How a K-Drama Gets Made: From Casting to the Final Episode

Casting news usually reaches the public in steps: a report that an actor has an offer, then a reply from the actor's agency. When a June 2025 report said Choi Jin-hyuk (최진혁) was in talks to lead a drama adaptation, his agency ANIC ENT said he was "positively reviewing the offer" (긍정 검토), short of a confirmation.¹⁷

The gap from offer to set can be long. For Vincenzo (빈센조), Song Joong-ki (송중기) and Jeon Yeo-been (전여빈) were reported in July 2020 to be considering the offer, and both were confirmed the following month, about five months before the first script reading.⁹ Casting once worked differently. The major networks recruited their own actors through an exclusive system called gongchae (공채), in which aspiring actors applied directly to a network and went through a multi-stage audition, until KBS and MBC announced the end of exclusive contracts for actors and screenwriters in 1981.¹

Once the cast is set, the director, writer and actors meet for the first script reading (대본 리딩), to read through the script together. For SBS's Pinocchio (피노키오), the cast gathered at the SBS Ilsan Production Center with screenwriter Park Hye-ryun (박혜련) and director Cho Soo-won (조수원) in October 2014, a few weeks before its mid-November premiere.¹⁵ When the Weather Is Fine (날씨가 좋으면 찾아가겠어요) held its reading at JTBC's offices with director Han Ji-seung and screenwriter Han Ga-ram present.¹⁶

In the table, the gap between the reading and the premiere runs from 46 days for Vincenzo (January 5 to February 20, 2021) to 272 days for Descendants of the Sun (태양의 후예), which held its reading on May 28, 2015 and finished filming before it aired.⁹⁵

Under the live-shoot system, the first four episodes of a series are usually shot in advance and the rest are shot while it airs. Dramas usually air on two nights a week, so the next episodes have to be shot in the five days between, often by three camera crews working in rotation. Scripts aren't finished in advance and can change with viewer feedback and ratings.¹ The Korea Herald called it a "semi-live show" format in 2015, "with episodes being scripted, shot and edited mere days before their airing".³

At its tightest, actors get the script a page at a time. The "one-page script" (쪽대본, jjokdaebon), as the Korea Times described it in 2008, means that "just one page of the script is sent from the writer", and actors shoot a scene without knowing what comes before or after it.² Crash Landing on You (사랑의 불시착) followed a live-shoot system, "dealing with a tight schedule and frequent interruptions" over six months of production: it premiered on December 14, 2019 and finished filming on February 13, 2020, three days before its final episode aired.⁷

A pre-produced drama (사전제작 드라마) finishes filming, and often editing, before it airs. The Korea Times named Bicheonmu (비천무) in 2008 as the first Korean drama "to fully complete filming and editing before being shown", though it then waited two years and seven months for a broadcast slot.²

The model's first major success was KBS2's Descendants of the Sun in 2016. Filming wrapped on December 30, 2015, 56 days before the premiere, so that the series could clear China's review in time to air there at the same time as in Korea.⁵ Other producers followed, in part because of the same Chinese rules, and the Korea Times contrasted it with "the common practice here where scripts are handed over to directors and actors on the day of the shoot".⁴ The trade-off is that nothing can change mid-run: writer Kim Eun-sook (김은숙) said her inability to adjust the script during filming caused concern, and several later pre-produced dramas did poorly enough to give the industry the term "pre-production jinx".⁵ Streaming works the same way: Squid Game (오징어 게임) was filmed from June to October 2020 and released all at once on September 17, 2021.¹⁰

A K-drama is usually led by a single director and often written by a single screenwriter, and Korean TV writers can become as famous as the actors.¹ Behind the main writer there is often a team: Kim Ran-ju (김란주) joined a writing team led by Lee Woo-jung (이우정) on Reply 1997 and was credited as an assistant writer on Reply 1997 (2012) and Reply 1994 (2013).¹⁹

Teams are now being credited openly. U+TV's Hunter with a Scalpel was co-written by four rookie writers, and a vice president of its producer, Soul Creative, called it "likely Korea's first drama to be fully developed through a structured writers' room". JTBC's Hide (2024) had three writers and MBC's Knight Flower (2024) two. According to the Korea Drama Production Association, 47 of the 123 dramas made in 2023 (38%) were based on existing works, and its secretary general says adaptations are "more conducive to collaboration".¹⁸

Live shooting also means a script can change hands mid-run. On OCN's The Uncanny Counter (경이로운 소문), writer Yeo Ji-na left after episode 12 in January 2021. OCN said she and the production team had different opinions on the final storyline and that she left by mutual agreement. Director Yoo Seon-dong wrote episode 13 and Kim Sae-bom finished the 16-episode season.²⁰

On a live shoot, editing runs up to air time. A 70-minute episode might reach the station on seven separate tapes in ten-minute installments, with the crew still shooting or cutting the end while the start is being broadcast.¹ One episode of MBC's 2007 blockbuster The Legend (태왕사신기) was finished only after its scheduled air time, and MBC extended its live news to fill the gap.² In March 2019, episodes of SBS's Big Issue went out with colour bars and unedited footage showing production notes, and SBS took the show off air for a week "to secure enough time for shooting and editing".¹³

Series have also got shorter. Dramas once ran 24 episodes, then 20, then settled at 16 for many years; by 2025 many ran 12. Netflix's The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call, planned as ten 60-minute episodes, was recut into eight of 45 minutes.²¹

A revised Labor Standards Act cut the maximum working week from 68 hours to 52 from July 2018. Film production and broadcasting had been exempt from working-hour limits; under the new law they were limited to 40 hours a week plus 12 hours of overtime.²² In March 2019 the Korea Times reported that the limit "has not been applied in practice in the entertainment field yet", and a union for broadcast staff asked the government for a special inspection. The same report noted that JTBC's The Light in Your Eyes (눈이 부시게) had finished all its episodes before it began airing.¹³

SBS's VIP that year shows a fully shot drama on a network schedule: script reading on April 18, 2019, filming from May 9 to October 26, and the premiere two days later, on October 28.⁶

A Korean film is finished before it's released, so there's no live shoot and no rewriting during a run. Parasite (기생충) was filmed from May 18 to September 19, 2018, premiered at Cannes on May 21, 2019 and opened in Korea on May 30, 253 days after filming ended.¹² The industry's "Big Four" both produce and distribute films: Lotte Cultureworks, CJ Entertainment, Next Entertainment World (NEW) and Showbox.²³ CJ Entertainment distributed both films in the table.¹¹¹²

Film also moved first on crew contracts. In April 2013 the Korean Film Council, the film workers' union, Lotte Entertainment, Showbox, NEW, CJ E&M and CJ CGV signed an agreement for a standard contract that gives film crews better pay and national pension, health, unemployment and industrial-accident insurance. The culture ministry said companies that didn't comply would be barred from releasing their films and from government investment.²⁴ Ode to My Father (국제시장), shot from September 3 to December 25, 2013, was the first Korean blockbuster to enforce a standard labour contract with its crew: no more than 12 hours of work a day, overtime pay and a full day off each week. Director Yoon Je-kyoon (윤제균) said the contract raised production costs by ₩300 million.¹¹