Urban Indians have a new ‘K’ in their lives. Yes, I am talking about the rising Korean Culture in India. For the last few years Hallyu has been a thriving sub-culture in India but last year it became mainstream, thanks to the pandemic, when Indian millennials started moving past Karan Johar and Ekta Kapoor and started exploring Korean dramas and movies on Netflix.

Although North eastern India has been fascinated by it for literal decades now and even has a place called K-TOWN, where you can purchase Korean drama and movie dvds and other things like K-pop groups albums and posters. I have an online friend from Mizoram, who said she was a third-generation K-pop stan and when I asked what she meant by it, she told me that hallyu has been passed in her family for three generations now, and that she has seen her parents and grandparents watching Korean dramas and shows of their time while she was growing up.

It was back in 2017 when I had my first encounter with Hallyu. I still remember watching Descendants of the Sun, a South Korean blockbuster drama, that pulled me into the rabbit hole. Since then I have watched 97 Korean dramas, no kidding and I am not even counting the amount of Korean music videos and other K-content I have consumed.

Hallyu is super amazing, you get to watch contents that are cute, thrilling and fun and they are always trying to address social issues through their work to inspire people and to change their perspectives about things that are considered as taboos and stereotypes in their society. Korean dramas are episodic seasons, usually consisting 12 to 25 episodes, running from 20 minutes to 1 hour and 15 minutes long and the best part of watching a K-drama is that they don’t go off-track like Indian serials.

If you want to explore Hallyu then you can find the K-content on sites such as Youtube, Netflix and Viki. I’ll recommend starting with shows like, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo or My ID is Gangnam Beauty.