You watch some K-dramas, and you just know this is pure fantasy, dramatic fun, and escapism, and what do you do? You bask in the euphoria.   

However, others quietly borrow from real lives, real pain, and real history, and use it in a way you have no choice but to feel it with all your emotions. These ones hit differently once you realize parts of them actually happened.   

So if you like your dramas with emotional baggage and historical receipts, welcome, take a seat.   

When Life Gives You Tangerines  

This drama is set across decades, starting from the 1960s, and the Netflix series starring IU and Park Bo-gum feels deeply intimate for a reason. The character of Ae-sun was inspired by a real-life Jeju Island woman named Hong Kyung-ja, whose life as a haenyeo (a woman who dives for shellfish) and caregiver provided the emotional framework for the series. Although the drama itself is somewhat fictional, based on Kim Hye-won’s actual experiences, it includes much of the reality that Jeju women lived every day throughout their lives during this time, all the while caring for their families, dealing with death, and fighting to survive. If you watched this one already, I am sure you might have suspected that it’s based on a true story.

Move to Heaven  

This drama is based on the non-fiction essay Things Left Behind by Kim Sae-byul, who is a real-life trauma cleaner. His work involved cleaning the spaces of people who died alone, uncovering stories no one stayed long enough to hear, and yes, as traumatizing as it may sound, each episode of Move to Heaven borrows emotional cues from real situations described in the book, even when the characters are fictionalized. This drama is the type that will tell you the aggressive truth in a calm manner.

Fight for My Way  

While presented as a rom-com, it is actually a work of dramatic fiction based on the real lives of Mixed Martial Arts fighter Choo Sung-hoon and his wife, Yano Shiho. Its central theme is about following your dreams after society has told you that you cannot succeed in achieving them. In an interview, the writer stated that he drew ideas for this story from observing other athletes and couples who experienced struggles publicly but were later able to achieve stable lives together. This one is a rom-com with an iota of truth.

Hymn of Death  

This drama might be the most heartbreaking story on this list. It is based on the true love story of Yun Sim-deok, the first professional soprano in Korea. Her true love was Kim Woo-jin, and they both committed suicide together. The events of this love story shocked Korea when they occurred in 1926, and this television show portrays them accurately according to historical documentation, including the popularity of Yun Sim-deok's composition entitled "Death Song." Hymn of Death is not just sad; it is heartbreaking to see how real this situation was, and to know that it really did occur makes every moment in the show seem more powerful.

Queen of Tears  

While Queen of Tears is not exactly based on a single documented individual, it draws inspiration from real-world corporate family dynamics common among Korean chaebol households. The series shows long-standing issues like loveless strategic marriages, succession pressure, emotional isolation, and power struggles that mirror real cases reported in Korean business and legal history. This is one of those “fiction, but let’s not lie to ourselves” dramas that we all know we are not just watching for fun.

The scariest and saddest K-dramas are often those inspired by true stories, because, unlike fiction, where we can twist and turn the outcome in favor of the character, true story-inspired dramas can only follow the unalterable script.

If you want a part, two with darker historical dramas or true crime-inspired ones, just say the word.

Which of these dramas are you just finding out about their reality?