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Autumn is K-drama season. Something about the cooler air, the longer evenings, and the falling leaves makes Korean dramas hit harder, the romance burn slower, and the melancholy land with more weight. If you are looking for your next obsession to ride out the season, here are five K-dramas whose autumn aesthetics, retro nostalgia, and slow-burning emotions are absolutely worth your fall evenings.
1. Reply 1988 (응답하라 1988, 2015 to 2016)
Reply 1988 is the autumn K-drama. Set in a cul-de-sac in Seoul's Ssangmun-dong in 1988, it follows five families whose teenagers grow up tangled in the same alley, the same leftover dinners, and the same impossibly slow love triangles. The drama has no real villain and no world-ending stakes. It is simply about ordinary people loving each other extraordinarily well, the kind of show where a single bowl of stew passed between two front gates can make you cry. Its themes of memory, neighborhood, and friendships that quietly define a generation feel sharpest when watched as the leaves are turning. Even today its finale holds the record as the highest-rated drama in Korean cable television history.
2. My Mister (나의 아저씨, 2018)
If you watch one K-drama this autumn, make it My Mister. This 16-episode tvN series follows the unlikely bond between a middle-aged structural engineer drowning in debt, family pressure, and corporate humiliation, and a young woman surviving homelessness and a violent loan shark. What sounds like a grim premise becomes one of the most quietly devastating and ultimately hopeful dramas ever made in Korea. The performances by Lee Sun-kyun and IU (Lee Ji-eun) are extraordinary, and the drama's willingness to sit with sadness, loneliness, and human imperfection without rushing to resolve them feels true. Its grey-blue Seoul cinematography, late-night subway walks, and the title track Dear Moon make it the definitive cold-evening watch. It won Best Drama at the 55th Baeksang Arts Awards in 2019.
3. Mr. Sunshine (미스터 션샤인, 2018)
For epic-scale autumn watching, Mr. Sunshine is unmatched. Set in Hanseong (today's Seoul) at the turn of the 20th century, just before Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910, the 24-episode series follows Eugene Choi (Lee Byung-hun), a Korean-born US Marine Corps officer who returns to the homeland he escaped as a child, and finds himself falling for Go Ae-shin (Kim Tae-ri), a noblewoman secretly training as a sniper for the righteous army resistance. Written by Kim Eun-sook (Goblin, Descendants of the Sun) with a reported 40 billion won budget, the show is shot with cinema-grade lenses and the autumnal Joseon palettes of dusky burgundy, rust gold, and slate grey that look like moving paintings. The finale drew 18.1 percent ratings, ranking it among the highest-rated dramas in Korean cable history.
4. Encounter (남자친구, 2018 to 2019)
Encounter (also known as Boyfriend) is the autumn romance. A wealthy hotel CEO and political heir, Cha Soo-hyun (Song Hye-kyo), crosses paths in Havana, Cuba with Kim Jin-hyuk (Park Bo-gum), a free-spirited young man traveling alone on savings from his part-time jobs. Their first chapter is filmed across actual Cuban locations, the Malecón, the Hotel Nacional, sun-bleached colonial streets, before the story returns to a Seoul of glassy hotel lobbies, autumn parks, and quiet downtown alleys. Director Park Shin-woo's deliberately slow pacing, with its long looks and unspoken understandings, became its calling card. The premiere set a new tvN Wednesday-Thursday ratings record at 8.7 percent, and its quietly stylish wardrobe and Song Hye-kyo's bob haircut made global fashion headlines.
5. Twenty-Five Twenty-One (스물다섯 스물하나, 2022)
For retro-tinted romance with a sharp autumn ache, Twenty-Five Twenty-One is essential. Set against the IMF financial crisis that hit Korea in the late 1990s, the tvN series follows Na Hee-do (Kim Tae-ri), a high schooler whose fencing team is dissolved overnight, and Baek Yi-jin (Nam Joo-hyuk), a once-wealthy college student forced into delivery work after his family's business collapses. Their slow-burning friendship-to-romance unfolds across rain-soaked sports stadiums, fluorescent-lit comic-book rentals, and the kind of leaf-strewn neighborhood scenes that made the show one of the highest-rated dramas in Korean cable history. The series has a famously bittersweet ending. If you want a K-drama that captures the season's wistful undertone perfectly, this is it.
How to Watch These K-Dramas This Autumn
All five of these K-dramas are available globally on major streaming platforms. Reply 1988, My Mister, Mr. Sunshine, and Twenty-Five Twenty-One stream on Netflix, while Encounter is on Viki and Netflix in select regions. Brew a hot cup of yujacha or sikhye, queue up the first episode after the sun goes down, and let the season's slower light do the rest. If you fall in love with one, you will probably end up watching all five.
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