Crash Landing on You has a premise that sounds like a dare. A South Korean heiress, Yoon Se-ri, is caught in a storm while paragliding and comes down in the Demilitarized Zone, where she is found by Ri Jeong-hyeok, a captain in the North Korean army who decides to hide her instead of reporting her. The 16-episode tvN series, written by Park Ji-eun and starring Hyun Bin and Son Ye-jin, ended in February 2020 with a 21.7 percent nationwide rating, at the time the highest in the channel's history.
What made it work was the mix: a romance across a border that should not be crossed, a squad of soldiers and village wives who supply the comedy, and real danger every time Se-ri's secret might slip. The ten dramas below each share at least two of those ingredients. We kept most of our original 2024 picks and replaced two that matched the mood less well.
1. Descendants of the Sun (2016)
A special forces captain and a surgeon fall for each other in Seoul, split over how they see duty, then meet again while deployed to the fictional war-torn country of Uruk. An earthquake and a string of other emergencies raise the stakes, and the banter between the two leads keeps it light. It is co-written by Kim Eun-sook, whose name returns several times on this list.
- FactsSong Joong-ki and Song Hye-kyo. KBS2, 16 episodes plus three specials.
2. Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (2016)
Better known as Goblin, this Kim Eun-sook fantasy pairs a 939-year-old immortal with a high school student who can see ghosts and may be the only one able to end his curse. The divide here is between the living and the eternal, but the formula is familiar to Crash Landing on You fans: a stoic man undone by a stubborn woman, a scene-stealing supporting cast and an ending that asks for tissues. It held tvN's ratings record until Crash Landing on You took it.
- FactsGong Yoo and Kim Go-eun, with Lee Dong-wook and Yoo In-na. tvN, 16 episodes.
3. Secret Garden (2010)
New on this list. Hyun Bin plays an arrogant department store CEO who falls for a stuntwoman far outside his social world, and then a body swap forces each of them to live the other's life. The class gap is the border, and the comedy comes from a man who has never had to consider anyone else. For viewers who came to Crash Landing on You for its lead, this is the earlier Hyun Bin performance most fans point to.
- FactsHyun Bin and Ha Ji-won. SBS, 20 episodes. Written by Kim Eun-sook.
4. The King: Eternal Monarch (2020)
An emperor from the Kingdom of Corea crosses into a parallel Republic of Korea and meets a police detective who assumes he is a fraud. The two worlds work like the two Koreas in Crash Landing on You: each side has rules the other does not understand, and staying together means one of them has to give up home. The plotting is denser than the other picks, so it rewards close watching.
- FactsLee Min-ho and Kim Go-eun. SBS, 16 episodes. Written by Kim Eun-sook.
5. Something in the Rain (2018)
Son Ye-jin plays a coffee franchise supervisor in her thirties who starts dating her best friend's younger brother, played by Jung Hae-in. There are no soldiers and no fantasy. The obstacles are the taboo around an older woman dating a younger man and the harassment she faces at work, both handled with a quiet realism. It is a good way to see a different side of the actress who played Se-ri.
- FactsSon Ye-jin and Jung Hae-in. JTBC, 16 episodes. Directed by Ahn Pan-seok.
6. Hotel del Luna (2019)
The owner of a hotel for ghosts has been bound to it for more than a thousand years, and her new general manager, a Harvard-educated hotelier, is there because of a deal his father made. Written by the Hong sisters, it switches between comedy and grief from one scene to the next, much as Crash Landing on You did in its village episodes.
- FactsIU (credited as Lee Ji-eun) and Yeo Jin-goo. tvN, 16 episodes.
7. Healer (2014)
Ji Chang-wook plays an illegal "night courier" hired to find and protect a young tabloid reporter, and the two are drawn into a mystery that reaches back to an underground pro-democracy radio station in the 1980s. It has the most action of any pick, but the romance carries a familiar tension: he hides his real identity from her, much as Se-ri has to hide hers in the North.
- FactsJi Chang-wook, Park Min-young and Yoo Ji-tae. KBS2, 20 episodes.
8. Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha (2021)
A Seoul dentist opens a clinic in the seaside village of Gongjin and keeps running into the local handyman everyone calls Chief Hong. The city-versus-village contrast mirrors Se-ri's time in Ri Jeong-hyeok's village, and the neighbors play the same role as the gossiping wives there. In the editors' view, it is the most comforting drama on this list.
- FactsShin Min-a and Kim Seon-ho. tvN, 16 episodes.
9. It's Okay to Not Be Okay (2020)
A psychiatric ward caregiver who looks after his autistic older brother crosses paths with a children's book author who becomes fixated on him. The romance is pricklier than Se-ri and Jeong-hyeok's, and the story deals openly with trauma. What it shares with Crash Landing on You is the idea of two damaged people slowly making each other braver.
- FactsKim Soo-hyun, Seo Yea-ji and Oh Jung-se. tvN, 16 episodes.
Each side has rules the other does not understand, and staying together means one of them has to give up home.
10. Queen of Tears (2024)
New on this list, and the most direct follow-up. Park Ji-eun wrote it, and the heroine is again a chaebol heiress at a company called Queens Group. Her husband is a lawyer from a farming village, and their marriage is close to collapse when she receives a serious diagnosis. The gap between his rural family and her wealthy one drives both the comedy and the drama. In April 2024 its finale reached a 24.9 percent rating and replaced Crash Landing on You as tvN's most-watched drama.
- FactsKim Soo-hyun and Kim Ji-won. tvN, 16 episodes plus two specials.
Editor's note: This story first appeared on kpop-fandom on 8 July 2024. It was rewritten and updated in October 2026: every cast, network and episode count was checked, two picks were replaced (Secret Garden and Queen of Tears in place of What's Wrong with Secretary Kim? and Touch Your Heart), and the ratings history of Crash Landing on You was added.
Sources The Korea Times: 21.7%, Crash Landing on You sets record for tvN drama, The Korea Times: Queen of Tears shatters tvN drama viewership record, ContentAsia: Queen of Tears ends with 24.85% audience share, Wikipedia: Crash Landing on You.