10 essential Kim So-hyun K-dramas, from ‘Between Steps’ to ‘Love Alarm’

In Good Boy, the JTBC high-octane cop K-drama streaming on Prime Video, Kim So-hyun joins Park Bo-gum, Lee Sang-yi, Heo Sung-tae and Tae Won-seok as part of a team of former Olympians recruited into a special police unit. She plays Ji Han-na, an Olympic shooting gold medallist known as the “shooting goddess”, who bids farewell to her athletic career and joins the force her father once served.

As Han-na settles into her new career, she acts as the squad’s tactical support and sharpshooter. Together with her teammates, she takes on a dangerous adversary whose corrupt network reaches the highest levels of power. Her personal life is just as fraught, with family trauma and a love triangle involving Park Bo-gum’s Yoon Dong-ju, a hotheaded former boxing champion who is hopelessly devoted to her, and Lee Sang-yi’s Kim Jong-hyun, a former fencer hoping to win her back.

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Serendipity’s Embrace is a second-chance romance K-drama starring Kim So-hyun as Lee Hong-ju and Chae Jong-hyeop as Kang Hu-young. In the tvN series, Hong-ju is an animation production PD who has sworn off love after a painful first relationship, while Hu-young is a smart, successful financial planner who returns to South Korea after a decade in the US.

Hong-ju is Hu-young’s first love. Back in high school, she played cupid for her best friend, delivering love letters to Hu-young without ever suspecting that she was the one he wanted. However, when Hu-young left for the US, the two lost touch. A decade later, fate offers them another chance, but just as Hong-ju begins to catch feelings, her ex-boyfriend, the novelist Bang Jun-ho, re-enters her life, while Hu-young’s ties to the US threaten to pull him away again.

Kim So-hyun stars as Mok Sol-hee, a human lie detector, in the tvN K-drama My Lovely Liar. Although she has turned her ability to tell whether someone is lying into a way of earning money, her gift, or curse, has also left her wary of people.

Then comes a man her ability cannot read: Kim Do-ha (Hwang Min-hyun), a songwriter who hides his face and keeps his distance from everyone. When he moves in next door, Sol-hee is intrigued less by his reclusive nature than by the fact that he doesn’t set off her ability, and she is drawn in despite herself.

When Do-ha’s dark past finally catches up with him, Sol-hee must decide whether to trust her gift or the man she has fallen in love with. What begins as an unusual neighbourly encounter soon becomes a mystery romance about trust, forgiveness and finding someone you can finally believe.

Kim So-hyun takes on her first historical action role in River Where the Moon Rises, wielding a sword as Goguryeo Princess Pyeonggang and her assassin alter ego, Yeom Ga-jin. The KBS2 fusion sageuk reimagines the familiar Korean folktale of Princess Pyeonggang and General On Dal, with Pyeonggang portrayed as an ambitious royal who dreams of becoming the first female ruler of Goguryeo.

After a childhood tragedy leaves Pyeonggang separated from her royal identity and without her memories, she grows up as Yeom Ga-jin, a skilled assassin. Her path eventually crosses with On Dal, a peace-loving man drawn into Pyeonggang’s dangerous fight for power and, as in the folktale, rises to become a legendary general.

The series ultimately ran for 20 episodes, with Na In-woo taking over the role of On Dal from Ji Soo from episode seven onwards and filming the earlier episodes again for the final, completed version of the K-drama.

Love Alarm, one of the more popular Kim So-hyun K-dramas, explores romance in the age of modern technology, where a dating app—one that puts Tinder, Bumble and Hinge to shame—alerts users whenever someone who likes them comes within ten metres.

The Netflix original series stars Kim So-hyun as Kim Jo-jo, a bright but guarded high school student whose life becomes complicated thanks to the Love Alarm app. Caught between Lee Hye-yeong, played by Jung Ga-ram, and his charismatic best friend Hwang Sun-oh, played by Song Kang, Jo-jo has to contend with the messy reality behind the notifications, including her own fears and insecurities.

The second season picks up four years after the app’s debut, with an upgraded Love Alarm 2.0 that includes a predictive feature, letting users know who may develop feelings for them in the future. Now an adult, Jo-jo is still caught between Hye-yeong and Sun-oh as the technology continues to shape how people understand love and attraction.

The sageuk rom-com K-drama The Tale of Nokdu stars Kim So-hyun as Dong Dong-joo, a prickly gisaeng trainee planning to avenge her entire family’s death. Things get complicated when Jeon Nok-du (Jang Dong-yoon), a young man looking for the female assassins who attacked his family, disguises himself as a woman to infiltrate a mysterious village where men are forbidden.

Forced to share a roof because of a housing shortage in the village, Dong-joo quickly discovers Nok-du’s true identity. Fortunately for him, she is harbouring a dangerous secret of her own. The two strike a deal to keep each other’s secrets, and they develop a closeness that soon turns into romance. But their arrangement is tested as they each pursue their own agendas—putting them on a collision course with the powerful forces behind their respective tragedies, and each other.

Kim So-hyun’s role in Goblin may be brief, but it is one of the most memorable cameos in the fantasy K-drama. Credited as the Queen of Goryeo, she plays young Kim Sun, the younger sister of Gong Yoo’s Kim Shin, who later becomes the Goblin. Kim Sun’s tragic death at the hands of her husband, King Wang Yeo, sets off a chain of events that ties several of the drama’s central characters together.

Centuries later, Kim Sun is reincarnated as Yoo In-na’s Sunny, a chicken restaurant owner who falls for Lee Dong-wook’s Grim Reaper, the reincarnation of Wang Yeo, who has no memory of his past life until Sunny begins to unlock the truth.

Who Are You: School 2015 was an early showcase of Kim So-hyun’s range, with her taking on two roles in the KBS2 teen mystery K-drama. She plays identical twins Lee Eun-bi and Go Eun-byul, who were separated as children and grew up leading different lives. Eun-bi lives in an orphanage in Tongyeong and is relentlessly bullied at school, while Eun-byul is a popular student at the prestigious Sekang High School in Seoul.

Their lives collide when Eun-byul suddenly goes missing, and Eun-bi loses her memory after a traumatic incident. Mistaken for her twin, Eun-bi wakes up to a life she does not recognise, surrounded by Eun-byul’s friends and classmates, including star swimmer Han Yi-an (Nam Joo-hyuk), Eun-byul’s childhood friend, and rebellious student Gong Tae-kwang (Yook Sung-jae). As she tries to piece together her identity and the truth about Eun-byul’s disappearance, she begins uncovering the secrets behind her twin’s apparently perfect life.

Kim So-hyun started out as a child actress and one of her most famous early K-dramas is the epic sageuk The Moon Embracing the Sun, which starred Hallyu A-listers Kim Soo-hyun and Han Ga-in. The K-drama casts her as young Yoon Bo-kyung (played by Kim Min-seo in adulthood), the future queen of a fictional Joseon kingdom, and the scheming rival of the drama’s main protagonist. She is joined by fellow child actors Kim Yoo-jung and Yeo Jin-goo, who, like Kim So-hyun, have gone on to become leading actors in their own right.

From her early sageuk roles to contemporary romances and genre-spanning hits, Kim So-hyun’s K-drama filmography offers plenty of entry points for new and longtime viewers. Between Steps is the latest addition, but dramas such as Love Alarm, My Lovely Liar, The Tale of Nokdu and River Where the Moon Rises show just how much her roles have evolved over the years. Whether you’re looking for a Kim So-hyun romance K-drama, a historical series or something with more mystery and action, there is a different side of the actress to discover in each of these titles.

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