10 Highest Rated K-Dramas On TV, Ranked By Nielsen Ratings

Korean Dramas are becoming more and more popular across the world as the distribution for them has expanded to streaming services to let even more people have access. Some of the best K-Dramas are more than a few years old but are staples for everyone becoming invested within the media form.

Classic K-Dramas like Boys Over Flowers and The Heirs are must-see K-Dramas for everyone starting out, but that list of “must-see” dramas are slowly growing over time based on new dramas that have made waves throughout the nationally high ratings on cable television.

10 Hotel Del Luna

Hotel del Luna is a fairly new K-Drama, it only aired in 2019, but it became a huge success during its run time. This K-Drama is about the grouchy CEO of a hotel for ghosts.

She, herself, is immortal and condemned to run the hotel and keep its clients happy until they choose to move on. But she has a few secrets up her sleeve, and only her new -and very human- hotel manager can help her uncover them so that she, too, may be able to move on.

9 Hospital Playlist

Hospital Playlist is not the typical run-of-the-mill medical drama like Grey’s Anatomy or House. This K-Drama dives much deeper into the friendships of the hospital staff and their shared lives as they have been together since undergrad.

This K-Drama was incredibly heartwarming and loved by all who watched it. It became the ninth highest-rated show on cable by the time it finished airing and is getting a second season, which is extremely rare for any K-Drama.

8 100 Days My Prince

After unfortunate events, Lee Yul becomes the crown prince to the throne and suffers a life of lies and deceit from his own family. He is hated by his new step-mother and forced into a marriage he despises. However, he isn’t perfect either, and constantly makes brash decisions which makes him unfair in the kingdom’s eyes.

After being nearly assassinated and losing his memory, he gets sucked into a marriage with a peasant woman who may or may not be someone from his past.

7 Itaewon Class

Itaewon Class focuses on the hardships of running your own business while everyone else is just waiting to see you fail. This ragtag group gets together to open up their own restaurant in the Itaewon district, where the hottest and trendiest restaurants lay.

But, unfortunately, none of them know how to market themselves that well and the restaurant finds itself without customers. That is until they meet Jo Yi-Seo, a social media influencer who decides to become the restaurant’s manager. Together they fight to overcome the evil ways of a corporate restaurant chain they find themselves competing with.

6 Mr. Sunshine

Mr. Sunshine is the sixth highest-rated K-Drama series that aired on cable television and actually a Netflix Original. This K-Drama is a period piece about a time in Korean that many K-Dramas don’t really cover, right before the Japanese occupation of Korea. This follows a man who had born as a slave in Joseon but escaped to the United States, joining the Marines.

He gets a mission that sends him back to Joseon, which is when he falls in love with an aristocrat’s daughter and uncovers the plot that the Empire of Japan plans to colonize Korea.

5 Guardian: The Lonely And Great God

Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (also referred to as Goblin) has been considered to be one of, if not the, best K-Drama series out there and is the fifth highest-rated. This K-Drama follows Kim Shin who is cursed to a life of immortality for supposedly betraying his kingdom.

His sentence was to live long enough to watch everyone he loves die for years on end until he meets the fateful person who would be the Goblin’s wife, the one to end his long life. This K-Drama has it all and has some of the best characters in any drama.

4 Reply 1988

Reply 1988 is another K-Drama that is widely considered to be one of the best K-Dramas out there. It is also the oldest K-Drama on this list and so it only recently got bested by the top three highest-rated. Reply 1988 is a K-Drama about friendship, love, youth, and family. It is the most heartwarming series and will have any viewer become an instant fan.

Deok-Sun recounts her final years of youth in 1988 and beyond with her four best friends from the neighborhood. The story dives into each character and their family, becoming almost generational. The parents are all friends and deal with middle-aged woes, Deok Sun and her friends are in high school, attempting to make something out of themselves and falling in love, and it bounces back and forth between each character, forcing audiences to fall in love with everyone. This is the kind of series that will have fans humming the theme song whenever they simply think of this show.

3 Crash Landing On You

Crash Landing On You is a newer Netflix K-Drama that made huge waves in the community and brought on a ton of new fans of the genre due to its strange but enticing synopsis.

After a paragliding accident, young heiress Yoon Se-ri accidentally lands in North Korea, where a military officer finds her and decides to help her. The two struggle to hide while they slowly fall in love with one another.

2 SKY Castle

This satirical K-Drama, SKY Castle, follows 4 housewives living in the luxurious residential neighborhood, SKY Castle, and their materialistic obsessions as they ruthlessly try to secure the success for their families.

Of course, almost all of the housewives and their husbands have secrets that are slowly revealed throughout the progression of this series. This K-Drama is a dark comedy as each of the families ends up getting entangled with one another.

1 The World Of The Married

The World of the Married is the highest-rated K-Drama on cable TV and just released its first episode in March and ended in May of 2020. This K-Drama is based on the BBC drama, Doctor Foster, and follows a couple who seem to have it all except for unfaithful marriage.

After a decade of marriage, Lee Tae-oh is tired of relying on his wife for financial stability and success. So when he meets a young woman who thinks highly of him, he enters an affair and keeps it hidden. When his wife later finds an unknown hair on her scarf, her suspicions begin to rise.

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