'Doona!' is the newest Korean drama to hit Netflix. Why the genre is growing in popularity in the U.S. — and what American TV can learn from its rise.

Call it the K-effect. Korean dramas, commonly referred to as K-dramas, have continued to rise in popularity in the U.S. in recent years, elevated by the success of Squid Game and Parasite. Interest in Korean content — that includes K-pop — isn't dying down either. Korean drama viewership rose a staggering 200% between 2019 and 2021, according to Forbes.

K-dramas, for those unfamiliar, are scripted TV shows from South Korea that — unlike its moniker — cover a wide range of genres, such as fantasy, romance, sci-fi, mystery, horror, action and historical period pieces. It's not uncommon for a K-drama to blur the lines between genres or exercise agility with form. Many Korean shows explore social issues like wealth inequality, classism and societal pressures, while putting strong emphasis on relatable themes such as love, family and friendship.

"People have been interested [in the genre] for a long time," journalist Kayti Burt, who specializes in Korean entertainment, told Yahoo Entertainment. "But the ease of accessibility has become a lot greater, which has led to a lot more people finding K-dramas, watching them and then looking for more."

Streaming service Viki, which houses over 2,500 Asian titles, saw its registered subscriber base jump 22% in the last year — in part driven by the popularity of K-dramas on its platform. "We've seen amazing growth year over year," Viki's vice president of marketing Karen Paek told Yahoo Entertainment. "During the COVID years, there was a big uptick, but we really sustained growth."

Netflix, which has intensified its focus on Korean content by investing in original productions, is seeing exponential success as well. Strong Girl Nam-soon, a spin-off of the 2017 series Strong Girl Bong-soon, was the No. 3 non-English title for the week of Oct. 9 through Oct. 15, attracting 4.4 million views. Fantasy romance Destined With You, which recently capped off a 16-episode run, was No. 8 with 1.7 million views. But nothing tops Squid Game, which remains Netflix's all-time most-watched non-English title, while zombie drama All of Us Are Dead is eighth on the list.

On Friday, Netflix launched the nine-episode romance Doona!, which mixes the K-pop world with a proven K-drama trope: a retired K-pop idol, played by singer-actress Suzy, transitions into ordinary life and unexpectedly falls in love with a college student (Yang Se-jong) while living in a shared house. Directed by Crash Landing on You's Lee Jung-hyo, the series is adapted from a webtoon, which has become a go-to source for K-drama material.

Escapism is a main reason why audiences gravitate toward K-dramas, Paek said. Increased interest in K-pop, with BTS and Blackpink at the forefront, as well as Korean cuisine, fashion and beauty, also help. "A lot of romances don't come together like this in real life. But this is an escape, living vicariously through these shows. It's a 'me time' treat for a lot of people."

"Especially as things get worse in the U.S. and globally, in terms of income inequality and wealth inequality, it makes this kind of storytelling that much more cathartic and an escape for people who are looking for that," Burt added.

Many of the traits found in Korean shows, which are driven by complex personal relationships with high emotional stakes (often told through the perspective of a female lead character), aren't necessarily storytelling priorities in American television. Part of the reasoning could be the makeup of the Korean film industry. In 2018, the country's Broadcast Writers' Union found that about 90% of its screenwriters are women, compared to 27% in Hollywood.

"Korean dramas often lead with romance and, especially in American TV, there isn't a lot that is romance-first," Burt said. "For girls and women, who are socialized to understand emotions and often be responsible for other people's emotions, that’s an interesting and cathartic kind of storytelling that a lot of American film and TV studios don’t specialize in, at least in the same way Korean drama has been able to."

Another ingredient is the examination of class warfare and socioeconomic strife, which K-dramas deal with "much more explicitly" than on Western shows. "People don't often think about romance as a class fantasy but it is," Burt said, adding that women "don't have access to the same economic security that men do." (American women made 82 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2022, a Pew Research Center study found. The gender wage gap is even wider in Korea.)

"The fantasy of a romance is not just that you'll find someone who loves you and treats you well, but will also offer you economic wealth and security in a way that you didn't have before," she explained. "You see that a lot in K-dramas."

Like legal procedurals or police dramas stateside, K-dramas tend to be formulaic. But that's not exactly a bad thing. In the 16-episode romantic comedy What's Wrong With Secretary Kim, for instance, the set-up is quickly established: A rich businessman (Park Seo-joon) is forced to confront his feelings for his secretary (Park Min-young) after she decides to quit.

It isn't a mystery that the two leads get together, but the build-up and the conflicts that arise as a result are the main draw. Themes of family turmoil and deep psychological wounds are equally explored in Secretary Kim, which, in any given episode, can go from light-hearted romance to navigating childhood trauma on a dime.

"There is a creativity with form and genre that people who have never broadly watched K-drama don't know about or don't expect," Burt said. "They are creative and flexible when it comes to blending genres. It oftentimes can make, in comparison to TV [in the U.S.], feel a little flatter."

Most importantly, there's usually an endpoint to the story. "That formula has worked in maintaining an audience's interest in a lot of ways," Paek said.

Korean dramas also depict traditions and values that are vastly different from American culture. Those distinctions can be intriguing to a global audience who may not be well-versed in non-Western customs.

"Korean dramas are often a lot more playful, but they don't sacrifice the serious or dramatic for that playfulness. I feel like that's how life is too. I like that tonal complexity compared to a lot of American [shows]," Burt explained.

In preparation for Doona!, director Lee Jung-hyo recommended Hulu's Normal People to series leads Suzy and Yang Se-jong for inspiration in portraying their angst-filled, young adult romance. "[Normal People] is quite similar to the emotional narrative to this show," Suzy said at a Doona! press conference in Seoul on Wednesday.

There is a melodramatic whimsy to Doona! that adds to the allure of the central plot. As is common in K-dramas, the Netflix series uses stylistic visual cues to effectively communicate the magnitude of the characters' innermost feelings and emotions. "Instead of thinking of the situational narrative, there's more of an emotional arc, an emotional narrative," Lee said of his series.

"K-dramas aren't afraid of emotionality, earnestness and sentimentality in storytelling," Burt said, which she believes American TV can lean into more.

"Stereotypical K-drama moments where the actual image will slow down — it might be a man and woman locking eyes, or the woman trips and falls into the man's arms — the music will swell and you'll see it from 15 different angles. People see that as silly, and maybe it is, but it's also effectively communicating how big emotions can grow and what it could actually feel like to experience it. How it can feel overwhelming or feel like it can stop or slow down time."

While it may seem cheesy to a viewer not familiar with the genre, Burt explained, "we have such dexterity and complexity when it comes to action storytelling and how people's bodies will interact with violence, but we often rely on the performance of actors to communicate emotion. There's more room in terms of form that we [can use to] depict what it feels like to be human, maybe in a heightened way.

"Instead of poking fun at it, trying to understand what that is and what might be the American version of exploring that in [Korean] TV and film."