Upcoming Korean Dramas Releasing In May 2026

Okay so, the K-drama calendar in May is genuinely stacked, and I've been putting off this piece because there's just a lot. Perfect Crown is still the biggest show on Disney+, but unfortunately for us, it’ll end soon.

Song Hye-kyo and Gong Yoo are reuniting on Netflix for a 60s-to-80s music industry epic. Park Eun-bin is doing a Y2K superhero thing with Cha Eun-woo. There's a body-swap chaebol drama, a body-swap Joseon villainess drama, and — because we contain multitudes — Red Velvet's Yeri is becoming a freediver in a healing show.

If you only have time for two, make them Perfect Crown (so you can finally understand why everyone is unhinged about it) and The WONDERfools.

But here are the shows we’re excited about this month.

My Royal Nemesis

Lim Ji-yeon — fresh off The Tale of Lady Ok — plays a Joseon-era villainess who got death-by-poison'd for her sins and wakes up in 2026 inside the body of Shin Seo-ri, a struggling actress with no lines and worse luck. Meanwhile, Heo Nam-jun plays the chaebol heir nicknamed "a monster created by capitalism," which is the best character logline of the year. Think enemies-to-lovers, body possession, plus a soft jab at the K-drama industry's own period-drama-industrial complex.

Azure Spring

Yeri of Red Velvet plays Anna, frozen by anxiety about the future. Kang Sang-jun plays Deok-hyeon, stuck in his past. Both end up on the southern coast learning to freedive — she as a haenyeo, he as a haenam — harvesting shellfish off the seabed. The haenyeo are real: a UNESCO-recognised matriarchal community of women divers, mostly grandmothers now, whose tradition K-content keeps mining for metaphors about resilience and quiet endurance. This is Little Forest with saltwater. You will cry.

The WONDERfools

Park Eun-bin (Extraordinary Attorney Woo) and Cha Eun-woo lead a superhero comic-action set in 1999 about a group of Haeseong City misfits who suddenly develop powers and start investigating a string of disappearances. The 1999 setting is a sly choice: that was the year Korean pop culture began its global ascent. All eight episodes drop at once, so feel free to binge!

Reborn Rookie

This one has body-swap chaebol drama. Son Hyun-joo plays Kang Yong-ho, the tyrannical "God of Business" chairman of Choiseong Group, the kind of man who pits his own twin children against each other for sport. Then he crashes into footballer Hwang Jun-hyun (Lee Jun-young) and they swap souls. Now the man who built the empire has to start over as a rookie employee inside it, learning how his own company actually treats people. Over here, it’s more like Big meets Succession.

The Legend of Kitchen Soldier

Park Ji-hoon, currently being mobbed in cinemas thanks to The King's Warden (now the second-highest-grossing Korean film ever), trades the period epic for a ladle. He plays Private Kang Seong-jae, a top-of-his-class recruit shunted into kitchen duty because he's broke, until a video-game-style quest window pops up and starts levelling him into a culinary legend. Mandatory military service is the great shared trauma of Korean men, so turning it into a LitRPG cooking comedy is — sorry — chef's kiss.

Love Class 3

Saebyeol (WAKER), Seo Ihan, Lee Woo-jin (GHOST9), and Petch play four young men juggling idol dreams, group politics, and complicated feelings. Korean BL has quietly built a global devotee base over the last few years, and Love Class has been one of its more consistent franchises.