Cover These South Korean remakes put their own spin on some of America’s biggest movies and TV shows (Photo: Warner Bros)
These South Korean remakes put their own spin on some of America’s biggest movies and TV shows (Photo: Warner Bros)
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What happens when Hollywood lands in Seoul? These South Korean remakes of American films and TV shows reveal what changes—and what survives—when a familiar story crosses cultures
When The Intern opened in South Korean cinemas in September, it arrived with a familiar story and a very different set of cultural assumptions.
The 2015 Hollywood film starred Anne Hathaway as an overworked startup founder and Robert De Niro as her 70-something intern. The Korean remake keeps the unlikely intergenerational friendship at its centre, but moves the story into a Korean fashion company, with Han So-hee as CEO Sun-woo and Choi Min-sik as retired publishing worker Gi-ho. The remake has also shifted some workplace dynamics to reflect contemporary Korean office culture.
It is hardly the first time South Korea has taken a successful American property and asked what it might look like in Seoul.
Over the years, Korean broadcasters have remade everything from dramas to reality shows to comedy programmes. The interesting part isn’t simply spotting the similarities. It is seeing what changes when the setting, workplace culture, family expectations and social rules are Korean.
Here are South Korean remakes of Hollywood hits and American TV shows worth knowing.
In case you missed it: 11 Korean dramas you loved—but didn’t know were remakes
1. ‘The Intern’ (2026)
Above Same unlikely workplace friendship, very different office—and a distinctly Korean take on generational anxiety
The Korean version: Han So-hee and Choi Min-sik
The newest addition to the Korean remake canon is also the most immediate.
In The Intern, Han So-hee plays Sun-woo, the ambitious founder and CEO of fashion startup Woo22, while Choi Min-sik plays Gi-ho, a veteran manager with 37 years of corporate experience who re-enters the workforce through a senior internship programme.
That dynamic mirrors Nancy Meyers’ 2015 Hollywood hit, in which Anne Hathaway played startup founder Jules Ostin and Robert De Niro played retired executive Ben Whittaker.
Director Kim Do-young deliberately anchored the adaptation in contemporary Korean corporate realities: modern office vernacular, start-up burnout, age hierarchies and the unique isolation that accompanies young female executives in Seoul. Gi-ho is not merely an older mentor dispensing warm advice; he is an analogue worker navigating an agile, digital-first company shaped by a vastly different generation.
2. ‘18 Again’ (2020)
Above Zac Efron’s body-swap comedy becomes a much more emotional second chance at fatherhood, marriage and adulthood
The Korean version: Yoon Sang-hyun, Lee Do-hyun and Kim Ha-neul
Based on the 2009 American film 17 Again, 18 Again follows Hong Dae-young (Yoon Sang-hyun), a middle-aged father whose life has gone badly off course. His marriage is falling apart, his career is stagnant and his relationship with his teenage twins has deteriorated.
Then, after a moment of intense regret, he mysteriously wakes up in his 18-year-old body, played by Lee Do-hyun.
The Korean adaptation keeps the fantasy-comedy premise but gives the story considerably more room to explore the consequences of Dae-young’s earlier choices. Instead of simply asking what an adult would do with youthful vitality, it asks what he might finally understand if he could observe his wife and children as an outsider.
Lee Do-hyun seamlessly alternates between swaggering high schooler and burdened family patriarch. The 16-episode series spotlights marriage, parenthood and the particular heartbreak of realising too late how much you took for granted.
3. ‘Woori the Virgin’ (2022)
Above An accidental pregnancy sends one determined woman into a collision of romance, family expectations and melodrama
The Korean version: Im Soo-hyang, Sung Hoon and Shin Dong-wook
Woori the Virgin adapts the American satirical telenovela Jane the Virgin, which itself was based on Venezuela’s Juana la Virgen. The Korean version follows Oh Woo-ri (Im Soo-hyang), an assistant drama writer committed to celibacy before marriage who becomes pregnant following a catastrophic medical mix-up during a routine examination.
The premise is inherently outrageous, but the Korean adaptation folds it into the familiar rhythms of weekend family melodrama and rom-com farce. Woo-ri’s pregnancy binds her to Raphael (Sung Hoon), the glamorous cosmetics CEO whose sample was mistakenly used, while throwing her stable relationship with detective Lee Kang-jae (Shin Dong-wook) into total disarray.
With 14 episodes, the Korean series condenses a narrative that ran for five seasons in the United States into a brisk, highly concentrated run that plays directly into classic K-drama tropes.
See more: 8 webtoon K-dramas that completely changed the ending
4. ‘The Good Wife’ (2016)
Above The scandal and courtroom battles remain, but a seven-season American story becomes a tightly wound 16-episode Korean drama
The Korean version: Jeon Do-yeon, Yoo Ji-tae and Yoon Kye-sang
Cannes Best Actress winner Jeon Do-yeon returned to television after an 11-year hiatus for The Good Wife, the Korean adaptation of the acclaimed CBS legal drama starring Julianna Margulies. The tvN series relocates the narrative from Chicago to Seoul, with Jeon’s Kim Hye-kyung forced to resume her legal career after her prosecutor husband is jailed in a corruption and sex scandal.
The core hook remains intact: a woman whose public identity was subsumed by her husband’s ambition must navigate the shark-infested waters of a major law firm while rediscovering her own agency.
By compressing seven American seasons into 16 episodes, director Lee Jung-hyo turned an open-ended procedural into a sleek, character-driven prestige thriller tailored to Korean institutional politics.
5. ‘Entourage’ (2016)
Above Four friends, one rising actor and the Korean entertainment industry in place of Hollywood
The Korean version: Seo Kang-joon, Park Jung-min, Lee Kwang-soo, Lee Dong-hwi and Cho Jin-woong
The HBO show seemed an unlikely choice for South Korean remakes, but production made it work. The Korean Entourage takes the engine of HBO’s Hollywood satire and transplants it into the cut-throat landscape of Seoul’s entertainment business.
Seo Kang-joon plays Cha Young-bin, a rising cinema star whose ascent pulls his childhood clique into a whirlwind of agencies, film festivals and intense industry networking. Park Jung-min, Lee Kwang-soo and Lee Dong-hwi round out the inner circle, with Cho Jin-woong providing electric energy as hard-charging agency boss Kim Eun-gab.
The tvN version refocused the narrative around loyalty, agency contracts and the intense scrutiny of Korean public relations. Rather than reproducing Western excess, it examined how lifelong friendships survive the rigid hierarchies of Korean showbiz.
6. ‘Criminal Minds’ (2017)
Above Same behavioural profiling, different institution—and a very Korean crime-drama rhythm
The Korean version: Lee Joon-gi, Moon Chae-won and Son Hyun-joo
The Korean Criminal Minds took the long-running CBS procedural and placed its elite behavioural analysis unit within the National Criminal Investigation (NCI) team.
Lee Joon-gi, Moon Chae-won and Son Hyun-joo lead the ensemble as profilers hunting dangerous serial offenders. The procedural skeleton will be familiar to fans of the original: an escalating crime spree, a psychological profile and a race against the clock.
However, the Korean production re-engineers the formula to suit a serialised format. Cases are tightly bound to the team members’ personal traumas. The adaptation infuses the clinical forensic work with heightened emotional stakes and domestic melodramatic gravity.
7. ‘Suits’ (2018)
Above The expensive suits stay; New York’s Pearson Specter becomes a top Korean law firm
The Korean version: Jang Dong-gun and Park Hyung-sik
KBS’s Suits preserves the central dynamic of the USA Network hit while relocating the corporate battlefield to Kang & Ham, South Korea’s premier law firm.
Jang Dong-gun stars as senior partner Choi Kang-seok (the counterpart to Gabriel Macht’s Harvey Specter), while Park Hyung-sik plays Go Yeon-woo (Mike Ross), an orphaned genius with photographic memory who is illegally hired as an associate despite never attending law school.
The 16-episode adaptation replaced American corporate litigation with South Korean legal codes, putting the focus more on the mentor-protégé dynamic. The production, one of the most outstanding South Korean remakes, highlighted how two brilliant outsiders navigate a legal establishment dominated by elite alumni networks and institutional prestige.
8. ‘Designated Survivor: 60 Days’ (2019)
Above After an attack wipes out the government, an unwilling Korean politician has 60 days to uncover the truth and protect the country
The Korean version: Ji Jin-hee, Lee Joon-hyuk and Heo Joon-ho
In the American Designated Survivor, a low-level Cabinet secretary ascends to the presidency after an explosion destroys the Capitol building. When tvN adapted the premise, it had to ground the story in South Korean constitutional reality.
Under Article 68 of the South Korean Constitution, an acting president must oversee new democratic elections within 60 days. Ji Jin-hee plays Park Mu-jin, a mild-mannered environmental scientist serving as Minister of Environment, who finds himself thrust into the acting presidency after a devastating bomb blast decimates the National Assembly during the State of the Nation address.
The 60-day deadline gives the Korean remake an unrelenting internal countdown. Interweaving inter-Korean diplomacy, national security laws and military coup threats, the series transforms a Hollywood premise into a masterclass in Korean political suspense.
See more: 11 great political K-dramas to put on your watchlist
9. ‘Leverage’ (2019)
Above A former insurance investigator assembles Korea’s most talented con artists to take on the wealthy and corrupt
The Korean version: Lee Dong-gun, Jeon Hye-bin, Kim Sae-ron, Kim Kwon and Yeo Hoe-hyun
The Korean Leverage takes TNT’s modern Robin Hood formula and reframes it as a high-octane caper series aimed at South Korea’s untouchable elite.
Lee Dong-gun plays Lee Tae-joon, an elite insurance investigator who turns rogue after the medical establishment betrays his dying son. He recruits a specialist crew: a master-of-disguise actress (Jeon Hye-bin), a competitive fencer turned cat burglar (Kim Sae-ron), a security muscle operative (Kim Kwon) and a brilliant hacker (Yeo Hoe-hyun).
The TV Chosun adaptation leans heavily into the ensemble chemistry and satisfying comeuppance narratives that power contemporary Korean crime television, demonstrating that the language of the heist transfers effortlessly across borders.
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.
