Cover These K-drama ajumma squads show that some of the best friendships on TV happen around a kitchen table, a market stall or a village alley (Photo: IMDB)
These K-drama ajumma squads show that some of the best friendships on TV happen around a kitchen table, a market stall or a village alley (Photo: IMDB)
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These memorable K-drama ajumma groups prove why neighbourhood mothers, grandmothers and village women are always handy to the plot
Every time you watch a K-drama, you can be sure of a few things: Korean chicken, Kopiko and a wise group of aunties.
The latter might be the mothers who sit outside their homes, the village women who know everyone’s business or the (iconic) haenyeo who head into the sea together. Their circumstances change, but the function of the K-drama ajumma is remarkably consistent: put three or four middle-aged Korean women in the same neighbourhood, and you have an instant social network.
The word “ajumma” is generally used for a married or middle-aged woman who isn’t a close relative, although its meaning is more complicated in Korean society than the English translation “older woman” suggests. In K-dramas, the ajumma often occupies a very specific social position. They are old enough to have accumulated authority, young enough to remain deeply embedded in the working life of a community and socially connected enough to know what everyone else is doing.
That makes the ajumma squad incredibly useful to a drama. They can deliver exposition without making it feel like exposition. They carry gossip from one household to another, provide food and practical help, comment on the behaviour of the younger characters and, when the plot turns serious, become an informal emergency-response team. They are witnesses to the community rather than outsiders looking in.
More importantly, these groups reflect something recognisable about Korean neighbourhood life: relationships aren’t always confined to the nuclear family. Neighbours can become confidantes, caretakers, creditors, rivals and surrogate relatives, with women in particular maintaining dense networks of practical and emotional support.
The best K-dramas understand that this is fertile dramatic territory. The K-drama ajumma squad can be hilarious and intrusive, but they can also carry the history of the area, reveal its class dynamics or quietly become the people holding everyone together.
Here are the K-drama ajumma groups that turned that familiar social network into some of television’s most memorable ensembles.
In case you missed it: 9 iconic K-drama mothers you can relate to
The Jeju Island matriarch circle, ‘When Life Gives You Tangerines’ (2025)
Above On Jeju, survival is a group project—and these women have been doing it long before anyone thought to call it one
In When Life Gives You Tangerines, the women of Jeju are not simply background figures in Ae-sun’s story. They are part of the social fabric that makes the island feel lived-in, particularly the haenyeo whose work, friendships and hardships shape generations of families.
Yeom Hye-ran plays Jeon Gwang-rye, Ae-sun’s mother and a haenyeo, while Cha Mi-kyung, Lee Soo-mi and Baek Ji-won play fellow divers and friends.
What makes the group memorable is the absence of sentimentality. These women work. They argue. They endure bad weather and worse circumstances. Their solidarity isn’t expressed through inspirational speeches so much as through the practical business of surviving another day. After all, the series places these aunties within the demanding economic and social reality of Jeju from the ’50s to the ’90s.
This group may represent the most powerful version of the K-drama ajumma: the woman who has no time to perform strength because she is too busy actually being strong.
The Gujin Taffy Village women, ‘Our Sticky Love’ (2026)
Above Every village needs women who know everything. Gujin has several—and they are not particularly interested in keeping it to themselves
Our Sticky Love (2026) takes the K-drama village ajumma and gives her a slightly stranger setting: a countryside town whose main industry is taffy production.
The Gujin Taffy Village ensemble includes Go Yeon-hong (Kim Young-ok), Pang Hui-ja (Jang Hye-jin), Cho Maeng-suk (Cha Chung-hwa) and Na Geum-hyang (Kim Mi-hwa) among its older residents, with the women occupying the social ecosystem surrounding Go Eun-sae (Ha Young) after she wakes up with amnesia.
Their appeal is that they don’t feel like interchangeable “village ladies”. They have their own personalities, alliances and ways of inserting themselves into the lives of people around them.
And because Our Sticky Love combines romance, mystery and comedy, their meddling becomes part of the show’s unusual tonal mix. They’re not merely there to comment on the action. They help create the peculiar little society in which the action takes place.
Here, the taffy may be sticky, but the village gossip is stickier.
See more: Why ‘Our Sticky Love’ is Jung Hae-in’s most unexpected K-drama yet
The Ssangmun-dong mothers, ‘Reply 1988’ (2015)
Above Three women, one alley and enough food, gossip and unsolicited advice to sustain an entire neighbourhood
If there is a gold standard for K-drama ajumma groups, it is almost certainly the mothers of Ssangmun-dong in Reply 1988.
Lee Il-hwa, Ra Mi-ran and Kim Sun-young play the mothers at the centre of the neighbourhood: Sung Deok-sun’s mother, Jung-hwan’s famously formidable “Cheetah Lady” mother and Sun-woo’s widowed mother. The drama makes their friendship almost as important as the romances involving their children.
They cook together, complain together and routinely wander into one another’s homes as though the concept of privacy was never invented. But the plot works because their friendship has real stakes.
When one family has money problems, another helps. When somebody needs food, there is food. When a child needs looking after, there are three mothers within shouting distance.
Their lives are not identical, either. Ra Mi-ran’s character has more money and more confidence; Kim Sun-young’s character carries the pressures of raising children alone; Lee Il-hwa’s character is the gentle spine of her family. Their differences are precisely what make the friendship convincing.
The North Korean village squad, ‘Crash Landing on You’ (2019)
Above First they suspect Se-ri. Then they adopt her. Then, apparently, they would like to know who exactly is threatening her (Photo: Netflix)
First they suspect Se-ri. Then they adopt her. Then, apparently, they would like to know who exactly is threatening her (Photo: Netflix)
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The women of the North Korean village in Crash Landing on You begin as something resembling an aggressively organised neighbourhood watch committee.
Na Wol-suk (Kim Sun-young), Ma Young-ae (Kim Jung-nan), Hyeon Myeong-sun (Jang So-yeon) and Yang Ok-geum (Cha Chung-hwa) have very different personalities and social positions, but their shared fascination with South Korean culture—and eventually their affection for Yoon Se-ri (Son Ye-jin)—turns them into one of the drama’s most entertaining ensembles.
Their gossip is part humour, part intelligence network. They notice things. They know who is having an affair, who has been buying suspicious products and who is behaving strangely.
Most importantly, their loyalties eventually become much more meaningful than their nosiness suggests.
When Se-ri needs help, these women don’t suddenly become action heroes. They do something more believable: they use the social machinery they already possess.
They know people. They know secrets. They know where things can be obtained. And they know how to make a suspicious neighbour regret asking too many questions.
The women of Ongsan, ‘When the Camellia Blooms’ (2019)
Above Ongsan’s women may gossip about everyone, but threaten one of their own and suddenly you have a neighbourhood-sized problem
When the Camellia Blooms turns its small-town women into a running commentary on Dong-baek’s (Gong Hyo-jin) life—and eventually something much more powerful.
The women around Ongsan initially scrutinise Dong-baek and her bar, treating her arrival as an invitation to speculate about her morals, romantic life and decision-making. But the show’s great trick is allowing that gossip network to evolve into solidarity.
The women are not presented as uniformly kind. They can be petty, judgmental and spectacularly nosy. That makes their eventual loyalty more satisfying.
When Dong-baek’s safety becomes a genuine concern, the neighbourhood’s women aren’t merely spectators anymore. They become part of the community’s protective infrastructure.
It is a recurring K-drama joke that ajummas know everybody’s business. But When the Camellia Blooms asks the more interesting question: what happens when that knowledge is finally put to good use?
The Gongjin grandmothers, ‘Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha’ (2021)
Above Three grandmothers, decades of friendship and absolutely no interest in letting the younger generation make stupid decisions unsupervised
The three grandmothers of Gongjin in Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha are Kim Gam-ri (Kim Young-ok), Lee Mat-yi (Lee Yong-yi) and Park Sook-ja (Shin Shin-ae). The drama explicitly establishes them as the town’s trio of elderly women, with Gam-ri serving as their leader.
They are softer than some of the groups on this list, but that doesn’t make them passive. They sit together, eat together, gossip about the younger residents and dispense advice with the confidence of women who have already watched several generations make the same mistakes.
Gam-ri, in particular, becomes an emotional anchor for Chief Hong and Hye-jin. Their presence gives Gongjin the sense of a place where people have known one another for decades—not simply a picturesque seaside town assembled for a romance drama.
Their friendship is also a reminder that the ajumma doesn’t necessarily have to be loud to be formidable. Sometimes she just has to look at you for three seconds and make you reconsider your entire life.
The Samdal-ri haenyeo squad, ‘Welcome to Samdal-ri’ (2023)
Above These women go into the sea together, work together and have absolutely no patience for anyone threatening their families
Welcome to Samdal-ri gives us one of the clearest modern versions of the Jeju haenyeo community.
Kim Mi-kyung plays Go Mi-ja, Sam-dal’s mother and the leader of the local haenyeo. Other members of the community include Baek Hyun-joo as Oh Geum-sul, Kim Mi-hwa as Yang Bu-ja and Yoon Jin-seong as Jeon Hee-ja.
Their work is hardly decorative. Haenyeo diving is physically demanding, and the drama uses the women’s labour to ground its story about family, grief and returning home.
Mi-ja’s relationship with her daughters is particularly important, but the larger haenyeo community gives her another network of women who understand what she has endured.
The result is an ajumma group whose power doesn't come from being socially connected in the abstract. They literally depend on one another for survival in the water.
The Jeju haenyeo and market women, ‘Our Blues’ (2022)
Above Nobody in Jeju seems particularly interested in pretending life is easy—and that is precisely why these women are so good at helping each other through it
Our Blues is technically an ensemble drama rather than a story about one particular ajumma squad, but its Jeju community is packed with older women whose lives intersect through work, family and the island’s tight social ecosystem.
Go Doo-shim plays Hyeon Chun-hee, a longtime haenyeo who has worked for decades, while Kim Hye-ja plays Kang Ok-dong. The series also includes other haenyeo and market women who form part of the community surrounding the younger characters.
What makes Our Blues particularly interesting is that it doesn’t glorify these women into endlessly wise grandmothers. They can be resentful. They can be stubborn. They can carry decades of grief. They can say things that hurt. However, they also understand something the younger characters haven’t necessarily learned yet: a difficult life is still a life worth showing up for.
Sasha Lim Uy Mariposa is a lifestyle journalist who is known for her food writing. Based in Manila and currently a marketing content specialist, she still dabbles in entertainment, beauty and dining coverage. She was the former managing editor of Esquire Philippines and was the food editor at SPOT.ph. She also edited several best-selling books about food.
She now writes for the different Tatler Asia markets as a contributing writer for T-Labs.
