Most anticipated title August – Four Hands, Two Sonatas. (Song Kang / Lee Jun-young) Exciting casting, Song’s return to TV after the army and Lee Jun-young promice to make this the one to watch. Can it beat Can this Love be translated? for best of the year?
My Bias, My Boss
Lead cast: Kim Hye-jun, Kang Hoon, Cha Woo-min
Kim plays Nam Da-reum, an ordinary young woman who lands her dream job at online fashion company Appello. It is her ideal role because Lee Chan (Cha), an idol-turned-actor she has long been a fan of, is employed there.
Kang appears as Appello CEO Kang Ha-gi, who shares an unusual bond with Chan. As Da-reum gets closer to her colleagues, a tale of misunderstandings and unexpected romance unfolds. (August 3)
Flex X Cop season 2 (Disney+)
Lead cast: Ahn Bo-hyun, Jung Eun-chae
Ahn Bo-hyun is back as corporate heir turned police officer Jin I-soo in the second season of the action comedy Flex X Cop. Jung Eun-chae (Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born) takes over Park Ji-hyun’s female lead role, playing a new character in the series.
After accidentally becoming a detective in season one, I-soo completes official training at the police academy before returning to the Violent Crimes Unit. Unfortunately, his new team leader is Joo Hye-ra (Jung), the academy instructor who tormented him and continues to hold a very dim view of the detective.
A contentious partnership unfolds between Hye-ra, a former counterterrorism ace, and I-soo, who can lean on his family’s immense wealth and resources to give him a crime-fighting edge. (Disney+, August 7)
Our Sticky Love
Lead cast: Jung Hae-in, Ha Young
Netflix [ENG SUB] (Aug 7th)
Following her breakout turn in The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call and a memorable supporting role in Teach You a Lesson, Ha Young tackles her first leading role in the Netflix series Our Sticky Love, in which she shares the limelight with Jung Hae-in (D.P.).
Ha plays Go Eun-sae, a successful prosecutor whose career is suddenly halted when she develops amnesia while investigating a case. She wakes up in a rural town without her memories or her fingerprints, making it impossible to identify her.
Jang Tae-ha (Jung), a former boxer now working as a boxing coach, shows up claiming to be her boyfriend. Tae-ha is not telling the truth; however, Eun-sae was his first love. As they investigate what happened to her, the question becomes whether love built on a lie can evolve into the real thing. (Netflix, August 7)
A Trap Called Desire
Lead cast: Jang Seo-hee, Jeon Hye-won
Jang Seo-hee (Game of Witches) and Jeon Hye-won (No Gain No Love) headline A Trap Called Desire.
Jeon plays Go Eun-seol, a woman falsely accused of murder who attempts to clear her name and seek revenge on those who tarnished it. Standing in her way is Joo Mi-ran (Jang), who has built her life on lies and deception.
In this melodramatic mystery-thriller, Eun-seol digs for the truth, reconnecting along the way with her first love Cha Seok-jin (Seol Jung-hwan, Red Balloon) and locking horns with Cheongma Group heiress Kang Hae-ra (Joo Sae-byeok, Iron Family). (Awaiting UK streaming info, August 10)
OK! Let’s Get Divorced
Lead cast: Lee Min-jung, Kim Ji-suk
Marriage-themed drama as Baek Mi-young, a woman who dreamed of following in her tailor father’s footsteps.
While working at a wedding gown shop, she met and married her designer colleague Ji Won-ho (Kim Ji-suk, Kiss Sixth Sense). Together, they left the gown shop to form their own company, G&White, but after a period of marital bliss, their relationship began to sour.
Now, after seven years together, Mi-young asks for a divorce while simultaneously trying to protect the company they built together from going under. (August 19) Streaming tbc
Four Hands, Two Sonatas (Netflix)
Lead cast: Song Kang, Lee Jun-young, Jang Gyu-ri
Song Kang is back with the pianist drama Four Hands, Two Sonatas, alongside Lee Jun-young (Reborn Rookie) and Jang Gyu-ri (When the Phone Rings).
Set in an elite arts high school, the series follows three musical prodigies and the rivalries and friendships that develop between them. Song plays the brilliant pianist Kang Bi-o, who inspired the gifted Choi Jeong-yo (Lee), who grew up in a disadvantaged family and later enters the school as his new rival.
Also at the school is the viola major Hong Jae-in (Jang), who was similarly captivated by Bi-o’s playing as a child. ((August 29)
Running into August
Dream to You – Viki (Ep5: July 27 | Ep 6: July 28)
Two high school sweethearts, a broken promise, and fifteen years apart. Hwang In-youp plays Woo Soo-bin, once a directionless teenager, now an acclaimed film director fresh off winning Best New Director at an international festival. Lee Hye-ri plays Joo Yi-jae, the one who actually wanted to make movies back then, now working as a reporter just to pay rent. In his acceptance speech, Soo-bin thanks her by name, live and completely unannounced, for the dream she once gave him, a lovely gesture and a genuinely terrible way to walk back into someone’s life. Episodes 5 and 6 continue their prickly reunion, pushed along by an unfinished screenplay the two wrote together as teenagers.
A Shop for Killers Season 2 – JioHotstar (Ep3 & Ep4 July 29)
Season 1 made Jeong Ji-an, orphaned young and raised by her assassin uncle, one of the more compelling reluctant heroines in recent K-drama memory. Season 2 hands her the keys: she’s now CEO of Murthehelp, the online shopping mall that secretly arms killers for hire, and her uncle Jeong Jin-man, who faked his own death to protect her, is back at her side. Together they’re going after Babylon, the shadow organisation that’s hunted them for years, which has responded by importing new muscle, including a Japanese assassin played by Masaki Okada. Lee Dong-wook, reprising Jin-man, reportedly packed on close to 18 pounds of mostly protein to bring back the character’s heavier, more intimidating build. Episodes 3 and 4 pick up with a bounty now on Ji-an’s head, which means her quiet island hideout stops being safe.
A Bona Fide Killer – Viki (July 31)
Friday is the week’s biggest day, with two premieres landing at once. First up: Gong Hyo-jin, back on MBC for the first time in fifteen years, her last hit there was The Greatest Love, back in 2011. This time she plays Yoo Bo-na, who looks like any other working mother: picking up her daughter, getting scolded by her mother-in-law, helping her husband pick out his outfit. She’s also Kingfisher, a legendary sniper returning to the job after three years of childcare leave. The real tension isn’t the missions, it’s home, her husband, an investigative journalist played by Jung Joon-won, is quietly closing in on Kingfisher’s identity with no idea he’s married to her, while a police detective closes in from another direction entirely. Adapted from a Kakao webtoon, the show treats her double life less like an action gimmick and more like a countdown on a marriage.
The Affair Was Just the Beginning – Viki (July 31)
Kim Hye-soo stars as Kyung-hee, a self-made interior design influencer with a million subscribers, a ‘Gold Button’ award, the trophy YouTube hands out for hitting that number, and, by her own account, a life she’s basically perfected: dream home, devoted younger husband, total success. Next door lives a doctor couple in the middle of a bitter divorce, played by Cho Yeo-jeong and Kim Jae-chul. The show’s own marketing does the pitching for it: one poster’s tagline reads simply, ‘An affair would have been better.’ Whatever secret eventually links both households, it’s already clear that plain infidelity is the least of anyone’s problems here.
WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS
Spooky in Love – Netflix (Ep5: Aug 1 & Ep6: Aug 2)
The weekend brings three shows at once, starting with the one already turning into a genuine hit, two weeks running at No. 1 in Korean viewership, and sitting inside Netflix’s global non-English top ten. A modern remake of the 2011 film Spellbound, it stars Park Eun-bin as Cheon Yeo-ri, heir to one of Korea’s largest luxury hotel chains, who’s been seeing ghosts since a boating accident in college. Yang Se-jong plays Ma Gang-uk, a prosecutor who initially treats her like a murder suspect before realising her ability might solve cases nobody else can crack. The show plays its horror and its romance completely straight against each other, jump scares folding into meet-cutes, while quietly building a mystery around deaths nobody investigated properly the first time.
The Apartment Job – Netflix (Ep7: Aug 1 & Ep8: Aug 2)
Ji Sung is doing something new on two fronts at once: this is his first original Netflix series, and easily the lightest role he’s taken in years. He plays Park Hae-gang, a former gang boss who suddenly needs a lot of money, fast, to help someone from his past, so he runs for president of his own apartment complex’s residents’ association, planning to quietly skim the building’s hidden funds. Instead, he stumbles into real corruption inside the complex and, despite himself, starts turning into the neighborhood’s unlikely protector. The premiere was the most-watched cable broadcast in Korea on the day it aired. Episodes 7 and 8 push the con further into territory Hae-gang clearly didn’t plan for.
The Husband – JioHotstar (Ep9: Aug 1 & Ep10: Aug 2)
Closing out the week is the darkest premise of the bunch. Neurosurgeon Kang Tae-ju, played by Namkoong Min, and his wife, hospital chairwoman Ko Se-yun (Lee Seol), agree to divorce, and the very next day, she’s kidnapped. Tae-ju instantly becomes both a fugitive suspected of taking his own wife and the only person actually trying to find her. He gets help from a man whose own wife was taken by the same kidnapper six years earlier, which makes the alliance feel less like generosity and more like two people chasing the same unresolved nightmare.
| K-Drama | Platform | Release |
| Dream to You | Viki | Ep. 5 – July 27, Ep. 6 – July 28 |
| A Shop for Killers Season 2 | Disney | Ep. 3 & 4 – July 29 |
| A Bona Fide Killer | Viki | July 31 (Premiere) |
| The Affair Was Just the Beginning | Viki | July 31 (Premiere) |
| Spooky in Love | Netflix | Ep. 5 – Aug. 1, Ep. 6 – Aug. 2 |
| The Apartment Job | Netflix | Ep. 7 – Aug. 1, Ep. 8 – Aug. 2 |
| The Husband | Disney | Ep. 9 – Aug. 1, Ep. 10 – Aug. 2 |