murder, he along with his allies decides to find the real culprit and prove his innocence.

Gonjiam

The crew of a horror web series travels to an abandoned asylum for a live broadcast. It soon encounters much more than expected as it moves deeper inside the nightmarish old building.

Hope

A young girl named So-won lives an idyllic life with her working class parents Dong-hoon and Mi-hee. One day on her way to school, So-won is kidnapped, beaten and raped by a male stranger before being left for death. Fortunately, she survives and is able to call an ambulance.

Hot Young Bloods

A comedy romance movie about the last generation of youths and their passionate romance based in Hongseong, Chungcheong Namdo in the 1980’s.

Il Mare

End 1999, a voice actor moves from Il Mare, a seaside house, and she leaves an Xmas card in it’s (magical) mailbox. He, an architect student, receives it end 1997, and so begins a friendship separated by 2 years.

Inseparable Bros

Se-Ha (Shin Ha-Kyun) and Dong-Goo (Lee Kwang-Soo) are not blood-related brothers, but they have been like brothers for the past 20 years. Se-Ha is smart, but he has a physical disability. Dong-Goo is not very smart, but he is in excellent physical condition. These two men meet Mi-Hyun (Esom). She is the only person to treat them without prejudice. Mi-Hyun helps them get out into the world.

Life risking romance

A detective fiction authoress makes a lot of romantic and funny stories with a criminal police and a fascinating sweet guy when she traces a serial killer.

Lost and Found

TV writer Ji-ho has been secretly in love with the same man for 10 years. After a night of binge-drinking, she wakes up to face the worst day of her life. She wakes up to find out she got fired for low viewer ratings.

Love 911

A doctor tries to woo a grieving, widowed firefighter in her attempt to get him to testify on her behalf in a medical malpractice case.

Lover’s Concerto

Two girls confused between love and friendship leave their mutal friend Ji-Hwan unexpectedly. Years later, Ji-Hwan departs on a long journey to find his old friends as he confronts a beautiful yet sad secret.

Midnight Runners

Two friends who are students at Korean National Police University, find themselves in an endless race against time after they witness a kidnapping and decide to use their knowledge.

Miracle in Cell No. 7

Joselito (Aga Muhlach), an intellectually disabled man who is wrongfully charged with sexual assault, kidnapping and murder of a little girl. In prison he becomes friends with his fellow inmates and together they form a plan to smuggle his young daughter (Xia Vigor) inside the cell. Years after, his daughter (Bella Padilla) becomes a lawyer and is determined to prove her father’s innocence.

Miss Granny

A 74-year-old widow realizes she is becoming a burden on her family. She mysteriously regains her physical appearance from the age of 20.

Missing Woman

A struggling divorcee discovers her infant daughter and Chinese nanny have gone missing.

My Annoying Brother

Doo-Sik (Jo Jung-suk) gets paroled from prison thanks to his younger brother (Do Kyung-Soo) Doo-Young. Doo-Young is a promising judo athlete. After 15 years, Doo-Sik (Jo Jung-suk) suddenly appears in front of Doo-Young and they begin to live together. Doo-Young becomes involved in an accident before the selection for the national team

My Girl and I

Beautiful student Su-Eun prevents her fellow student Su-Ho to drown in the ocean. Su-Ho however, does not know who saved him, until Su-Eun tells him after a while. The love between them starts to grow, seemingly infinite. But then something terrible happens.

My Little Bride

A teenage girl tries to continue her normal social and school life, after her grandfather forces her into an arranged marriage with a man in his twenties.

My Sassy Girl

A young man sees a drunk, cute woman standing too close to the tracks at a metro station in Seoul and pulls her back. She ends up getting him into trouble repeatedly after that, starting on the train.

No breathing

A gifted swimmer rediscovers his talent by entering a competition against his long-time rival.

On Your Wedding Day

The story of the man who receives a wedding invitation from his first love that he met in high school.

Once in a Summer

The well esteemed professor Yun Suk-young (Lee Byung-hun) regrets only one thing at his old age: To have lost his one and only true love. He remembers the time during the year 1969. The country is covered with student protests everywhere aimed against the dictatorial government.

One way trip

Four friends run from the police after they try to rescue a woman being beaten by her husband.

Parasite

Greed and class discrimination threaten the newly formed symbiotic relationship between the wealthy Park family and the destitute Kim clan.

Pure Love

People reminiscing about their first love stories as they listen to love stories on the radio. During a live broadcast, a radio DJ receives a letter that shares stories from a fishing village 23 years ago.

Rampant

Lee Chung is a Prince of Joseon, but he has been taken hostage to the Qing Dynasty.

Real

The plot revolves around a charismatic gangster (Kim Soo-hyun, from the hit TV series My Love from the Star), whose efforts to launch a luxury casino complex are complicated by rival crime networks and a mysterious doppelgänger.

Secretly, Greatly

Three elite North Korean sleeper agents live under cover for so long that they believe their cover stories are their real identities. They are shocked when they are ordered to kill one another or face death at the hands of an elite hit team.

Star Nextdoor

Hye-mi is a top Hallyu star who lives next door to a middle school student So-eun. In reality they are mother and daughter, but they’ve kept it a secret from the public for fear of scandal.

Tae Guk Gi- The Brotherhood of War

When two brothers are forced to fight in the Korean War, the elder decides to take the riskiest missions if it will help shield the younger from battle.

The Battleship Island 

During the Japanese colonial era, roughly 400 Korean people, who were forced onto Battleship Island (“Hashima Island”) to mine for coal, attempt to a dramatic escape.

The Beauty Inside

A South Korean has a different person’s body, changing every morning to a body “borrowed” for a day – man, woman, old, child and sometimes a foreigner. “He” works as furniture designer. He loves a girl. She loves him for the beauty inside.

The Divine Fury

After waking up with mysterious wounds on his hands, a champion fighter finds himself in an otherworldly battle against evil forces that wreak havoc in the human world.

The Flu

Chaos ensues when a lethal, airborne virus infects the population of a South Korean city less than 20 kilometers from Seoul.

Pandora

The explosion of a nuclear power plant caused by an earthquake leads to a disaster which no one other than its workers can stop from spreading further.

Tidal Wave

A woman named Yeon-hee (Ha Ji-won) lives in Busan with her boyfriend Man-sik (Sol Kyung-gu) near Haeundae Beach. But, when they find out a tsunami will hit the city, They realize they only have 10 minutes to escape!

The Villainess

A female assassin leaves a trail of bodies behind her as she seeks revenge.

Cold Eyes

A high-tech police surveillance team attempts to take down a gang of ruthless bank robbers.

Exit

A rock climber tries to save the day when a mysterious white gas envelops an entire district in Seoul, South Korea.

The negotiation

An ace crisis negotiator faces off against a cold-blooded hostage taker. Over the course of 21 hours, she attempts to crack his unusually calm demeanor and force him to reveal his motivations.

The Dude in Me

A weak high school student and a mighty gangster exchange their bodies accidentally.

You’re my pet

On a rainy night, Eun-Yi walks home and finds a large blue box on front of her home. When she looks inside of the box she’s shocked again to see the named In-Ho, sitting in the box. Ji-Eun brings sopping wet In-Ho into her apartment, while she tries to contact her younger brother. Her younger brother doesn’t answer her calls. Oddly enough, In-Ho reminds Eun-Yi of her former pet dog Momo. Eun-Yi then comes up with an arrangement. She will let In-Ho stay at her apartment if he will become her pet dog named Momo.

Baby and I

A rebellious high school student sees his life take a strange turn when he goes to the grocery store and someone leaves a baby in his shopping cart, along with a note claiming he’s the father.

Love So Divine

Kyu-sik, a seminary student, is sent to a remote church in rural Korea after he breaks a relic.

Mood of the Day

A womanizer and a cute woman (in a 10 year relationship going nowhere) on business trip are seated next to each other on a full train from Seoul to Busan. They start talking when she accepts she can’t escape him.

My Brilliant Life

Dae-soo and Mi-ra have Ah-reum when they are 17. Ah-reum is diagnosed with progeria, and as his body rapidly ages, his finds comfort in writing a story about how his young parents fell in love.

My Tutor Friend

A man from a wealthy family who should be in his second year of college, is still finishing his highschool requirements. His family hire a tutor for him who is his own age but she comes from a poor background.

One Step

Si-hyeon has synesthesia and sees sounds as colors due to the symptom. Because of the neurological phenomena, Si-hyeon cannot bear listening to music nor singing. However, she hears a certain melody in her dreams every night and tries to find a past related to the melody. The music movie delivers such tense dramatic story through Si-hyeon’s experience.

I Married an Anti-Fan

The story is about a female reporter who marries a male celebrity after previously hating him and becoming an anti-fan, the polar opposite of a fan.

The Con Artists

An expert safe-cracker has 40 minutes to steal slush funds hidden inside a customs building.

The Legend of Seven Cutter

A typical teen transfers to a new school, where his life starts to change after he’s mistaken for a notorious fighter who leaves seven centimetre scars on his victims to remind them of their defeat.

The Handmaiden

A woman is hired as a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress, but secretly she is involved in a plot to defraud her.

The Man From Nowhere

A quiet pawnshop keeper with a violent past takes on a drug-and-organ trafficking ring in hope of saving the child who is his only friend.

Zombie for Sale

When a pharmaceutical company’s illegal experiments inadvertently create a zombie, the strange Park family finds it and tries to profit from it.

The Outlaws

Based on real events, this crime action film depicts a Seoul detective’s attempts to keep peace while two Chinese-Korean gangs battle over turf in the neighborhood.

The princess and the match maker

Hoping to find the perfect husband for a princess, a renowned diviner narrows down his choices to four men. She soon disrupts his grand plans by taking fate into her own hands and checking out the candidates for herself.

The Thieves

After a heist in South Korea, a gang of 5+1 fly to Hong Kong to look into a heist, in a Macau casino, of a $30M diamond, planned by someone unreliable. He brings in HK thieves as well. Can anyone be trusted?

The Witch: Part 1 – The Subversion

A high school student with amnesia tries to uncover what has happened to her. All leading her into deeper troubles ultimately revealing a darkness she could not have imagined.

The Classic

A college student finds a diary detailing a long-ago love triangle involving her mother, her future father, and his best friend.

Poetry

A sixty-something woman, faced with the discovery of a heinous family crime and in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, finds strength and purpose when she enrolls in a poetry class.

Joint Security Area

After a shooting incident at the North/South Korean border/DMZ leaves 2 North Korean soldiers dead, a neutral Swiss/Swedish team investigates, what actually happened.

Oldboy

After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-Su is released, only to find that he must find his captor in five days.

Snowpiecer

In a future where a failed climate-change experiment has killed all life except for the lucky few who boarded the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe, a new class system emerges.

The Host

A monster emerges from Seoul’s Han River and begins attacking people. One victim’s loving family does what it can to rescue her from its clutches.

Maundy Thrusday

 A suicidal girl started to visit a convicted murderer awaiting execution every Thursday.

Love Forecast

An elegant weather reporter on TV and a foul-mouthed boozer off, Hyun-woo juggles three relationships with three men of different personalities. This is the “love story” of her life.

Romance of Their Own

Han-kyung comes to town to live with her mom. Attracted to her pure charm, the most popular guys Hae-won and Tae-sung fight each other for her.

More Than Blue

“K” loves Cream but has terminal cancer so he keeps his love for her secret and tries to find a mate for her before he dies so she will not be alone after he dies.

Architecture 101

Seung-Min is hired against his wishes by an old flame to design and build her new home.

Train To Busan

While a zombie virus breaks out in South Korea, passengers struggle to survive on the train from Seoul to Busan.

Tune in for Love

In 1994 during the IMF crisis, two people meet while exchanging stories on a radio program. They fall in love, but can’t quite seem to get the timing right.

Tunnel

A man is on his way home when the poorly constructed tunnel he is driving through collapses, leaving him trapped.

Twenty

Three 20-year-old friends embrace life’s possibilities and changes and cause havoc wherever possible.

V.I.P

The son of a high-ranking North Korean official is suspected of committing serial murders around the world, and is chased by South Korea, North Korea and Interpol.

Veteran

A detective hunts down a young and successful man.

Windstruck

The heart-warming romance story between Kyungjin and Myungwoo. Even though he has passed away, he will be always with Kyungwoo forever.

Witness

A man witnesses a cruel murder and becomes entangled in circumstances out of his control.

Seondal: The Man Who Sells the River

Based on the popular conman character of KIM Seon-dal from Korean folktale who famously sold the water of Daedong River.

The Magician

Hwan-hee (Yoo Seung-ho) is a successful magician, whose tricks excite the audience of the fading Joseon era. With his blind adoptive sister Bo-eum (Jo Yoon-hee), who works as a Gisaeng, he has secured himself a good position in a society in which hunger is part of everyday life

The Manhole

A young girl is kidnapped by a serial killer. The serial killer uses manholes to kidnap and kill his victims. The young girl’s older sister tries to save her before it’s too late.