I am relatively a newcomer when it comes to kdrama. I have long resisted watching them and preferred American movies. I've always thought that the oppas look like cute ladies, more beautiful than their co-stars.. until i saw a cf of Rain. Wow. So my very first kdrama was a strongly recommended blockbuster worldwide Descendants of the Sun. I have been swallowed bybthe rabbit hole despite warnings of friends not to ever start watching kdramas. Curiousity got the better of me. There is no turning back after that.

@missvictrix, this is exactly how I got into Dramaland! I mean the exact same thing. I'm sure it did for many other Beanies too. I think its the odd name of the show, Boys Over Flowers. When my friend told me about it a good few years before I watched it, the name sort of got stuck in my head, until I came across it on some streaming site, and just started watching it. I think it was a beginning scene in the first episode only where Geum Jan-di was being badass and I think she punched some bully, that just got me hooked. And then Lee Min-ho! Then subsequently I just randomly looked up BOF on Google and stumbled upon Dramabeans! My second drama was Personal Taste though!
"This is partly why, now and forever, a) a tiny fragment of Lee Min-ho will always be mine; and b) why K-dramas became like a friend to me." I feel the same.

I started with Jdrama. I was watching the animated version of Nodame Cantabile and then the drama version. It was a pretty crazy heroin but surprisly it worked very well in drama. So I started to watch Jdramas but it became difficult to find them, so I tried the other countries mainly Korea and Taiwan. My first KDrama was Que Sera Sera and it was quite unusual, it didn't follow the typical formula that I discovered later. And here I am, but it feels like more an endless abyss than a hole :p

I actually got into kdramas by curiosity...I discovered in 2009 kpop first(my one big love at first sight BIGBANG via youtube mistake) and my best friend watched a kdrama Summer Scent 2003(exactly the pic posted by you) at that time and called the plot "STUPID"... In my desire to try it out for myself and somehow prove that the stupid wasn't the norm that defined kdramas even if i never watched it myself i watched 1% of Anything with Kang Dong Won and from there started watching as many as possible and mostly the newer ones at that date....My memory is a bit hazy how i stumbled with this particular one and didn't watch the same drama as my friend;i guess the synopsys wasn't appealing to me or to cringey but after finishing my own batch of drams i raved that kdramas were addicting and great to her making her give another chance(she was watching jdramas,liking them more,Gokusen ringing bells?)...being a kdrama duckling back then everything was soooo suspenful and the twists were unpredictable unlike now that have 10 years of avid viewer under my belt jajja ...Still remember looking on My Soju(older fans might know) for the dramas and was part of my daily routine...I don't regret falling into this dramaland hole because i gained much more than losing(opening my horizon to new cultures,learning korean,metting u guys)

My gateway drug errr drama was also Boys over Flowers. I initially watched it because at the time kdramas were being shown on Hulu and kept showing up on the suggested watch list. When I was younger I had loved the manga and anime Hana Yori Dango so figured I would give it a try. Me and my little brother managed to somehow binge watch the drama in 3 days. It's definitely not a good drama and I could never go back and watch it because I know it's bad. But it is ultimately what got me into dramas. I cannot name what was my 2nd drama but some other earlier ones I distinctly remember is Secret Garden and You're Beautiful which helped solidify my descent into drama watching.

It took me awhile to branch into other Asian dramas, but some of my other firsts are:

Cdrama: Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (Eternal Love)
Tdrama: Fated to Love You
Thai Drama: SOTUS the Series

Flipping through the over-the-air antenna TV channels when a period piece caught my eyes on a local Korean channel. English sub was intermittent. Show didn't seem to be on a regular schedule. Sometimes it suddenly turned dead air during the broadcast. Still, managed to watch a few episodes over a few weeks.

After a few months, some time between Thanksgiving and New Years, decided to google the show with a vague description. DramaBeans recap of The Moon Embracing the Sun were the top search results. Skimmed through the recaps the found the episodes I watched. EUREKA!

After this one, City Hunter, Secret Garden, Warrior Baek Dong Soo... VIKI and DF memberships. Then cdramas and jdramas.

I don't watch much dramas or shows in general anymore, preferring reading web novels and listening to audio dramas. Still, visiting DB and checking up general viewer sentiment about dramas has become a habit.

Ah are you me? Lol. My and your drama pattern has been the same. High school fellows started watching a strange Korean drama called Boys over flowers and discussed it everywhere. So I just gave it a try in summers and I was hooked. Hooked definitely to the reverse harem story, seeing those good looking guys and weird jerk tsundere male lead who still ended up winning my heart. It was a whole new world. Obviously I followed it with City Hunter which I love to date but never rewatched because I know these two wouldn't stand the test of time and my maturity now. But I took quite some rest and then returned in 2013 to check Heirs . Clearly I only cared about Lee Minho at this point. I don't anymore, I also think he lacks a lot of acting skills but I will still check out the first episode of a show for him. That fragment remains, he is my first kdrama crush. Though I was a little older by that time and realized soon enough that Heirs was trash. So I started seeing recaps because the show was dropped but I wanted to see how the story went. That's when I came across DB. The only platform that acknowledged Heirs for the mess it was lol. Since Heirs had a star studded cast, every other recap site (i came across) was praising it, rather praising oppas but DB was the only place critical of it and that's when I knew I needed to stick to DB. But I didn't, I took a rest again. I occasionally checked Dramafevers facebook page where they kept mentioning dramas. I saw the comments of a few and it felt that You who came from the stars was popular. I checked that out but wasn't impressed except for the first few episodes. Then all of a sudden I saw a few of my friends discussing Healer on facebook. And I thought ok let's give this one a try. And probably that might have been the last try I could ever give a kdrama because even though I liked Bof and City Hunter, they didn't really bring me down the rabbit hole. They were just on the same level as foreign language films would be. You might try them once or twice but won't watch them forever. But I knew less. Healer was it!! It was amazing. It's run had already finished so that's when I remembered I needed recaps to check reviews and voila I landed on DB again (I might have checked DB for YWCFTS but that was only for the recaps to fill up episodes but for Healer, I stayed for the comments and the personal opinion of the recappers). After I completed Healer I followed it with my first live watched show Falling for Innocence. In summers I catched up on already acclaimed shows like Misaeng and My Girlfriend is a Gumiho and other Hong sisters shows. Since then I have been a regular both in kdramas and DB. Come to think of it, always my real life circle has brought me to kdramas. But unfortunately the people who introduced them to me, don't watch them anymore. Now that BOF is too old I wonder what show acts as a gateway drug. Is it Dots?

I am forever grateful to Netflix for exposing me to Kdramas. I accidentally clicked on Mirror of the Witch AKA Secret Healer, and I still remember the confused text messages to my BFF about what I was watching but I did not stop watching and by the end, I was hooked! I've been free-falling down the Kdrama (and all things Korean) rabbit hole ever since :) Now if only I could learn the language

Stumbled across a Korean movie named A Millionaires First Love on YouTube while I was pretending to do an assignment back in 2008. Watched it, loved the dashing hero with the dimples (Still in Love with him)... googled... saved LOTS some of his pics on my Nokia 6300... more googling/YT... ended up watching my first kdrama... Goong (Bunked class to binge it) ....and 11 years later here I am... still exploring in this rabbit hole!

I was born into a drama-watching family. We lived in a small town where the only entertainment were watching TV together after dinner. My first venture to kdrama was Autumn in My Heart. My roommate owned the DVD set and it had this inexplicable draw that I could not comprehend even now. I hate tear-jerker and felt iffy about the faux incest, but I could not stop watching. When Officer Min touch Jang Geum's hand in Jewel in the Palace, I screamed.

I stopped watching kdrama after for a few years because I had no access to it. Then, my friend had to gift me a DVD set of Full House and I knew of the free dial-up Internet. It's down the rabbit hole after that.

It came the time when I could not wait to go home to watch the next episode of Protect the Boss and discovered that there's live recap online. One site led to the other, and then I discovered DB. Kdrama watching experience was never the same since.

My first was BOF too. I got tired of American shows three years ago and that's why I decided to watch it after I found it on Viki and I liked it. So I then watched Playful Kiss and found it a little weird, heh. Then me and my sister who watched only the first half of BOF with me decided to watch City Hunter and we loved it. After that I finished most of LMH's dramas before I start watching other kdramas. I took a break afterwards for about a year and went back to American shows. Then I decided to finish watching the kdramas that I just left in the middle (which were quite a few), I found myself not be able to to stop. Before I knew it I was so addicted that I feel like I can never go back to anything else. I just adore kdramas now. I rarely watch anything else. I even got bored of reading even though I was a bookworm.

This is great. My first drama was Boys over Flowers too. Terrible, terrible drama. It was hilarious though. Afterward, much like you I thought if I'm bored enough I'll watch another. Then I watched Coffee Prince, after that it was all over. Coffee Prince was my 3rd drama. This is going to sound really arrogant and so I apologize for my ignorance but I was like "Oh kdramas can be good." Coffee Prince will forever and always be my rabbit hole and has a very special place in my heart.

I started with a Taiwanese drama my friend had told me she was watching, she kept talking about every episodes she watched giving me updates, I got impatient waiting for updates so I figured I should do it myself It started with a Kiss Finished it in 2 days then the 2nd season. Then I had nothing to watch. she gave me a list I watched the other Taiwanese dramas on there, then the Japanese ones (since I’d watched animes & read mangas before, it seemed more familiar.) having nothing left to watch I started my first K-drama: Delightful Girl Choon Hyang & that was it. You’re beautiful , Full House , basically anything I could get my hands on, anything with subs, not that it made a difference, I could barely speak English & had never watched anything with subtitles. Dramas became my excuse, I’m not watching TV I’m learning English. I only watched K-dramas after, binging everyday after school.

I was a huge General Hospital fan. I will never forgive my Liz and Jason ship not sailing. A GH recap blog I read reviewed Fated to Love You. I was so intrigued. I kept circling around it and then finally watched. I think Googling it brang me to DB. When I really started to consume dramas I was consuming the old recaps at the same pace. I'd read them on my commute like a book.....I really need to go back and WATCH them. Anyway, looking up dramas I'd always see Coffee Prince I just went ahead and bought the DVDs. I didnt have streaming sites figured out yet, lol. Then came Secret Garden and Samsoon. I mean once you see those cheekbones....
Boys over Flowers was like crack. I was so sleep deprived and as I'd press play I kept asking myself.."What is this? Do I even like this? But I need it!!"

Oh, The wonderful rabbit hole that is drama land! Mine was exactly the same except I started with *Personal Taste* in 2013. Hiatus for about a year then I stumbled upon the wonders called "City Hunter", "Moon that embraces the sun" and "My Love from the Star". Never looked back since! What an exciting 5 years as a non-native speaker and now I can understand about 60% of the drama w/o subs. Lee Min Ho and Kim Soo Hyun.. goldies...

K-Beauty was a gate to kpop and kdrama for me, and first dramas: My Love from Another Star ( every kbeauty blogger mentioned it), Keigo Higashino Mysteries, Dr Qin Medical Examiner.

My first k-drama was Full House with Rain and Song Hye Kyo in 2004. I was visiting my relatives in Vietnam where everyone watched it, like everybody was obsessed with the show. My eyes nearly popped out of my head at Rain’s extravagant fashion. And I mean EXTRAVAGANT. Nobody even came close to his crazy fashion from Full House days. I still remember those revealing clothes on Rain’s huge body until this day. It really was the weirdest thing to me as I was used to European and American series. I loved Full House despite all the craziness but I considered it only just anomaly and went back to my “white” TV (even though I’m not white).

It was Coffee Prince 3 years later that really pulled me into dramaland and never let me go again. My white friends used to make fun of me because I watched some girlish guys with questionable fashion but - that was before k-pop took over the world.

Nowadays dramas and Dramabeans are daily part of my life and I’m happy I found fans who are as passionate about dramas as I am.

Great write-up, thanks @missvictrix for echoing my experience on how I stumbled upon K-drama and how it remained this oasis, like a friend I can find solace in. I also got introduced to K-drama by a classmate in grad school, who insisted I watch Boys over Flower. I watched... and nvr looked bck for the past 5 yrs! Thanks to Dramabeans which makes it even more enjoyable and interesting!

I didn't start out with BOYS OVER FLOWERS, but it was my first modern drama. I started with sageuks (JUMONG, KINGDOM OF THE WINDS, EMPEROR OF THE SEA) and didn't even notice that they had +50 episodes. But I always ended up in tears, so I looked up time travelling dramas (as if those wouldn't end in tears pffft, I was young and naive).

Anyway, I was hooked by FAITH and wanted to see more of the soft-spoken handsome general Choi Young. So I looked him up, tried to learn his name (Lee Min Ho) and did my research of "best kdramas" on internet. And that's how I found BOYS OVER FLOWERS.

For me it was Coffee Prince. Our local network surprisingly aired it, and it was dubbed in my native language. I was indifferent at first when seeing the commercials. Then, one day my mom started watching it and told me to join her. And all it took was 10 minutes to fall in love with the characters, the story, the bromance and of course Gong Yoo! After it finished airing, I stopped watching kdramas for a while because the network didn't air other shows and because I didn't know where to watch them. A while later I wasn't feeling well, I was in a dark place. Remembering the fuzziness I felt while watching Coffee Prince, I started searching where I can watch kdramas online. So, Boys Over Flowers and Goong it was! Kdramas are the same for me: an oasis where I feel like I can breathe. Thank you for this piece! It was lovely!

@missvictrix Thanks for this post! That’s me speaking. When my family (my hubby included) started watching BOF, I resisted. That’s until I saw him watching My Princess and I thought Song Seung Heon was really handsome. I checked it out and he became my Oppa. It was followed by BOF, Lie to Me, Goong, Prosecutor Princess, Coffee Prince. LMH was the ultimate in City Hunter, which for me is one of my top drama, only to be beaten by Chang Wook and Healer. And BTW @msrabbit I got traumatized by the ending of Autumn in my Heart but SSH and Won Bin made it so worth it.

These weren’t perfect dramas but I feel that these older dramas were more addicting than recent dramas, tropes and all. After watching an episode, there was just this great urge to watch the next one. These days I’m more selective in my choice of dramas.