Seoul mates for life: Inside India’s love affair with K-drama and BTS

Now 24 and working as a content writer in Moranhat, a town in Assam, Paul’s engagement with the Korean world endures, though opportunities to experience the culture directly are scarce. She owns one BTS album — her only official merchandise — and has journeyed through more than 150 K-dramas, even tracking them in a diary for many years until, as she puts it, “life got busy”.

Over the last decade, Korean popular culture, often termed the “Korean Wave” or Hallyu, has woven itself into the daily lives of many youngsters in India, emerging as a distinct subculture. It surfaces on streaming platforms and music charts, in the language apps on their phones, the instant ramen on supermarket shelves, in college dormitories and bedroom screens. While algorithms and global platforms explain how the obsession arrived, they are less adept at explaining why it stayed, long after the novelty faded.

But sometimes, as it happened near Delhi recently, this obsession tips over. Three siblings were found dead, allegedly after they jumped off their ninth-floor apartment in Ghaziabad. Police said their suicide note alleged that they were beaten by their parents who threatened to get them married off. This was unacceptable to them, police officers said, because they “loved Koreans”. “Now you must believe that Korean and K-pop were our life…,” the note read.

Mix of romance, relatability

For 14-year-old Anika Yadav, a student at Loreto Convent Tara Hall in Shimla, it started with a classroom buzz. Everyone was talking about BTS. “So I wanted to see what the hype was about.” What anchored her, however, was the lyrical depth. BTS’s song Magic Shop, a track about finding solace and support, is her favourite. One of the lines from the song goes: “You gave me the best of me, so you’ll give you the best of you.”

“It’s about the days when you hate being yourself and want to disappear,” she says. “I’m a very sensitive person, and music with deep meanings comforts me.”

Her exploration expanded to K-dramas — romantic fantasies such as Goblin (about a centuries-old immortal cursed to search for his bride) and My Love From the Star (which pairs a top actress with an alien who has lived on Earth for 400 years). “When you are coming into your teenage years, you are interested in crushes,” she says. “The way the guy shows affection, a lot of girls dream about that. You don’t see that much in Indian dramas.”

The cultural immersion is backed by emerging data on how swiftly the Korean tide has surged across Indian screens. According to Facebook Analytics, 2023, there are over 15 million consumers of Korean cultural products (from K-pop to K-dramas) in India. Euromonitor reported that Netflix saw a 370% increase in K-drama viewership in India in 2020 compared to 2019. Platforms such as Zee5 and MX Player dub K-dramas in Indian languages to reach a wider audience.

Ishika Kaur, who recently returned to Kolkata after studying global media in Singapore, traces her interest in Korean dramas back to her school years. “It suddenly became a huge thing among my classmates.” To her surprise, the stories felt deeply familiar. “They remind me of 2000s’ Bollywood rom-coms,” she says. “Bollywood doesn’t really make those anymore.”

She points to Crash Landing on You, a hit cross-border romance between a South Korean heiress and a North Korean army officer, for its patient emotional pacing, a rhythm she finds missing in Indian television. The family dynamics also resonate. “The fear of the mother, the respect for elders…,” Kaur says. “If the same scene was in a Western show, it wouldn’t work. In a Korean drama, it’s funny. We laugh because we have lived it.”

For Avryl Pereira, a 25-year-old PR professional in Mumbai, it began with snippets on Instagram Reels. “I came across one or two reels on one of the series. I found it interesting and that’s how I entered it.”
Soon, she found herself seeking out all things Korean. Pereira’s comfort food is a steaming bowl of ramen, now a weekend ritual. She experiments with making Korean fried chicken and gimbap (seaweed rice rolls) at home, seeking out ingredients like seaweed in specialty stores. “Food makes you more connected towards a particular culture,” she says.

Avryl Pereira with her husky Do Do Hee, named after the female lead in My Demon. (Photo by special arrangement/Express Photo)

Her fandom is now a family affair. She has got her parents, especially her father, Ossie Pereira, 54, “hooked” to K-dramas. He was initially skeptical (“What’s wrong with you?” he’d ask) until a serendipitous scroll on YouTube led him to a comedy clip, and they ended up checking out the full series together. Her father, an accountant, now enjoys the full range, from romantic comedies such as My Demon (a fantasy about a contractual marriage between a cynical CEO and a devil) to intense series such as The Glory (a dark revenge thriller about school bullying). The family’s Husky is in on it too — she is named Do Do Hee, after the female lead in My Demon.

For Abhyudaya Karamchetu, 32, from Hyderabad, the entry point into Korean culture were the short, compelling clips that populated her Facebook feed sometime in 2018. “At first, I was curious,” she says. “Then it became a chain. You watch one actor, then you look up what else they have done.” Her consumption has since become more discerning. “Earlier it was any Korean content. Now I ask what the series is actually telling me.”

What holds her attention is a discernible code of conduct among the characters in many of these dramas. “There’s arrogance, but there’s a limit. There is respect.” She contrasts this with the often-punitive conflicts between leads in Indian serials. “We cross that line very easily,” she says.

The infrastructure of a wave

Crash Landing on You is part of an undergraduate course. (Wikimedia)

The popularity of K-dramas has even propelled it into academic spaces. Raahi Adhya, a lecturer at the National University of Singapore, teaches Crash Landing on You as part of an undergraduate course on literary and visual narratives.

“Students either love it or hate it,” she says, which makes it a compelling tool to interrogate cultural labels such as “trashy” or “prestigious”. The show, she says, is self-aware — it satirises K-drama tropes even while lavishing in their emotional excess. “The fact that it achieves such high popularity through its appealing themes and visual pleasure makes it even more fun to discuss,” she says.

In India, this cultural wave first landed in the Northeast, says Jagadeesh Reddy, a culture connoisseur who previously worked as curator with the Korean Culture Centre in India.

Reddy says that as early as the 2000s, Korean series were circulating in Manipur and Nagaland via cable and informal distribution networks. “The Northeast was the first gateway,” he says. “Before the rest of India realised Korean culture was booming, people there were already consuming it.”

This spread is often described as organic, but it has not been accidental. Vivek Sharma, a research scholar at the University of Delhi and former professor of international affairs at Jeonju in South Korea, argues that the country’s cultural exports are closely aligned with state priorities and are shaped by domestic pressures, including a declining birth rate. “With the country experiencing a demographic crisis, there is a strong sense that Korean culture and language need to be protected,” he says, “and one way of doing that is by amplifying them abroad.”

This strategy influences how the culture travels. Dramas and music are rarely dubbed; subtitles are preferred, ensuring the Korean language remains audible. That consistent exposure has spawned measurable spillover effects.

Language-learning platforms such as Duolingo report a steady rise in Indians studying Korean. According to Duolingo’s 2025 Language Report, Korean surged to become the sixth most popular language to study globally, a status propelled by its popularity in markets such as India. The growth is strongest among younger users, who typically first encounter the language through song lyrics, subtitles, and online fan communities.

Sharma offers a caveat: what travels most easily is a polished, appealing portrait of a people and its culture. “Young people abroad are interested in K-culture,” he notes, “but not necessarily in other aspects of the country.” The complexities — the social hierarchies, the country’s politics and history, its feminist movements — remain less visible behind the glossy facade.

A pandemic push

This cultural infrastructure was firmly in place when the pandemic arrived. With lockdowns confining people to their homes, streaming services became the primary source of entertainment. Korean content, already circulating online, benefited dramatically. According to the Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange, K-pop streaming in India increased by 362 per cent between 2018 and 2023.
As viewership expanded, consumption moved beyond screens to food and skincare products.

According to the 2025 How India Eats report by Swiggy and management consulting firm Kearney, takeaway orders of Korean food have surged in India.

In Mumbai, Pereira has watched the restaurant scene evolve. “My first-ever restaurant (for a Korean experience) was Origami,” she says, recalling the two-hour journey she made to Powai from her home in Virar to eat tteokbokki, gimbap and ramen. “Now there are four branches of the restaurant and others with good Korean food much closer,” she says.

According to the 2025 How India Eats report by Swiggy and management consulting firm Kearney, takeaway orders of Korean food have surged in India, with the cuisine witnessing a 17× rise in consumption since 2022. The demand is being driven by high-frequency orders, especially for Korean BBQ, which has become a weeknight staple for urban foodies. McDonald’s has also tapped into the Korean wave with gochujang flavours and K-pop tie-ins, along with Korean noodles.

Over the years, while Korean ramen, snacks, and skincare products such as sheet masks found a steady market in Indian cities, Karamchetu says she has been selective about what to pick.

She says she has tried Korean skincare but rejects the marketed ideal of “glass skin”, a term for a poreless, dewy complexion. “Indian skin will not turn into that,” she says. “Genes matter.”

Pereira, a skincare fan, acknowledges the cost. Serums with ingredients such as snail mucin can cost up to Rs 2,000, with luxury sunscreens reaching Rs 4,000-5,000. “Of course it’s expensive,” she says, but the appeal of the clear, luminous “glass skin” ideal persists for many.

According to a 2025 Datum report, the K-beauty market in India is projected to reach $1.5 billion in value by 2030.

The fandom is also beginning to manifest in shared, real-world experiences. Pereira is looking forward to an upcoming event in Mumbai, ‘ARIRANG: A BTS Comeback Fan Experience’, on March 22. “I’m excited to go for that,” she says.

For some, the gap between the curated fantasy and a more complex reality eventually comes into focus. While studying in Singapore, Ishika Kaur learned about South Korea’s 4B movement, a radical feminist campaign whose name refers to four “bi” or refusals: marriage, childbirth, dating, and sex with men. “It shocked me,” she admits. “Because when people say K-dramas, the first thing they think of is romance.” Conversations with Korean classmates further dismantled any lingering illusions. “They kept saying, ‘K-dramas are fantasy. They’re not reality.’” The distinction stayed with her. “One starts watching with more awareness.”

For others, age changed the relationship. Paul’s favorite drama is now Reply 1988, a nostalgic, slice-of-life series following families living on the same street in late-1980s Seoul. “Not everybody has a goal,” she said of its relatable characters. “And that’s okay.” Korean popular culture has not replaced Indian film or television in her life; it sits companionably beside them.

For Paul, what remains is less the intense fervor of a new discovery, and more a durable, personal resonance. She mentions the BTS song Zero O’Clock, a gentle ballad about waiting for a difficult day to end and a new one to begin. Its key line, “And you’re gonna be happy”, is a quiet promise. She returns to it when she needs a reminder. “It tells you the next day will come, things can be reset,” she says.
In Mumbai, Pereira might agree, perhaps while sharing a bowl of ramen with her father, as their Husky, Do Do Hee, looks on.