Directed by Park Hyun-jin, the Netflix romantic comedy Love and Leashes introduced many Western audiences to the world of steamy K-drama shows — but it’s far from the only one. Love and Leashes‘ BDSM spin on the classic romantic K-drama made it a somewhat shocking discovery for viewers unfamiliar with how quickly the genre has developed over the years. In the past, K-dramas have earned a reputation for being highly polished soap operas. Though many Korean dramas still fit this category, the storytelling has evolved significantly, and even some of the most seemingly traditional K-dramas put their own unique spins on conventional romantic tropes.
Nowhere is this more true than in the steamiest Korean dramas streaming online today. Love and Leashes is just one of the many sexy, steamy, or spicy K-dramas that subvert typical expectations about the genre. The steamiest K-dramas aren’t just about sex — they tackle intimacy, companionship, social taboos, love, and other themes in ways that less racy and steamy romantic K-dramas cannot. For those looking for Korean dramas that break away from the usual fare, these shows and movies turn up the heat in the romance genre.
25 Forecasting Love And Weather
(2022)
Forecasting Love And Weather isn’t the absolute steamiest K-drama out there, but it does have quite a few steamy, and even a few more suggestive, scenes among its main couples. The series kicks off with a woman being cheated on by the man she’s been with for years, and the cheating is not left up to the imagination.
She also hooks up with a complete stranger after the breakup, who she ends up working with when she becomes a team supervisor for the Korean Meteorological Association. The two decide to go ahead with a relationship while attempting to hide it from everyone around them. The show is full of near-misses as members of the team almost catch them together. Their relationship is complicated when another coworker stays with them while on the outs from his wife, and they struggle to maintain a professional relationship.
The show has an interesting concept when examining relationships – comparing them to weather patterns – and though it’s got steamy moments, it isn’t quite as steamy as the rest of the K-dramas here.
24 The Lover
(2015)
This K-drama debuted in 2015 and features more tension and explicit scenes than many on the air today.
Though K-dramas have a reputation for being incredibly chaste, and many fans believe they have only recently begun to include steamier scenes with couples, that isn’t always the case. This K-drama debuted in 2015 and features more tension and explicit scenes than many on the air today. The Lover is essentially an anthology series since it focuses on four different pairings. The show, however, follows couples who all live in the same apartment complex.
One pairing features a couple living together for years, but unmarried. Another features an older woman supporting her younger boyfriend while he pursues his dream. The third is a young couple who has just moved in together and haven’t revealed all of their true selves to one another. The final pairing is an especially progressive one for the time since it’s the only one that isn’t heterosexual. A Korean man needs a roommate, and he specifically requests a non-Korean one because he thinks he won’t feel the need to bond with him. He ends up living with a Japanese man.
The series is full of raunchy humor, which is highly unusual in the K-drama landscape. It also contains more intimate scenes than usual. It made it a breath of fresh air when it premiered.
23 Kiss Sixth Sense
(2022)
Kiss Sixth Sense started as a webnovel before it was adapted into a webtoon, and later, a live-action K-drama. It’s a romantic comedy that leans more into fantasy than a K-drama might usually try to do.
Hong Ye-sool (Seo Ji-hye) is a young woman with an odd supernatural ability. She can see the future when someone kisses her. While it might seem useful on the surface, it makes her life more complicated when she accidentally ends up kissing her boss. The kiss leaves her seeing their future together, including more intimate moments. Her visions make her focused on seeing what that future could be like, and she becomes interested in getting closer to her boss.
Of course, because this is a romantic K-drama, there are further complications when Hong Ye-sool’s ex-boyfriend tries to re-enter her life.
22 It’s Okay, That’s Love
(2014)
It’s Okay, That’s Love is not usually one of the shows that comes up in conversation around steamy K-dramas. That’s because the series is more likely to come up in conversations about the portrayal of mental health in media instead. Both aspects of the show – a steamy romance and a mental health storyline – are the backbones of the series.
The show follows a man who is a bestselling novelist and a radio DJ who also happens to have obsessive-compulsive disorder that stems from trauma in his childhood. When he crosses paths with a psychiatrist who has a negative view of love and a phobia of sex, they initially butt heads, but there’s a spark between them. They slowly fall in love and experience a more intimate relationship than either of them in the past.
This series, however, isn’t a lighter romantic K-drama. It deals with a man being framed for murder and features an examination of undiagnosed schizophrenia. The series did win a slew of awards and was also recognized with a plaque of appreciation from the Korean Society for Schizophrenia Research.
21 Love To Hate You
(2023)
Love To Hate You is on the lighter end of a K-drama rom-com spectrum, but it does still feature some serious subjects. The two main characters get off on the wrong foot because they both have very specific and negative views of the opposite gender.
Yeo Mi-ran (Kim Ok-vin) is a lawyer with a free spirit and a healthy sexual appetite. She, however, also does not particularly like men in general and is ready to offer up her own brand of social justice for women who have been hurt by them. Nam Kang-ho (Teo Yoo) is an actor who hires her law firm and happens to have an aversion to most women because of his own past experiences. Though the two start as enemies, they also have some fantastic sexual tension for the audience.
20 King The Land
(2023)
It’s important to note that K-dramas aren’t known for their steamy content. Even romance K-dramas are more likely to imply physical aspects of a relationship or to include charged moments of flirting instead of giving the audience any kind of mature scene. That has slowly been changing in stories involving any kind of romance on Korean television, but it’s still much more likely for kissing scenes, like those in King The Land, to be considered the steamiest aspects of a K-drama than anything more overtly sexual.
King The Land doubles as a romantic comedy and an inheritance dramedy. The series follows the wealthy heir to a luxury hotel group and his interactions with one of the hotel’s employees whose smile he can’t seem to stand. Of course, there’s much more to their interactions than that, and the chemistry in the series is impressive.
19 Lovestruck In The City
(2020-2021)
Lovestruck In The City is closer to what audiences might think of as an American sitcom like Friends or New Girl. It follows a group of people in various stages of relationships while living in a big city in South Korea. The format of the series is set up similar to a documentary with the characters giving interviews about their relationships, and it’s got the flirtatious leanings of rom-coms like King The Land and Forecasting Love And Weather.
It doesn’t feature as much steamy content as some of the other K-dramas here, but what it does feature is one of the best first kisses in K-dramas to date. Critics often compare the characters of Park Jae-won and Choi Kyeong-jun to the best-known will-they-or-won’t-they couple on television, Ross and Rachel of Friends.
18 Melting Me Softly
(2019)
Also called Melt Me, Melting Me Softly is a blend of romance and science fiction. The two main characters agree to participate in an experiment in which they will be frozen for 24 hours to see the effects. Unfortunately, something goes wrong with the experiment and the two end up frozen for 20 years. When they wake, not only do they have to catch up on two decades worth of events, but they also have to deal with very physical limitations to how much they can interact with others, which is, paradoxically, where the steam comes into play.
It’s the tension between the characters that leads to some of the show’s steamier moments. The two have to maintain lower heart rates and gradually increase their body temperatures to avoid any damage to their bodies. As their attraction to one another grows, that becomes nearly impossible, leading to the two characters kissing under the stream of a cold shower to keep themselves out of any danger at one point.
17 The Forbidden Marriage
(2022-2023)
A series set in a historic Korean era that involves a marriage ban and a con artist might not seem like it would include much heat, but surprisingly, it does. Both a historical drama and a romantic comedy, the series follows a young woman who acts as a matchmaker despite marriage being outlawed by the king. The king’s grief over the loss of his wife leads to the ban, but when the matchmaker tries to get out of prison by saying she’s possessed by the spirit of his late wife, things get complicated.
There’s a clear attraction between the two despite the matchmaker denying it. She implies the king is ugly at one point, leading him to remove his clothing in her presence to prove a point. The tension comes from whether he will discover the truth behind her lies, but along the way, there are plenty of heated moments between the two.
16 Secret Love Affair
(2014)
It has to be noted that Secret Love Affair, or Secret Affair as it is also known, is not a romantic comedy. Many of the K-dramas known for their steamier moments are much more comedic than this series. Instead, it leans much closer to melodrama and it serves to provide a lot of social commentary on how Korean society views romantic relationships.
The series follows a woman in her 40s who allows everyone around her to believe that she’s led a completely fulfilling life. She is married and successful, but for her, there’s something missing. When she falls for a pianist in his 20s, she realizes she’s experiencing love for the first time. The story is of their affair and how it could very easily damage both of their lives, but throughout the story, moments that reflect how Korean society would view this couple, how society views love in general, and how society measures success, are all interwoven.
15 Something In The Rain
(2018)
In Something In The Rain, 35-year-old Jin-ah is a successful single woman who begins to fall in love with her best friend’s younger brother when the latter returns from abroad after three years. It’s a twist on an old rom-com trope. The two slowly fall in love while getting to know each other and navigating their age gap, inevitably telling their respective families and others about their romance.
What makes Something In The Rain a steamy Korean drama is the way it realistically tackles the South Korean taboo of younger males dating older females. That’s something a handful of K-dramas have taken on since. This gives even the most classic rom-com scenes – like sneakily holding hands under the table or walking in the rain — a new lease on life.
14 Her Private Life
(2019)
Sung Deok-mi is an art gallery curator who is secretly a zealous fan of the K-pop idol, Cha Shi-an. In the age of fandom communities on social media, this K-drama definitely hits a pop culture sweet spot.
A steamy K-drama for fans who like K-pop, Her Private Life begins when false rumors surface about Sung Deok-Mi and Cha Shi-an dating. After the idol’s wild fanatics threaten Sung Deok-Mi, she pretends to date her boss Ryan Gold, a retired artist who manages the gallery. When the two are forced to keep up appearances at work and elsewhere, what starts out as make-believe eventually turns into a real romance. Apart from being a steamy Korean drama, this also results in funny scenes like Ryan ignoring a deliveryman to passionately kiss Deok-Mi.
13 My Secret Romance
(2017)
The K-drama My Secret Romance follows Cha Jin-wook and Lee Yoo-mi, who meet at a Gangwon-do resort, with the former working there as a bellhop under his father’s orders and the latter there for her mother’s wedding. The two hit it off and spend the night together.
Fast-forward three years and Yoo-mi is working as a nutritionist at Jin-wook’s company. The two’s new relationship starts off rocky with Jin-wook being hard on Yoo-mi, even antagonizing her, just to be near her. While outsiders might see him as a playboy, the truth is that he kept a memento of their night together and just wants the chance to get to know her. When the two finally start to warm up to each other again, it turns into a steamy Korean drama riddled with passion, and some of the usual romantic comedy misunderstandings, and love.
12 The World Of The Married
(2020)
A K-drama spin on the popular BBC One series, Doctor Foster, The World Of The Married follows the life of successful psychiatric doctor Ji Sun-woo, who seems to be leading a perfect life with her husband, Lee Tae-oh, and their son, Lee Joon-young. What seems perfect, however, rarely truly is.
Her world is turned upside down when she learns that Tae-oh is having an affair with the young Yeo Day-Kyung — and her “friends” have been hiding it from her. While decidedly one of the steamiest K-dramas, The World of the Married is also one of the more heartbreaking as some of the characters give into their darkest thoughts. Tae-oh and Day-Kyung deliver unforgettable intimate scenes that perfectly capture the excitement of forbidden lust, but the series also features more violence than the usual steamy series.
11 A Witch’s Romance
(2014)
This particular K-drama is actually a remake of a 2009 Taiwanese series, and though it only has 16 episodes, it has a great story. Ban Ji-yeon is a 39-year-old woman who has given up on love in the steamy Korean drama, A Witch’s Romance. However, her heart begins to thaw when she meets 25-year-old Yoon Dong-ha, and the two embark on a December-May romance.
Another spicy K-drama that’s not afraid of the South Korean social taboo regarding older women dating younger men, A Witch’s Romance also deals with the effects of tragedy. While Ji-yeon’s war photographer husband disappeared before her wedding day, Dong-ha lost his girlfriend to a heart problem. The prevailing intimacy of the passionate scenes between the two betray their growing feelings of love for one another.
10 It’s Okay To Not Be Okay
(2020)
It’s Okay to Not Be Okay is an emotional, romantic, and steamy Korean drama that follows the lives of three individuals. Moon Gang-tae lives with and takes care of his autistic older brother, Moon Sang-tae. The brothers move around a lot after Sang-tae witnessed the murder of their mother when he was young. In every new town, Gang-tae works in the psychiatric hospital, and there he encounters Ko Moon-young, a famous children’s author who has antisocial personality disorder.
Moon-young realizes that their pasts overlap and becomes romantically obsessed with Gang-tae. Together, Gang-tae, Moon-young, and Sang-tae unravel their shared past in one of the most poignant, complex, and emotional K-dramas in recent history. The series received a nomination for Best TV Movie Or Miniseries at the International Emmy Awards.
9 Love and Leashes
(2022)
Entering into a contractual relationship, Jung Ji-woo and Jung Ji-hoo are two coworkers in the Netflix K-drama Love and Leashes. What makes Love and Leashes unique even among the steamiest K-dramas is that it explores communication, respectful boundaries, and romantic feelings in a relationship hinged on hardcore BDSM. Many of the steamier on-screen romances to incorporate BDSM into their stories have been criticized in the past for not including the importance of communication and boundaries.
It’s a steamy rom-com that lovingly plays with the most common tropes in K-drama. For instance, Ji-hoo only brings up his secret interest in BDSM to Ji-woo after she accidentally discovers a collar he ordered at work. Nonetheless, Ji-woo turns out to be a quick learner, masterfully stepping into the stilettos of a dominatrix eager to please the man she’s beginning to fall in love with.
8 Nevertheless
(2021)
Nevertheless follows two singles who have trouble being in relationships and are non-believers in love. It’s a common rom-com trope to see a player bond with someone who cannot get past the trauma of a broken heart but Nevertheless makes it feel fresh.
Park Jae-eon is a known flirt who doesn’t want a committed relationship, and as for Yu Na-bi, her terrible past has made her disillusioned with love. In a twist of fate, they decide to enter into a relationship with each other and to give commitment a try. As the two explore a semi-friends-with-benefits setup, they begin to fall in love and change their cynical outlook. This steamy K-drama is all about the tension of weighing whether the other feels the same way. Na-bi even has an intensely passionate dream about Jae-eon.
7 What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim?
(2018)
When Lee Young-Joon, a vice-chairman of a major corporation, learns that his very capable secretary Kim Mi-so will be resigning after nine years, Young-Joon decides to do whatever it takes to make sure she stays by his side in What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim? After all, she’s a great secretary, and he wouldn’t want to keep her by his side for any reason other than work, right?
His attempts to get her to stay include setting up a fireworks show just for her and giving her thoughtful gifts reminiscent of the time they’ve enjoyed working together. However, this is no ordinary K-drama about falling in love with the boss. As he stalls her leave at every turn, the two begin to fall in love and heal each other from their past shared traumatic experiences, resulting in some of the steamiest K-drama scenes.
6 Another Miss Oh
(2016)
This K-drama follows the story of Park Do-kyung, who is left at the altar by his fiancé, Oh Hae-young. When Do-kyung later learns that she’s to be married, he goes out of his way to ruin her wedding plans. However, it’s soon revealed that the woman’s life he’s just ruined is not “his” Oh Hae-Young, but another Miss Oh. Mistaken identity contributes to a comedy of errors that turns into a sweet and steamy story.
As Do-kyung gets close to this “other” Hae-young, the two begin to fall in love. However, after seeing Oh Hae-young with her former fiancé the previous night, Do-kyung is not very happy to see her the next day, which eventually culminates in one of the steamiest kissing scenes in K-drama.
