The Best Korean Thrillers on Netflix, Ranked

This 2023 thriller hits close to home in the age of technology and smartphone privacy. As if losing your phone isn’t nightmarish enough, imagine someone dangerous with little regard for life getting ahold of it and tracking your every move.

Lee Na-mi (Chun Woo-hee) loses her phone and the bus and receives a call to pick it up. Jun-Yeong (Yim Si-wan) tricks her by putting spyware on her phone and begins terrorizing her personal and professional life. How would you combat someone who knows your entire schedule as you update it?

Is it possible for a serial killer to have a conscience? This film explores a phone in the same home that connects two people (Park Shin-hye, Jeon Jong-seo) 20 years apart.

Through that connection, a serial killer and a distressed woman try to change each other’s fate but this leads to many outcomes and consequences.

No one wants to know when they’ll die and be sent to Hell, let alone know it’ll be by three supernatural monsters.

The series focuses on how this phenomenon is weighing on society, the fear-mongering being used by two organizations that have risen from the chaos, and the desperate search for the truth behind it all. 

This film was released at the height of the COVID pandemic which added to the overall eeriness.

#Alive follows Oh Joon-woo (Yoo Ah-in) as he’s alone in his family’s apartment when a grisly virus spreads across the city, rapidly turning people into zombies. Digitally cut off from the world, he tries to desperately seek help and find a way out of his complex. 

After losing his whole family in a tragic accident, Cha Hyun-su (Song Kang) moves into a rundown apartment complex. Horrific monsters appear and start ravaging the city, leading to all the residents banding together to survive. Cha Hyun-su ends up undergoing a transformation that leads the residents to decide if he’s a friend or foe. 

This K-thriller had a very strong lead with Song Hye-kyo as the main character. She plays a former victim of school violence who seeks revenge by becoming the homeroom teacher at the elementary school of her bully’s child.

This show was painful to watch, not because it was explicitly graphic but the level of cruelty that these kids had towards a classmate simply because of their status and the fragility of her home life. The Glory had many layers to it for a limited series but what made it powerful was the fact that some scenes were based on a true event in 2006 in South Korea.

This drama-thriller is another horror you can add to the list of things that could go wrong with social media. The series follows a developer (Kang Hae-lim) for a social connecting app, “Somebody,” even though ironically she’s not the best at communicating with people.

A murder takes place, and the app is involved which unravels into very complex layers. The main premise is that people are willing to go to dangerous lengths to feel accepted and validated even though most of the characters feel incredibly lonely.

This 2016 horror thriller is non-stop from start to finish. Cynical workaholic Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) boards a train to Busan with his estranged daughter so she can see her mother. Before the train departs, an ill woman boards the train and chaos is not far behind.

You meet different groups on the train as they try to survive the zombie outbreak happening on the train between cars. When they all finally come together, it’s an adrenaline-riddled fight for survival against zombies and panicked, selfish passengers.

What would you do for $4.56 million? This thriller series took the world by storm with the audiences questioning what they’d do if put into the position.

Even with the comedic moments for levity, the psychological thriller focuses on people desperate for money to change their situations but not taking into account just what they’d be subjecting themselves to. 

This series was watched in over 474.26 million hours in the first 30 days. You follow a group of high school students (Park Ji-hu, Yoon Chan-young, Jo Hi-hyun, Lomon) who are trapped after a science teacher’s experience goes wrong causing a vicious zombie outbreak.

With zombies running at a full sprint and their parents trying to reach them, the students must survive and reach safety. 

Here’s another zombie thriller with great jump scares. This series blends political thriller and elements of zombie horror.

It follows a crown prince (Ju Ji-hoon) as he investigates a mysterious illness that afflicted the King to find the same deadly epidemic is ravaging the countryside and spreading into cities. The heir attempts to save the Kingdom from the plague while trying to stop his political opponents from stealing the throne. The series also has a side sequel to the second season called “Ashin of the North” which explores the origins of disease and a character that the crown prince encounters. 

The number one spot is going to the 2003 cult classic film. This mystery thriller will have you questioning everything and everyone until the final moments of the film.

You follow obnoxious drunk Oh Dae-Su (Choi Min-sik) who wakes up in a windowless hotel held captive after being drugged. He’s finally released after being tortured for 15 years for an unknown reason with only a TV to keep him company. He seeks revenge on his captors but turns into a dark journey into who hates him enough to torment him and why.