Cover Son Ye-jin’s ‘The Scandal’ brings the spotlight back to the best Korean shows and movies similar to ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ (Photo: Netflix)
Son Ye-jin’s ‘The Scandal’ brings the spotlight back to the best Korean shows and movies similar to ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ (Photo: Netflix)
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From Joseon seducers and elaborate romantic wagers to revenge plots fuelled by betrayal, these Korean shows and films deliver the same intoxicating mix of desire, deception and treacherous games as the iconic ‘Dangerous Liaisons’
With Netflix’s The Scandal bringing Dangerous Liaisons back into the spotlight, there is no better time to revisit the Korean dramas and films that have explored the same seductive territory. Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s 1782 novel has inspired screen adaptations around the world, but Korean filmmakers and drama writers have repeatedly found new ways to make its central game of desire, deception and social power their own.
Some of the titles below are direct remakes. Others take a different route, borrowing the elements that make Les Liaisons dangereuses so addictive: calculated seduction, dangerous wagers, infidelity, revenge, social ambition and relationships in which nobody is quite as innocent as they seem.
If you loved the scheming, sexual politics and deliciously messy relationships of Dangerous Liaisons, these are the Korean shows and movies to watch next.
In case you missed it: 9 South Korean remakes of Hollywood hits and American TV shows to know
1. ‘Untold Scandal’ (2003)
Above A Joseon-era seduction game turns deadly when an aristocratic woman and her notorious cousin target a virtuous widow (Photo: IMDB)
A Joseon-era seduction game turns deadly when an aristocratic woman and her notorious cousin target a virtuous widow (Photo: IMDB)
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If you want the closest Korean equivalent to Dangerous Liaisons, start here. E J-yong’s Untold Scandal transplants Laclos’s story to late-18th-century Joseon, replacing French aristocrats with members of Korea’s elite while retaining the novel’s fascination with seduction, reputation and sexual conquest. The Korean Film Council describes Lady Cho as a seemingly devoted wife who secretly pursues sexual conquests, while her cousin Jo-won has turned seduction into something of an art form.
Lee Mi-sook, Bae Yong-joon and Jeon Do-yeon play the central triangle, with Jo-won taking on the role of the charismatic libertine and Lady Cho orchestrating the game around him. Their target is a virtuous widow whose innocence makes her conquest all the more enticing—and whose feelings ultimately make the game considerably more dangerous than its players expect.
The appeal of Untold Scandal is not that it follows the broad outline of Laclos’s novel. It understands what makes the material so enduring: the thrill comes from watching people who believe they are cleverer than everyone else gradually lose control of the game they designed.
2. ‘The Great Seducer’ / ‘Tempted’ (2018)
Above Three privileged young people turn romance into a wager, only to discover that their target’s feelings are not as easy to control as they expected
Move Dangerous Liaisons from the salons of 18th-century France to the privileged young elite of contemporary Seoul and you get The Great Seducer, also released internationally as Tempted. The MBC drama was explicitly based on Laclos’s novel, with Woo Do-hwan playing Kwon Shi-hyun, the charismatic young man at the centre of the seduction game, and Joy playing Eun Tae-hee, his intended target.
Shi-hyun agrees to seduce Tae-hee as part of a scheme involving his wealthy friends. The problem is that Tae-hee is hardly the naïve prize they imagine. She initially regards falling in love as something pathetic and has little interest in playing along with the expectations surrounding romance. As Shi-hyun gets closer to her, the wager begins to collide with genuine feelings.
That tension is what makes Tempted such an obvious companion to Dangerous Liaisons. The characters begin by treating attraction as something they can engineer. Then the emotions they have been manipulating start becoming real.
3. ‘The Scandal’ (2026)
Above In Joseon’s elite society, a notorious seducer accepts a dangerous wager that draws an unsuspecting widow into a game of desire and deception
The latest Korean screen reimagining of Laclos’s story arrived on Netflix in September 2026, with Son Ye-jin, Ji Chang-wook and Nana at the centre of its Joseon-set romantic conspiracy. Netflix describes The Scandal as a reimagining of the 1782 novel, while the series has also been described in Korean coverage as being based on the 2003 film Untold Scandal.
The set-up should sound immediately familiar to anyone who knows Dangerous Liaisons: a clever woman, a celebrated seducer and an apparently innocent target become locked into a game that is supposed to have clear winners and losers. Lady Cho proposes the wager, and Cho Won approaches Hui-yeon, a virtuous young widow, in an attempt to secure his victory.
For anyone coming to the story through the novel, The Scandal is particularly interesting because it shows how easily Laclos’s machinery can be transplanted into a very different social world. The rules of Joseon society change the stakes, but the central pleasure remains the same: watching people gamble with desire and discover that desire has its own agenda.
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4. ‘The Handmaiden’ (2016)
Above A pickpocket, a conman and a wealthy heiress become caught in an elaborate scheme where almost everyone is lying to everyone else
Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden is not an adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons. Rather, it is based on Sarah Waters’s novel Fingersmith. But if what you loved was the elaborate deception, shifting loyalties and seductive power games, this is essential viewing.
Set in 1930s Korea during the Japanese occupation, the film follows Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri), a pickpocket hired to become the handmaiden of Japanese heiress Hideko (Kim Min-hee). She is secretly working with a conman posing as a Japanese count, whose plan is to seduce Hideko, marry her, take her fortune and have her committed to an asylum. Then Sook-hee and Hideko develop feelings for one another, throwing the carefully constructed scheme off course.
Like Dangerous Liaisons, The Handmaiden is fascinated by performance: people pretending to be something they are not, romance being used as leverage and characters constantly trying to work out who has the upper hand. The difference is that Park Chan-wook keeps turning the machinery inside out until the people who appear to be pawns start writing their own game.
5. ‘A Frozen Flower’ (2008)
Above A royal marriage, a forbidden affair and a struggle for succession turn desire into a threat to the throne
There is more political intrigue in A Frozen Flower, but its central relationship is every bit as combustible. Set at the end of the Goryeo dynasty, the film follows a king whose relationship with his military commander Hong Lim (Zo In-sung) is complicated by the demands of succession. When pressure mounts to produce a male heir, the king orders Hong Lim to sleep with the queen (Song Ji-hyo) and father a successor.
The arrangement quickly becomes something far more dangerous. Hong Lim and the queen develop an intimate relationship that extends beyond the king’s original political calculation, turning a royal succession plan into a volatile emotional triangle.
The film is not an adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons, nor does it share Laclos’s social setting. What connects them is the way private desire becomes inseparable from power. Attraction does not exist in a vacuum: every affair changes an alliance, threatens a reputation or gives someone else leverage.
It is also darker and more tragic than the seduction games of Laclos. Here, desire is not merely something characters use to manipulate one another. It becomes what ultimately destabilises the entire structure around them.
6. ‘Scarlet Innocence’ (2014)
Above A secret affair becomes the beginning of an elaborate revenge plot when a professor abandons the young woman he seduced
Scarlet Innocence takes the romantic manipulation of Dangerous Liaisons into much darker psychological territory. Jung Woo-sung plays Hak-kyu, a university professor who moves to a small town after becoming embroiled in a sexual harassment allegation. There, he begins an affair with Deok-yi (Esom), a 20-year-old local woman, before returning to his family when he is able to resume his university career.
Their relationship has devastating consequences. Eight years later, Hak-kyu is blind and estranged from his daughter when he befriends a young woman called Se-jung, unaware that she is actually Deok-yi, who has returned under a new identity with revenge in mind. Her plan draws Hak-kyu, his daughter and herself into an increasingly bitter game of deception.
This is where the Dangerous Liaisons comparison becomes less about aristocratic seduction and more about the mechanics of revenge. The attraction is calculated, identities are concealed and the person who appears most vulnerable may actually be controlling the entire game.
7. ‘The Treacherous’ (2015)
Above At a decadent Joseon court, a ruthless royal adviser uses sex and manipulation to tighten his grip on a tyrannical king
If the decadent court politics of Dangerous Liaisons appealed to you as much as the romance, The Treacherous takes that atmosphere and turns the volume up. The film is inspired by the reign of Yeonsan-gun, the infamous Joseon king, and focuses on the ruthless retainer Im Sung-jae (Ju Ji-hoon), who manipulates the king by exploiting his appetite for women.
Im Sung-jae gathers thousands of women for the king’s court, while Dan-hee (Lim Ji-yeon), one of the women drawn into the system, has her own reason for getting close to the throne: revenge for what happened to her family. Here, the court is a venue where sexual access becomes political currency, and almost every relationship carries an ulterior motive.
It is not a Laclos interpretation, but the atmosphere will be familiar to anyone who enjoys the poisonous social choreography of Dangerous Liaisons. Desire is never merely desire. It is a route to influence, revenge or power.
8. ‘Eve’ (2022)
Above A woman spends years preparing an elaborate revenge scheme against the powerful family she blames for destroying her life
Eve is what happens when the seductive strategist at the centre of a period drama gets a modern revenge-thriller makeover. Seo Ye-ji plays Lee Ra-el, a woman who has spent 13 years preparing to take down the people responsible for destroying her family.
Her revenge depends partly on seduction and social manipulation. She deliberately enters the orbit of powerful people, using attraction, ambition and carefully cultivated relationships to move closer to Kang Yoon-kyum, the man at the centre of her plan. What begins as a long-term scheme becomes increasingly complicated as genuine emotions enter the equation.
There is no direct Laclos connection here, but Eve shares one of Dangerous Liaisons’s most addictive ideas: the pleasure of watching someone enter a room with a plan that everyone else is too distracted to see. Romance is not the destination. It is the weapon.
9. ‘The World of the Married’ (2020)
Above An affair shatters an apparently perfect marriage, sending its characters into a vicious cycle of betrayal, revenge and emotional manipulation
The World of the Married is not a Dangerous Liaisons remake. It is a Korean remake of the BBC drama Doctor Foster. But if what keeps you watching is the spectacle of relationships becoming psychological warfare, this one belongs on this list of revenge-based Korean shows.
Kim Hee-ae plays Ji Seon-u, a successful family doctor who discovers that her husband, Lee Tae-oh (Park Hae-joon), has been having an affair with a younger woman, Yeo Da-kyung (Han So-hee). Rather than walk away, Seon-u begins dismantling the life she once shared with him, setting off a cycle of divorce, revenge and further betrayals.
No aristocratic salons or 18th-century letters. Instead, you get wealthy families, social reputations, infidelity and people weaponising information against one another. The common thread with Dangerous Liaisons is the transformation of intimacy into strategy, not to mention the dawning realisation that once you start playing that game, nobody gets to dictate how it ends.
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10. ‘The Penthouse: War in Life’ (2020–2021)
Above The wealthy residents of a luxury Seoul apartment complex wage an increasingly ruthless battle over status, money, marriage and revenge
If you want the Dangerous Liaisons social warfare without needing the characters to resemble Laclos’s originals, The Penthouse: War in Life is the maximalist option. The three-season drama revolves around residents of the luxury Hera Palace apartment complex and their children, with wealth, status, ambition, affairs and social competition driving the story.
The characters lie, betray one another, manipulate relationships and use their children and marriages as extensions of their social ambitions. Alliances shift constantly, while the death of a young girl at Hera Palace becomes the catalyst for a sprawling web of secrets, rivalries and revenge.
This is not one of the Korean adaptations of Dangerous Liaisons. But the similar themes are unmistakable: both stories understand elite society as a stage on which romance, reputation and social power are constantly being traded. The Penthouse simply swaps Laclos’s letters and drawing rooms for premium apartments, private schools and spectacularly dysfunctional families. Plus loads more melodrama.
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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.
