5 Underrated but Brilliant Thriller K-Dramas for the Fans of Hellbound and Vagabond

There’s no secret that the South Korean industry today is probably one of the most fast-growing ones, conquering the world with every new K-drama released on every major streaming platform.

There are excellent series created in almost any genre you can even imagine, with a lot of mixed genres being created along the way. However, one of the most favorite genres of K-drama fans are thrillers and crime dramas, sometimes with a pinch of horror blended in, like Hellbound. Or action, like Vagabond.

So here we have 5 K-dramas that definitely deserve your time.

1. Nobody Knows (2020)

We start with this 4-year-old K-drama about detective Cha Young Jin. The young woman is trapped in guilt and horror after a serial killer murdered her friend 19 years ago. Since then, she has carried the trauma around with her, dreaming of bringing everything to justice and finally taking revenge.

She became a person with no friends and no social life, but she has a kind of friendly relationship with her neighbor Eun Ho, who sometimes does chores for her. One day he fell from the roof and went into a coma. But Young Jin doesn't believe that it was just an unfortunate accident.

2. Children of Nobody (2018)

Children of Nobody differs from any other K-drama you have ever seen. Haunting, chilling, and often painful to watch, this is something the fans of K-dramas are not used to seeing on their screens.

At the center of this series is a woman named Cha Woo Kyung. She seems to be very happy at first glance, and why shouldn’t she be? She is married to a loving husband, she is pregnant and she loves her job as a child counselor. However, everything changes after an accident that brings her closer to Kang Ji Hun, a devoted detective who believes in strict punishment toward criminals.

3. Blind (2022)

This K-drama revolves around Ryu Sung Joon, Ryu Sung Hoon, and Jo Eun Ki as they become part of a serial murder case involving jurors as victims. They know that it was no accident, but they have to find out the truth behind the deaths.

The three friends are smart with their own superpowers, one is a judge, one – a detective and the third friend is a social worker who is always ready to fight till the end in the name of justice.

4. Train (2020)

Another brilliant version of a K-drama about how guilt eats away at a person and serves as a driving force for his future actions. Seo Do Won is the main character of the series, and even today he is haunted by something his drunken father did many years ago.

He accidentally killed a man and ended up dead himself. So Do Won lives his life trying to secretly repay Han Seo Kyung for his father's sin while hiding the truth. In order to do this, he became a detective. However, his life gets complicated when he finds a mysterious train at an abandoned station, which is actually a portal between parallel universes.

5. Psychopath Diary (2019)

One of the most popular K-dramas in the genre is definitely Psychopath Diary. At the center of the series there’s a 34-year-old office worker named Yook Dong Shik. The most important fact about him is that he is so weak that he can’t say no to anybody and is used by people around him all the time.

Tired from life, he wants to commit suicide, but something goes wrong. After a failed attempt he wakes up with amnesia and holding a serial killer’s diary. You can imagine whatever happens next, right?