Cover Park Shin-hye loves starring in sci-fi K-dramas. Here, she shines as a soldier from the future in ‘Sisyphus: The Myth’ (Photo: IMDB)
Park Shin-hye loves starring in sci-fi K-dramas. Here, she shines as a soldier from the future in ‘Sisyphus: The Myth’ (Photo: IMDB)
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From time-bending walkie-talkies to brain-syncing experiments gone wrong, these sci-fi K-dramas have carved out a uniquely ambitious lane in this genre
K-dramas may be best known for their love stories, cliffhanger betrayals and immaculate styling, but science fiction has long been one of the industry’s stealth frontiers. From augmented reality gone rogue to neural syncing and alien encounters, these shows don’t just borrow genre tropes—they inject them with distinctly Korean sensibilities: romance as tether, morality as battleground, and technology as both saviour and curse.
While Hollywood sci-fi often leans on spectacle, K-dramas tend to fold speculative concepts into human-scale drama, making wormholes and time-travel radios feel as urgent as a family feud. The result is a body of work that’s as inventive as it is emotionally devastating.
In case you missed it: 12 intense K-drama thrillers that will keep you on the edge of your seat
‘Circle: Two Worlds Connected’ (2017)
Above A biotech company’s alien-inspired memory implants link a 2017 student (Yeo Jin-goo) and a 2037 detective (Kim Kang-woo) in a dual-timeline thriller about how technology rewrites humanity.
Circle: Two Worlds Connected is a dual-timeline thriller that splits its story between 2017 and 2037. The series splits its story between 2017 and 2037. Student Kim Woo-jin (Yeo Jin-goo) uncovers suicides linked to alien-influenced technology, while in the future detective Joon-hyuk (Kim Kang-woo) investigates a surveillance-ruled utopia called Smart Earth. Exploring alien contact, neuroethics and brain-implant science, Circle was one of the most ambitious K-dramas about how memory defines humanity.
‘Are You Human?’ (2018)
Above When a chaebol heir falls into a coma, his android double (Seo Kang-joon) is programmed to impersonate him—only to develop feelings for his human bodyguard (Gong Seung-yeon).
When chaebol heir Nam Shin (Seo Kang-joon) falls into a coma, his scientist mother deploys his android double, Nam Shin III, to protect the family empire. Trained with programmed “emotions,” the robot soon sparks genuine feelings in bodyguard Kang So-bong (Gong Seung-yeon). Its 36 episodes unpack AI empathy, the uncanny valley and corporate power, exploring how technology can destabilise social hierarchies while asking what separates the human from the machine.
‘My Holo Love’ (2020)
Above A lonely woman with face blindness (Go Sung-hee) finds solace in an AI hologram (Yoon Hyun-min), blurring the line between companionship and code.
A lonely woman afflicted with face blindness (played by Go Sung-hee) finds solace in an AI hologram (Yoon Hyun-min), blurring the line between companionship and code.
Han So-yeon’s dependence on the augmented-reality hologram Holo turns into a meditation on AI intimacy, wearable tech and parasocial relationships. By exploring the possibility of emotional attachment to non-human intelligence, the drama anticipates real-world debates about VR companions and digital assistants.
‘Sisyphus: The Myth’ (2021)
Above A genius engineer (Cho Seung-woo) and a soldier from the future (Park Shin-hye) battle assassins and time-loop paradoxes in a high-stakes conspiracy.
Sisyphus: The Myth is one of the most cinematically compelling sci-fi K-dramas of late. Engineer-genius Han Tae-sul (Cho Seung-woo) discovers time travel is real—and deadly—when Seo-hae (Park Shin-hye), a soldier from the future, arrives to save him from assassins. Their fight against a global conspiracy hinged on time-loop paradoxes, multiverse logic and quantum mechanics, rendering fate as a weaponisable commodity. The show leaned heavily on the mechanics of particle colliders, wormhole theory and bootstrap paradoxes, turning high-concept physics into the scaffolding for a survival thriller that blurred science with spectacle.
‘The King: Eternal Monarch’ (2020)
Above Emperor Lee Gon (Lee Min-ho) and detective Tae-eul (Kim Go-eun) navigate romance across parallel universes connected by wormholes and a mythical flute.
The romance might take centre stage, but this is also one of the most popular sci-fi K-dramas of all time. In The King: Eternal Monarch, Korea is split across parallel universes: in one, it’s a monarchy ruled by Emperor Lee Gon (Lee Min-ho); in the other, a democracy where detective Jung Tae-eul (Kim Go-eun)lives. Their romance plays out amidst a backdrop of wormholes and the butterfly effect, as the two try to close dimensional rifts caused by a supernatural flute. The lavish production brought speculative physics, royal drama and fantasy into a rarefied blend.
‘Signal’ (2016)
Above A profiler in 2015 (Lee Je-hoon) and a detective in 1989 (Jo Jin-woong) communicate through a time-warped radio to solve cold cases before history locks them shut.
A mysterious walkie-talkie links profiler Park Hae-young (Lee Je-hoon) in 2015 to detective Lee Jae-han (Jo Jin-woong) in 1989, allowing them to solve cold cases that should’ve gone unsolved. Each transmission alters events with unpredictable ripple effects, with Cha Soo-hyun (Kim Hye-soo) often bearing the brunt of shifting timelines. The show’s central device evoked quantum entanglement and retrocausality, weaving scientific what-ifs into a taut police procedural that made causality itself feel like a crime scene. This is one of the smartest uses of speculative tech in K-drama.
‘Memories of the Alhambra’ (2018-2019)
Above Glitches in an AR game trap a CEO (Hyun Bin) in deadly scenarios, forcing him and a reluctant partner (Park Shin-hye) to test the limits of virtual reality.
Tech CEO Yoo Jin-woo (Hyun Bin) tests a groundbreaking augmented reality game in Spain, only to find that glitches in the system trap players in deadly scenarios. Landlady Jung Hee-joo (Park Shin-hye), sister of the game’s missing developer, becomes his reluctant partner as the line between gameplay and reality collapses. The drama leaned into AR glasses, neural feedback loops and location-based triggers, grounding its fantasy in real-world emerging tech while turning Granada into a haunting labyrinth where every quest carried the threat of real-world death.
‘Dr Brain’ (2021)
Above A neuroscientist (Lee Sun-kyun) syncs his brain with the dead to solve his wife’s death, only to lose himself in other people’s memories.
Sewon Koh (Lee Sun-kyun), a grief-stricken neuroscientist, develops brain-synchronisation technology that allows him to tap into the memories of the dead—including his wife’s. Each “download” pulls him further into fractured identities, blurring the boundary between self and other until every revelation becomes unreliable. Loosely grounded in connectomics, neural mapping and real-world brain–computer interface research, the series amplified today’s experimental science into a noir-like descent where memory is both data and ghost. No wonder it is one of the most gripping sci-fi K-dramas on this list.
‘Glitch’ (2022)
Above When her boyfriend disappears under a UFO, Ji-hyo (Jeon Yeo-been) and a conspiracy theorist (Nana) unravel a cult built on alien signals and social paranoia.
Hong Ji-hyo (Jeon Yeo-been) enlists UFO-obsessed Bo-ra (Nana) to track down her vanished boyfriend, only to fall into a maze of cults, cover-ups and unexplained signals. Rather than focusing on aliens themselves, the series leaned into SETI-like signal detection, cognitive bias and the culture of belief, weaving together conspiracy theories and internet subcultures. By grounding the extraterrestrial in social commentary, Glitch became less about “first contact” and more about how communities create meaning from the unknown.
‘Duty After School’ (2023)
Above Alien spheres invade Earth, and high school seniors-turned-soldiers must wage war against biotech organisms that double as a metaphor for youth under siege.
When mysterious alien spheres descend on Earth, high school seniors—including Kim Chi-yeol (Shin Hyun-soo), Lee Soon-yi (Im Se-mi), and Jang Soo-cheol (Kim Ki-hae)—are drafted into military service, trading classrooms for combat zones. The spheres behave like biotech organisms, merging cellular biology with weapons engineering, their unpredictable evolution keeping scientists and soldiers equally on edge. By fusing invasion tropes with survivalist teen drama, the show became a study in how speculative warfare reshapes coming-of-age stories, turning the pressures of exams into life-or-death battles.
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Sasha Lim-Uy Mariposa is a lifestyle journalist who is known for her food writing. Based in Manila, she also covers entertainment and dining, as well as a broad range of topics. She was the former digital editor at Esquire Philippines and was the digital managing editor at Spot.ph, and now writes for the different Tatler Asia markets as a contributing writer for T-Labs.
