5 Korean Netflix Shows to Watch Instead of Season Two of ‘Squid Game’

5 Bloodhounds

If you want another show that shows just how far debt and financial hardship can push a person, I highly recommend Bloodhounds. A skilled amateur boxer finds his family under the thumb of loan sharks, and unfortunately for the loan sharks, they’re trying to browbeat someone who is very, very good at fighting. With the assistance of another boxer, he takes on the loan sharks fist-first. The fights are some of the best I’ve seen in recent memory, feeling like something halfway between John Wick and Streets of Rage.

4 The Frog

Sometimes money isn’t necessary to see just how cruel humans can be to each other. The Frog is a twisty thriller about what it’s like to be caught in the web of a few sadistic minds, though with no reward on the other side. It’s hard to go into the plot without spoiling too much, but if you’re a fan of shows that don’t hesitate to continually pile misfortune onto characters, The Frog is worth watching. 

By the end, you’ll be filled with legitimate, righteous, off-the-couch-edge indignation at the villains. I don’t think I’ve hated a character in a television show this much since maybe King Joffrey.

3 The Devil’s Plan

Korea isn’t just excellent at cooking up fake reality competitions, but real ones as well. The Devil’s Plan had me hooked by the end of the first episode, and it has a lot of parallels with Squid Game. Minus the whole “murdered if you lose” part, of course. The contestants live in a house on-set and compete every day in showdowns that draw from basic children’s games. But what makes it particularly exciting is that these contestants aren’t average citizens: They’re extremely intelligent, successful people — from rocket scientists to lawyers to professional StarCraft players. 

If you’ve ever wanted to watch multiple people with lofty PhDs play the sleepover classic Mafia, you’re treated to that in Episode One, and it only gets better from there. When the games are done? Then they return to the living quarters and macro planning and strategy continues.

2 Physical: 100

If you prefer your competitions to regard brains over brawn, Physical: 100 is your show. It takes 100 contestants to compete in search of who has the “best physique,” but not in an aesthetic sense. Like The Devil’s Plan, the careful game design and impressive casting are what make it so compelling. Competitors aren’t local gym bros, but legitimate top-level athletes from a broad array of disciplines — from Olympians to Korean special forces soldiers to rock climbers. 

The challenges, too, make it much more than a strongman competition. Take, for example, an early task that requires carrying weights while running across a rickety bridge. You can see the faces of the incredibly strong, but not particularly agile powerlifters and bodybuilders fall when they realize they won’t be able to brute force their way to the top.

1 Hellbound

If you want to watch a society eat itself alive, check out Hellbound. Certain people are issued edicts of death, followed through with violent glee by demons at the specified time. The problem is that the reasoning for actually receiving an edict, despite being assumed to be “sin,” is less than clear. That leads to a population desperately trying to decipher an otherworldly threat for themselves, creating branching paths and belief systems. 

As they so often do, the rival religions that pop up don’t get along, and soon enough, the edicts pale in cruelty in comparison to the actions taken to understand them.