Cover If ‘Twelve’ has you wondering what other K-dramas have built their own supernatural universes, start here (Photo: Disney)
If ‘Twelve’ has you wondering what other K-dramas have built their own supernatural universes, start here (Photo: Disney)
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Love ‘Twelve’? From celestial guardians and ancient curses to grim reapers and inherited superpowers, these K-dramas build supernatural worlds with rules, histories and mythologies worth getting lost in
There’s a difference between a K-drama that happens to have supernatural elements and one that makes you believe there is an entire universe operating just beyond the frame.
That distinction is what makes K-dramas with fascinating mythology so addictive. The best ones don’t simply announce that a character is immortal, that ghosts exist or that someone has supernatural powers. They give those things rules. There are hierarchies, histories, consequences and sometimes entire institutions devoted to maintaining the balance between the ordinary world and whatever lies beyond it.
Twelve is a particularly fun example. At the centre of the drama is a mythology built around 12 celestial guardians associated with the zodiac, tasked with protecting humanity against supernatural evil. Suddenly, the familiar zodiac becomes something much bigger: part of a cosmology involving guardians, powers, enemies and an ancient struggle that has been unfolding long before the story begins.
And that is the real pleasure of these dramas. You aren't simply watching a fantasy story. You are gradually learning how its world works.
Here are the K-dramas that make their supernatural rules, strange histories and elaborate mythologies feel like stories in themselves.
In case you missed it: 13 K-dramas with the weirdest plots
1. ‘Twelve’ (2025)
Above Twelve zodiac guardians, one supernatural war and an entire mythology hiding behind the familiar symbols of the Chinese zodiac
Twelve takes one of the most recognisable systems in East Asian culture and turns it into the foundation of a supernatural action saga. The drama follows 12 celestial guardians, each representing one of the 12 animals of the zodiac, as they protect humanity from evil forces.
The premise immediately gives the series an unusually useful piece of world-building: its heroes aren’t simply a random collection of people who happen to possess powers. Their identities are tied to a larger cosmological system.
That creates room for questions about hierarchy, duty, power and what happens when guardians fail at the responsibility they have inherited. The supernatural conflict therefore has a history behind it rather than feeling like something invented solely to propel the week’s action sequence.
It’s also exactly the kind of mythology that rewards curiosity. Once the drama establishes its 12 guardians, the natural question becomes what each one represents, how their powers work and what their relationship is to the larger celestial order.
What we love about Twelve? It doesn't just use mythology as decoration. The mythology is the engine.
2. ‘Alchemy of Souls’ (2022)
Above A magical kingdom where soul-shifting is forbidden, powerful mages control the elements and even identity itself can become a weapon
In Daeho, magic isn’t an unexplained phenomenon that occasionally appears when the plot needs it. It is an entire discipline.
Mages train, families cultivate different forms of power and spells operate according to rules that become increasingly important as the story develops. At the centre is the forbidden technique of soul-shifting, which allows one person’s soul to inhabit another person’s body.
That single piece of magic creates much of the show’s mythology: bodies become vessels, identities become unstable and physical ability no longer necessarily corresponds to the person occupying the body.
Mu-deok (Jung So-min) and Jang Uk (Lee Jae-wook) are therefore navigating not just a romance but a world in which magic has political, social and personal consequences. The show’s elaborate mythology also makes its fantasy setting feel lived-in. There are magical institutions, powerful families, ancient spells and political factions, each with its own relationship to magic.
It’s not just a world where magic exists. It’s a world where people have built an entire society around it.
3. ‘Bulgasal: Immortal Souls’ (2021–2022)
Above Reincarnation becomes a supernatural mystery in a world where two people have been bound together across centuries
Bulgasal takes the Korean folklore creature of the bulgasal, an immortal being that survives by feeding on blood, and builds an entire reincarnation mythology around it.
Dan Hwal (Lee Jin-wook) becomes immortal after a supernatural encounter, while Min Sang-woon (Kwon Na-ra) repeatedly reincarnates through different lives. Their present-day relationship is inseparable from events that happened hundreds of years earlier.
The cleverness of this mythology lies in how the drama makes reincarnation function almost like a mystery box. A person encountered in the present may turn out to have a completely different identity in a previous life. Relationships that appear accidental gradually reveal themselves as part of a much older pattern. Every revelation about the past changes the meaning of the present, which makes the mythology feel less like background information and more like an enormous puzzle the characters—and viewers—are gradually assembling.
4. ‘Moving’ (2023)
Above Superpowers are inherited, hidden and passed from parents to children in a world where the government would rather nobody knew they existed
At first glance, Moving looks like a superhero drama. Kim Bong-seok (Lee Jung-ha), Jang Hee-soo (Go Youn-jung) and Lee Gang-hoon (Kim Do-hoon) are teenagers with extraordinary abilities that they have inherited from their parents.
But the show becomes much more interesting once we understand that these powers aren’t isolated phenomena.
Their parents, including Kim Doo-sik (Jo In-sung), Lee Mi-hyun (Han Hyo-joo) and Jang Joo-won (Ryu Seung-ryong), belong to an older generation of people whose abilities were exploited by South Korea’s intelligence apparatus.
The supernatural system therefore has a political history. Unlike other superhero universes, here, powers aren’t merely cool abilities. They have shaped careers, government programmes, family relationships and the way these characters understand themselves.
Most importantly, Moving gives its superpowered characters ordinary problems. Someone who can fly still has to get through school. Someone with extraordinary strength still has to raise a child.
5. ‘The Atypical Family’ (2024)
Above A family with supernatural abilities starts losing them to the very problems modern life has taught us to recognise all too well
The Bok family appears to have inherited extraordinary abilities. Bok Gwi-joo (Jang Ki-yong) can travel back to happy moments in his past, while his older sister can fly and his young daughter can read minds. Unfortunately, life starts getting in the way.
Depression, insomnia, obesity and other modern-day struggles interfere with their abilities, turning the family’s supernatural powers into an unusually clever metaphor for mental and emotional health. Here, powers aren’t treated as fixed superhuman upgrades; they are connected directly to the characters’ emotional states.
Gwi-joo’s ability, for example, becomes complicated by his relationship with his own past. The family’s supernatural decline is therefore also a story about people losing access to parts of themselves.
The Atypical Family takes the familiar superhero-family premise and asks a much stranger question: what if your superpower disappeared because you weren’t okay?
6. ‘The School Nurse Files’ (2020)
Above A school nurse fights bizarre jelly-like creatures born from human emotions using a toy sword—and somehow the mythology gets stranger from there
Ahn Eun-young (Jung Yu-mi) has an unusual secret: she can see strange jelly-like creatures called jellies that ordinary people cannot perceive.
These creatures are manifestations of human desire, emotion and other forms of psychic energy. Some are harmless. Others are dangerous.
Her ability puts her in a strange position. She is essentially a supernatural custodian working in an ordinary school, dealing with problems that the rest of the staff cannot even see.
The School Nurse Files doesn’t explain every element of its mythology in conventional exposition. Instead, it throws viewers into a world that already appears to have its own logic and asks them to learn by observation.
It’s far from Twelve in terms of kookiness. This show is one of the strangest supernatural universes in Korean television: colourful, surreal and occasionally grotesque. It feels less like entering a fantasy kingdom than discovering that your own world has been full of things you simply couldn't see.
7. ‘Sell Your Haunted House’ (2021)
Above Real estate meets exorcism in a world where haunted properties are just another problem waiting to be professionally managed
Hong Ji-ah (Jang Na-ra) runs Daebak Real Estate, a property agency with a very specific speciality: she cleanses buildings of ghosts before selling them. The premise is ingenious because it turns the supernatural into an occupation.
Ghosts aren’t merely frightening apparitions. They are problems attached to properties, often because of unresolved deaths and trauma. Ji-ah and fraudster Oh In-beom (Jung Yong-hwa) investigate the history of haunted spaces before attempting to send their spirits on.
That gives the series a lore with an almost procedural quality. Each haunting has its own circumstances, while the exorcism process follows its own rules. A world where the supernatural has effectively become a service industry? We’re in. This is, after all, the most Korean-drama thing imaginable: even ghosts have paperwork.
See more: 10 underrated K-dramas that deserve your attention
8. ‘Mystic Pop-up Bar’ (2020)
Above A mysterious late-night bar helps troubled customers resolve their emotional problems by entering their dreams
Wol-joo (Hwang Jung-eum) runs a peculiar drinking establishment that operates outside the world’s normal rhythms. Her customers arrive carrying emotional burdens and are helped through supernatural dream journeys.
The drama gradually reveals that Wol-joo’s unusual job is connected to an ancient punishment and a much larger spiritual system involving the afterlife, reincarnation and unresolved relationships.
What makes its mythology work is its emotional logic. The supernatural rules aren’t there merely to make the plot more fantastical. They allow the drama to literalise feelings that would otherwise be difficult to dramatise. For example, a person’s regret can become a place, a relationship can become a supernatural problem and a buried memory can become something the characters physically enter.
Mystic Pop-up Bar is ace at turning emotional healing into fantasy architecture.
9. ‘Tomorrow’ (2022)
Above Grim reapers aren’t just collecting souls. They’re part of a supernatural bureaucracy tasked with preventing people from dying by suicide
In Tomorrow, death is organised.
Choi Jun-woong (Rowoon) joins the Crisis Management Team of the underworld, a group of grim reapers whose job is to intervene when people are at risk of suicide. The series features an afterlife that operates almost like a corporation. There are departments, ranks, rules, performance expectations and competing responsibilities. This bureaucratic approach makes its supernatural world unusually distinctive.
Instead of presenting death as a mysterious unknowable force, Tomorrow imagines an enormous organisation operating alongside human society. The grim reapers have jobs, colleagues and institutional politics. The original premise provides the supernatural system a very human purpose: the people who work for death are sometimes trying to keep someone alive.
10. ‘The Uncanny Counter’ (2020–2023)
Above Demon hunters work undercover as noodle-shop employees in a supernatural universe where evil spirits, psychic powers and the afterlife operate according to their own rules
The Counters are supernatural beings tasked with hunting evil spirits that have escaped into the human world. By day, they operate a noodle restaurant. By night, they hunt demons.
The series revolves its own mythology around the Counters’ powers, their relationship with the afterlife and the different levels of evil spirits they encounter.
The world is complex, particularly with the way the supernatural and mundane worlds constantly overlap. The Counters aren’t living in some separate fantasy realm. They are fighting supernatural threats in shopping centres, offices, schools and ordinary neighbourhoods. Even their restaurant becomes a significant part of the metaphysical—a mundane workplace doubling as a secret headquarters.
It’s a simple but effective trick: make the supernatural world exist right next door to ours, and suddenly everything feels a little more mysterious.
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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.
