Agent Kim Reactivated’s runaway success has sparked demand for similar K-dramas blending covert pasts, family stakes and dark humour. From The Fiery Priest’s foul-mouthed ex-spy priest to A Shop for Killers’ secretive uncle and Family: The Unbreakable Bond’s undercover sniper husband, viewers can stream multiple series where ordinary lives collide violently with hidden identities.
Agent Kim Reactivated has turned into one of SBS's biggest hits of the year, with its fourth episode crossing 20% nationwide viewership, faster than any Friday-Saturday drama in the network's history. Part of its success comes down to So Ji-sub, who plays a former black ops agent hiding behind the most ordinary cover imaginable - a savings bank manager and single dad - until his daughter, Min-ji, goes missing, forcing him to abandon the act.
What makes it work is not just the fighting, it is the question sitting underneath all of it, how much of the ordinary father survives once the operative takes back over. If that mix of hard hitting action, dry humour and a father-daughter story pulled you in, there is no shortage of Korean dramas mining the same territory. From a foul mouthed priest with a spy past to a mild mannered uncle running a black market weapons shop, here are five shows that hit the same notes.
Kim Nam-gil plays Kim Hae-il, a Catholic priest with an explosive temper and, as it turns out, a past as a National Intelligence Service operative. When his mentor is murdered in what is ruled a suicide, he teams up with a timid, talkative detective and an ambitious young prosecutor to expose the corruption behind it. The 2019 series became the highest rated SBS miniseries of that year and won Kim Nam-gil the network's Daesang, its top acting honour. A second season landed on Disney Plus in late 2024, moving the investigation to a drug ring in Busan. If you want proof that action dramas do not have to take themselves seriously to be good, this is it.
So Ji-sub returns here as Nam Gi-jun, a former top enforcer who severed his own Achilles tendon eleven years ago just to be allowed to leave Seoul's criminal underworld. Peace does not last. When his younger brother Gi-seok, by then second in command of the Juwoon gang, turns up dead, Gi-jun comes back armed with nothing but a baseball bat and no interest in restraint. Adapted from the webtoon Plaza Wars, the 2025 Netflix series digs through eleven years of buried gang history to find out who really ordered the killing, and the answer runs closer to the top than anyone expects. It is a much darker, much bloodier watch than Agent Kim Reactivated, but the core idea, a man dragged back into violence to protect family, is the same.
Lee Dong-wook plays Jeong Jin-man, the quiet uncle who raised his niece Ji-an after her parents were murdered, running what she believes is an online agricultural supply warehouse. Then he is declared dead by apparent suicide, their home comes under drone and sniper attack within the same episode, and Ji-an realises she never actually knew the man who raised her. The 2024 Disney Plus series, adapted from Kang Ji-young's novel, became the platform's most watched Korean original, and a second season arrived in July 2026. The uncle-niece bond driving the story runs on the exact same tension as Agent Kim Reactivated, a hidden identity that only reveals itself once the people closest to it are in danger.
Jang Hyuk plays Kwon Do-hoon, an NIS sniper who has spent ten years of marriage convincing his wife Kang Yu-ra, played by Jang Na-ra in their fourth on screen pairing, that he works an ordinary trading company job. The show leans harder into comedy than Agent Kim Reactivated does, missed anniversaries and all, but the emotional stakes are real once Yu-ra's own hidden past starts catching up with the family. It aired on tvN in 2023 to solid ratings and later found a wider audience on Disney Plus and Hulu, where fans have kept asking for a follow up ever since.
Han Yi-han was once South Korea's top cardiothoracic surgeon before a rigged operation cost him his license and his fiancee. Five years later he comes back as a medical malpractice lawyer, and the prosecutor he now faces in court is the same woman he lost everything with. There is no black ops backstory here, just So Ji-sub playing quiet, controlled fury across a courtroom instead of a battlefield, which makes it worth a look for anyone curious how far his range stretches beyond the genre Agent Kim Reactivated has him known for right now.