19 titles, most popular first
In 1997, Yong-gu, a man with a developmental disability, lives happily with his six-year-old daughter Ye-sung and promises to buy her a Sailor Moon backpack. After a tragic accident involving a police commissioner's young daughter, he is wrongly arrested for her death and sent to prison, where his cellmates at first look down on him.
In 1980, Kim Man-seob is a widowed taxi driver in Seoul, raising his child alone and buried in debt. When he overhears another driver boasting about a well-paid fare to Gwangju, he grabs the job for himself. His passenger is Peter, a German journalist hoping to report on the growing unrest there, which Man-seob knows nothing about.
Teenagers Yeo-jin and Jae-yeong are trying to save money for a trip to Europe. Jae-yeong sells herself to men while Yeo-jin sets up the meetings and keeps watch for the police, until one day a police raid goes wrong and their plan unravels with painful results.
Young-hee is an actress who leaves Seoul after a very public affair with a married film director. She spends time in Hamburg with her older friend Jee-young, wandering markets, parks and bookshops, and later returns to the Korean coastal city of Gangneung, where she meets old friends over dinner and drinks.
In 1950, during the Korean War, an American pilot crash-lands near Dongmakgol, a remote mountain village whose residents know nothing about the fighting. Soon three North Korean soldiers and two South Korean deserters are also led there, and the enemies end up in a tense standoff while the puzzled villagers carry on with their daily lives.
Longtime friends and married couple Seok-ho and Ye-jin host a housewarming dinner for their close friends. Over the meal, the group agrees to a game: every new message and call that comes in on their phones must be shared with the whole table. What begins as lighthearted fun soon grows more and more awkward.
After failing the national exam to become a teacher, Hye-won quits her part-time job in Seoul and heads back to the country village where she grew up. Her mother is no longer there, but as Hye-won cooks through the seasons, memories of how her mother made a home for her come back, and she reconnects with two childhood friends.
Im Na-mi is a well-off housewife who feels lonely and ignored by her husband and daughter. A hospital visit stirs memories of her 1980s school days, when she was a new girl teased for her country accent and was taken in by a lively group of friends called Sunny. Decades later, she sets out to find them again.
Won-il was once a promising swimmer like his champion father, but after losing both parents he quits the sport and lives recklessly. Facing expulsion, he is brought by his father's old friend Jae-suk to a sports high school, where he runs into his old rival Woo-sang, now a national swimming star forced to start over.
In 2014, a radio DJ receives a letter from his first love that stirs up long-buried memories. Back in the summer of 1991, five friends spend their days together, and shy, innocent Beom-sil falls for Soo-ok, a girl with an injured leg whom he carries wherever she needs to go.
Nineteen-year-old Yoon-young dreams of a civil service job and lives with her deaf single mother while working part-time at a café. After a violent assault one night, she ends up in prison, known only as inmate 2037. In despair, she pulls away from her mother and slowly finds support among her cellmates in room 12.
Kim Byung-doo is a small-time gangster in his late 20s who can't raise enough money to save his family from eviction. Desperate, he goes over the head of his boss, Sang-chul, and takes a dangerous job straight from President Hwang, the man above them. Meanwhile, he reunites with childhood friend Min-ho, now a director making a gangster film.
Hong Jeong-hye is serving ten years in prison for killing her abusive husband, and the son she bears behind bars must, by law, be given up for adoption. Promised a day out with her infant if she pulls it off, she sets out to form a choir with fellow inmates, including death-row prisoner Kim Moon-ok.
Four best friends set off on one last trip together before one of them leaves to do his military service. Along the way, they become caught up in an incident that changes the course of their lives forever.
Three lonely people cross paths at a department store. Mi-jung, a stockroom worker, keeps to herself to avoid others' eyes; Yo-han, who works in the parking garage, is outgoing and loves rock music; and Kyung-rok has traded his dreams for a safe but empty life. Kyung-rok is drawn to Mi-jung right away.
Wei Wei is a young circus ringmaster whose only family and friend is Ling Ling, a gorilla who can swing a baseball bat. When her grandfather dies and leaves a huge debt, a loan shark wants to take Ling Ling away to pay it off, so Wei Wei lets a money-minded sports agent named Sung bring the gorilla to play in the Korean Baseball League.
Yong-ju, Gi-woong and Gi-taek were best friends in middle school, but they have since drifted apart, with Gi-woong now a feared fighter who runs with a powerful bully's gang. Under heavy pressure to get into a top university, Yong-ju worries as Gi-taek is targeted by the gang, while his own feelings for Gi-woong grow.
Early in King Sunjo's reign, the scholar Jeong Yak-jeon is banished to remote Heuksan Island. Fascinated by sea life, he hopes to record it in a book and asks for help from Chang-dae, a young fisherman who knows the waters well but refuses to work with a convicted man, until Jeong offers to tutor him in return.
After her mother's death, lonely Soo-rin moves to Hwano Road with her new stepfather and keeps to herself until a boy named Sung-min befriends her. One day they go into the mountains with friends to watch a construction blast, and everyone vanishes except Soo-rin. Days later, a grown man appears, claiming to be Sung-min.
