Un-favorite villan trope
1. Chaebol with daddy issues
2. Middle aged corrupt politicians who are horrible parent
3. bullies
4. Helicopter parents

Favorite:
1. Josean vampire (you all know who I mean)
2. chaebol serial killler with kettle ball

Favorites villains:
- Time in time travel themed dramas
- Fate in sad ending romance dramas
- Villains who can't make me hate him/her

Unfavorite villains:
- Psychopath (writer easy way out, humans are interesting because their motivation in doing things)
- Villains who use masks, caps, hoodies, and weird camera angles to hide their identities like the viewers are fool, not recognizing them.

My favorite villains are the ones who are complicated and have legitimate reasons for their choices other than just wanting to be "bad". I'll also take a smart, effective villain over a indiscriminately nasty one any day. However, my all-time favorite "villains" and characters in general, are those who are legitimately torn between conflicting desires, loyalties or goals, and therefore often find themselves cutting moral corners in an attempt to deal with a world where none of the choices are obvious or easy. Some of my favorite shows that do this include Six Flying Dragons, Queen Seondeok, The Devil (Lucifer), The Untamed, Pied Piper (flawed in other ways but has an amazing antagonist), Jumong, and both Forest of Secrets 1 & 2.

My favourite villain is one who I can't hate and still can't love. I'm not talking about a pretty face. But a villain that makes me wish he was innocent. That's the kind of villain I love watching.

I hate villains that glare their eyes for their next baddie move. For God's sake, stop it!

If he or she is rich and middle aged or elderly, chances are they are probably evil, regardless of genre its a Kdrama staple at this point.

The best friend who is trusted implicitly (usually by the male lead) almost always turns out to be a bad guy.

Every Makjang Mother-in-law

Chaebol teenagers and young adults. (need we say more)

The weird guy (usually from a small town) who blends in a little too well with everyone

Un-favorite villains

-Bullies
-Obsessed sky castle moms (+Crazy ahjuma obsessed with the value of her building)
-Corrupt public servants/politicians (especially the king's father in law that has all the freaking power of the kingdom)
-Hot psychopath that murdered people because he didn't have anything better to do.
-Every single character Baek Hyun Jin plays
-Hello Monster's villain (how could he do that to Min? Our poor baby T.T)

Favorite villains
-Funny gangsters
-(Hilarious) corrupt dudes turned good: Jun Ho in Chief Kim, Honey Lee in The Fiery Priest, Honey Lee in One the Woman
-The ones that don't pretend to be something their not (unlike the main lead) and aren't actually that bad (they only wanted love). Aka. Villains more likable than the leads: Min Jung in The Devil Judge (I still can't get over her speech to the high school girls)

Kwak Siyang convincing us all that he was a cute supportive younger brother just to hurl his cute cat against a wall in Chicago Typewriter was the most memorable baddie reveal ever

Song Yoon-Ah's character in The K2. Second drama I ever watched, she fascinated me. Ultimately, the only character worth watching. When I think of a baddie, she always comes to my mind first.

Villains - especially those who are at first apparently nice - wear round glasses.

(If they are men - women just wear round glasses anyway)

My first sign of a baddie is actually the actor/actress playing the character. And the one I'd first recognize is Jung Woong-in and Shin Sung-rok.

Other signs include
- Chaebol/Abusive teenagers( I freaking hate this one)
- Toxic Workplace.
- Family Feuds.
- The ones who know the full story. If you have too much information, you're on my radar.

The villains that interest me are the ones whose battle with the good guys is actually balanced and not a one sided winnings till the good guys then hit a single devastating nail to their coffin; also, the ones who get revealed towards the end of a drama.
The ones I like are nuanced villains whom you know are only on the wrong side of history, and they still have some morals left somewhere. The ones who cause a ruckus with a purpose instead of just for causing sake (Queen Seondeok's Mishil and Devils Judge Kim Min-jungcomes to mind).

Un-favourite villain trope would be the Petty Tyrant - the office boss who kicks his employees shins, abusive teachers, bully it-girl/guy, etc.

Favourite would be those who started on the right path but veered off course (Stranger, I Can Hear Your Voice) or those who are just unabashedly villainous but not in a psychopathic way.

I have never been to Korea but if I do, I will have two rules: never cross the road, and have nothing to do with animals, because then I might have to visit a vet who might be
- a volunteer by night who is a crazed murderous chaebol by day
- a centuries-old goblin with a murderous plan to steal my fox bead
- a murderous zombie who tortures animals
- possessed by a murderous spirit with a plan to become super-powerful.
I guess it's the way they teach them in veterinary college.

Funny... I have a tentative essay planned about kdrama villians.

my favourite villain trope is obviously the insistence upon casting inexplicably hot people to play them for no particular reason other than 'what if bad guy also sexy?'

on a more serious note, though, I love it when a villain, rather than being evil for the sake of it, has a valid point/ideology driving their actions. It's why Killmonger in Black Panther is such a strong villain- he did awful things, but his stance was pretty sympathetic and understandable for a lot of reasons.

I also love when a villain exists very clearly in contrast to our hero, particularly when they have a lot in common, and that their biggest distinction that has led to their respective roles are the choices that they made in response to their similar circumstances.

Then again, sometimes I don't need the deep stuff. Sometimes all I'm craving is a charismatic, beautiful asshole who likes to commit murder and chew on scenery.

I guess like a lot of people, my favourite villains are the one who do things but not for them. It's just their ways are different from the heroes. I like too late redeemption arc like in Pinocchio, He Is Psychometric, Forest of Secrets 1 and 2.

I like villains that are the product of their environment/upbringing. The most memorable villain for me is Nam Goong-min’s character in Remember-Son’s War. He was one the most detestable and evil characters I’ve ever seen in Kdramas, but at the end my heart broke for him.

Another type of villains that I love is non-human real life villains such as time, circumstances, baggage and priorities as in 2521.

The single most detestable trope for a villain has to be animal cruelty. I simply cannot stand it. Petty egoism or vicarious living off of one's children is also so tiresome.

But agency, cleverness and some righteousness sits very well with me. It doesn't hurt if that villain happens to be super hot while at it, like the Joseon vampire @sspat mentioned. My all-time favorite villain is Gong Zi of Bloody Romance. I go gaga for him.

The villian who will always stay with me and made me swing from raw hate to heartbreak was the character played by Jung Woong-in in Empress Ki. He was only in a supporting role, as Yeom Byung soo, and when he articulates his motivations, he becomes understandable, but not forgivable. His character shows how evil always feels sorry for itself and victimised to the extent that it makes us feel sorry for their hard fate.

Thank you for choosing a Shin Sung Rok villain as the cover image 🥲.

With that said, Lee Jae Kyung is a very important character in MLFAS, without him and his obsession with tranqualizer + USB, there would have been no drama at all. He basicly pushed the plot forward just by being evil and power hungry, masked by his good-ish persona in front of others.

My favourite villain character is Lee Hyuk from The Last Empress. Nutured to be bad by his bad parents. I do wonder how the character could have been with better upbringing but that would lead to no drama...because in TLE the royal family and their evil-side was the drama 🤣.

By the way, SSR's character description in Doctor Lawyer screams villain. May he have lots of screen time in that drama 😆.

I used to know a villain was a villain if their hair was styled up. That was a dead giveaway. Nowadays that might be less common, but I'm still wary.

Other giveaways are the perpetual all black with the black cap or they happen to be a vet or volunteer at an animal shelter.

My favorite villain anywhere ever (not just in K-dramas) is SSR in You From Another Star - because he was the only villain I saw since my childhood that I was literally scared of. And I think it's the hardest thing, to really scare grownup people watching TV just with your snakey face and mean stare. So SSR is forever my no. 1.
My no. 2 in K-dramas would be the Joseon vampire - because I also love the Loki-kind villains (those we somehow find cute even though they don't necessarily have a tragic backstory).
And no. 3 is the evil lawyer from Hyena. A really slick one (and I'm still mesmerized by his choice of interior designers).

I find this the worst villain: the chaebol who stalks, manipulates, abuses his position to force himself upon a young woman who is not at all interested in her; then in a toxic fashion, wears her down to like him.

I find the best villain is a character you do not expect to be dark, sociopath or psychopath. My favorite was Jo Yeo Jeong as a smiling terror in Ms. Perfect

This drama seems to be long forgotten, but there are 2 villains from Angry Mom that have stuck with me all these years later. I loved Ahn Dong Chil as a villain. He was an awful human being, but he was a complex character who [in his mind] had reasons for doing the things he did and I found myself hoping against hope that he would somehow turn into a somewhat decent person. He was a very *dark* gray character that sometimes did the right thing, but you spend most of the drama thinking that he did something unforgivable and he just can't get a full redemption arc, and I appreciated the show for that. But I loved this character so much for being such a complex villain.

On the flip side, this show also had Do Jeong Woo. While he had some complexity to him, he was just plain evil. But he was evil in a very REAL way where he 100% exists in this world and it makes my skin crawl. I hated him with every fiber of my being and I would get riled up thinking about all the men in this world that are just like him and UGH. I hated him. But he served his purpose as a proper villain, and he made Dong Chil slightly less awful. Slightly.

I also really loved Min Seok Hoon from Mask, but his character kind of lost his awesomeness as a villain by episode 6. But I think I loved him so much because of how the actor was playing him more than anything else.