7 K-dramas with unique conditions and abilities, from ‘Take Charge of My Heart’ to ‘Pinocchio’

Unique ability: touch that transfers the ability to see ghosts

In tvN’s supernatural romantic comedy Spooky in Love, streaming on Netflix, a single touch comes with a rather spooky consequence. Cheon Yeo-ri (Park Eun-bin), a hotel heiress who can see and hear ghosts, can also pass on her ability to see the dead through touch. To keep her secret safe, Yeo-ri—much like Na Bo-bae in Take Charge of My Heart—keeps her hands gloved and keeps her distance. Unsurprisingly, her unusual condition has made it difficult for her to form meaningful relationships.

Then she meets Ma Gang-uk (Yang Se-jong), an ace prosecutor with a fierce commitment to justice and one glaring weakness: he is terrified of ghosts. When their hands meet, Gang-uk temporarily sees dead people himself, and what begins as a reluctant arrangement soon proves useful. Working cold cases together, Yeo-ri relays what the spirits of murder victims tell her, while Gang-uk turns those leads into evidence, helping restless souls find justice.

See more: 7 K-drama ghosts who broke our hearts, from ‘Spooky in Love’ to ‘Hi Bye, Mama!’

Unique condition: hiccups whenever she lies

When Choi In-ha (Park Shin-hye) lies, she has an unmistakable tell. In the hit SBS K-drama Pinocchio, the aspiring reporter has a fictional condition known as Pinocchio syndrome, which makes her hiccup whenever she’s not being honest. Even a small fib can set her off, leaving her little room to hide her feelings or even tell little white lies. Her condition also complicates her dream of becoming a broadcast journalist, a career built on separating fact from fiction. But it is only one part of a story that intertwines romance, family secrets and the consequences of telling the truth.

Her bond with Choi Dal-po (Lee Jong-suk) is just as layered. In-ha’s grandfather takes the boy in, mistaking him for his long-lost son, and gives him a new name, making Dal-po In-ha’s “uncle” although the two are not related by blood. As they get older, their feelings grow into something more than family. Both end up as rookie reporters at rival stations, where they must navigate the pressures of the media industry while uncovering buried secrets from their families’ pasts.

Unique condition: allergic to human touch

In the MBC rom-com K-drama I’m Not a Robot, Kim Min-kyu (Yoo Seung-ho) has it all: immense wealth, striking looks and a position as the principal shareholder of a finance firm. But a life-threatening allergy to physical touch has left him utterly shut away from the world—until he arranges a private trial of Aji 3, an advanced humanoid robot designed to look and behave like a real person.

Unbeknownst to Min-kyu, the actual Aji 3 malfunctions, prompting its creator, Hong Baek-gyun, to ask his ex-girlfriend to stand in for the android. Jo Ji-ah (Chae Soo-bin, who also stars in Take Charge of My Heart), an aspiring entrepreneur on whom Aji 3 is modelled, agrees.

Min-kyu’s condition turns out to be a psychological response to trauma. Believing Ji-ah is a robot gives him the freedom to interact with her without the reaction he experiences around other people. Part comedy of errors, part study in vulnerability, I’m Not a Robot is ultimately about the importance of human connections in helping people find healing.

Unique ability: lie detection

Nobody gets a lie past Mok Sol-hee (Kim So-hyun) in the romantic mystery K-drama My Lovely Liar. She may have found a lucrative use for her uncanny talent, helping clients uncover the truth, but years of spotting people’s lies have left her jaded. When Kim Do-ha (Hwang Min-hyun), a composer who has retreated from public life since becoming a murder suspect, enters her life, she is more intrigued than wary. He is the first person Sol-hee cannot get a read on, and her curiosity only grows once he moves in next door.

Drawn to Do-ha despite his apparent immunity to her ability—or perhaps because of it—Sol-hee has to learn to take someone at their word without leaning on her special gift. Do-ha, for his part, needs the courage to let someone into his life. Beyond the mystery, My Lovely Liar is a romance about truths, secrets and the space between them where trust can grow.

Unique ability: touch allows access to a person’s memories

In the fantasy mystery romance He Is Psychometric, Lee Ahn (Park Jinyoung) lives with psychometry, a gift he never asked for. Since the fire that killed both his parents, a touch can set someone else’s memories playing in his head. His gift, however, is far from foolproof. Ahn struggles to control what he sees, and the fragments he picks up do not always give him the full picture. Even so, he sets out to put it to work on criminal cases, hoping it might reveal clues that conventional investigations have missed.

Yoon Jae-in (Shin Ye-eun) barrels into his life with secrets of her own. By the time she becomes a police officer, she is helping Ahn learn to control his ability, and the cases they work on together draw their pasts ever deeper into the truth behind the fire. Ahn may see what others cannot, but making sense of what he sees takes more than a gift. Piece by piece, as the past falls into place, their partnership gives way to romance.

Unique ability: seeing smells as colours and shapes

For Oh Cho-rim (Shin Se-kyung), every scent has a colour and a shape. In the fantasy romance thriller The Girl Who Sees Smells, an accident leaves her with amnesia and a curious sixth sense that turns smells into something she can see. It is the kind of bizarre side effect that proves unexpectedly useful when she meets detective Choi Moo-gak (Park Yoo-chun), a man who cannot smell, taste or feel pain.

The two are bound up in the same case. Cho-rim is the sole witness to the Barcode Murders, although she cannot remember what she saw, while Moo-gak, whose younger sister was one of the victims, is determined to track down the killer. His missing senses and her extra one make for a neat match, and the colours she sees help them close in on the culprit, and on each other.

From a touch that can recharge an artificial heart to a supernatural gift that reveals memories, these seven K-dramas prove that an unusual ability can do more than set a character apart. It can complicate intimacy, expose hidden truths and bring people together in the most unexpected circumstances.

If you’re searching for K-dramas with unique conditions and abilities, Take Charge of My Heart, My Lovely Liar, He Is Psychometric and the other titles on this list offer different takes on the connection between extraordinary gifts and ordinary human feelings. Whether you prefer romantic comedies, crime-solving duos or fantasy romances, these stories show how a strange condition or superpower can become the starting point for a much bigger story.

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