‘Squid Game’: 3 Korean Survival Series to Watch After the K-Drama
Viewers will be interested in continuing the thrill of what Squid Game has to offer. The Korean drama took childhood games to new extremes in a way no one ever imagined. It primarily focused on 456 players having to develop a strategy to win and survive six rounds. If they lose, they meet death. Squid Game is a survival K-drama full of gore, chills, and the anxiety of staying alive.
Squid Game is not the only drama that uses these storyline elements. With so many K-dramas to watch, dramas like Extracurricular and more tell the story of its main characters stuck in dire situations looking for ways to make it to the next day.
‘Strangers from Hell’ has a young man wary of his neighbors (Netflix)
Strangers from Hell was created from a popular webtoon. The horror survival K-drama is also known as Hell is Other People. For this storyline, a young man tries to keep his sanity and survive long enough as he becomes suspicious of his new neighbors. Strangers from Hell involves a serial killer that seems ordinary during the day but is a heinous monster.
Yoon Jong-woo (Im Si-wan) gets a job opportunity in Seoul. As a man in his 20’s, he is low on cash and rents a cheap room in a sketchy residential building. His new neighbors are anything but cordial and are downright creepy. Over time, Jong-woo starts to suspect his neighbors taking part in something much deadlier. Jong-woo has to survive long enough to leave before he loses his sanity.
‘Dark Hole’ mixes an environmental phenomenon with monsters in a survival K-drama (Viki)
The 2021 K-drama centers around a mysterious sinkhole in the middle of a fictional city called Muji. The hole emits smoke that turns its residents into ravenous mutants. Dark Hole centers around two main characters who battle to survive and rescue people in need before the smoke turns them into monsters.
Lee Hwa-sun (Kim Ok-vin) is a detective in Seoul who receives a phone call from her husband’s killer. For her to finally get answers, she has to travel to Muji. She soon meets Yoo Tae-han (Lee Joon-hyuk), a former detective now a wreck driver. Tae-han has lived in Muji all his life and watches as his home descends into chaos. He joins forces with Hwa-sun to rescue survivors as Hwa-sun looks for her husband’s killer.
‘Sweet Home’ is an apocalyptic horror with building tenants trying to survive (Netflix)
According to Forbes, the success of Squid Game as a survival K-drama has fans boosting the popularity of similar dramas. Sweet Home is one of the dramas recommended by many fans. The K-drama starred Song Kang in his second Netflix original drama. Sweet Home does not involve childhood games, but it does have a similar vibe about staying alive.
The tenants of a building are locked inside as the city becomes ravaged by monsters. The monsters take on a grotesque form of a human’s inner desires. The tenants have to stop the monsters from entering as they look for the markers of someone turning among them. Sweet Home is a riveting story full of action, horror, and the heartbreaking stories of the main characters. Song Kang’s character Cha Hyun-soo is special as he battles the monster inside him to keep his humanity.
