I think I have 4 stages of gateway dramas.

My introduction to Asian dramas was Taiwanese classic It Started With a Kiss. I was an avid Neopets player in elementary and middle school (yeah, I was a cool kid) and one of my friends from there mentioned that she was watching Taiwanese dramas. I’d never heard of them before but I was intrigued, and she gave me ISWAK as her first recommendation. Ten years later I tried to rewatch and it made me want to stick my head into a garbage disposal, but 7th grade me was INVESTED.

The next couple of years I mostly watched Japanese dramas, as I was big into J-pop at the time. My interest in K-pop was growing steadily when I entered high school, and it was then that I somehow stumbled upon Goong, which ended up being my very first K-drama. I hated almost all of the characters, but dang, I was hooked and entranced by the beautiful sets. That drama had no business being as pretty as it was, being made in 2006.

For several years after that I was a fairly casual k-drama watcher. I sometimes posted about them on my tumblr, but I was never a big part of the fandom. When I started university, though, dramas made me feel less alone, and I began to lurk Dramabeans regularly. It was then that Healer aired, and I got completely swept up in the frenzy of live-watching for the first time.

I became more and more active on Dramabeans after that, and by the time the site was redesigned I was visiting multiple times a day. Of course, it was Because This Life is Our First that made me into a true DB and K-drama addict, and I’ve been stuck here in this fandom ever since. Thanks, Ji-ho and Se-hee.

I have Netflix's algorithm to thank for immersing me in the world of KDramas. Like many, I watched SQUID GAME. Suddenly, Netflix suggested more Korean series to me. One of them was OH MY Venus. The synopsis sounded interesting, I was bored and looking for a nice love story. Although I didn't understand a lot of things due to the lack of cultural background and especially the names (these still confuse me partly because I can't tell if they are female or male names) and titles/addresses put me to a hard test, I was hooked. So I watched SHE WAS PRETTY and later other dramas with Park Seo Joon. In between, I kept ending up at Dramabeans, where I got more recommendations (I had quickly discovered that the recommendations were often congruent with my tastes).

What do I like so much about KDramas? It's not uncommon for a drama to make me cry at first and then suddenly make me laugh in the next scene.
I find it ideal that a drama often has 16 episodes. That way I can immerse myself completely in this world without it degenerating into a soap opera. And when there's a happy ending, it's usually not in the last five minutes, but I can enjoy it for a very long time.

1st Question - Jumong. Swordplay are my thing. Which is the reason why I still have a bias towards Sagueks. Conqueror, Gwangaetto the Great, and then Iron Empress sealed my love for sagueks because it had so many female cast wielding the sword. I'd watch a saguek today if there's a female swords woman (Six Flying Dragons).

2nd Question - Dramabeans Recap section. :- I've read more Kdramas as they aired than I've watched since stumbling on Mirror of the Witch here, which I also watched.
Reading Temperature of Love here on the recap section is why I now watch modern Kdramas and I'm hooked, totally.

3rd Question - I've fallen so hard, my watchlist is pilled up and I'm still adding to it. Plus the ones I have saved since it completed airing but haven't found the mood to watch yet.

Stumbled on Strongest Deliveryman one day while looking for something to watch. Started looking into more kdramas while waiting for the next episodes. Proceeded to get absolutely hooked on Lovers in Bloom and on my week off binged the like 60 or 80 episodes that were out at the time. (sigh, she had so much better chemistry with the SL.)

Been a fan of Chinese Wuxia and Martial arts films since i was a kid, my first exposure to Asian dramaland were the condor remakes/adaptations of the early and mid 00s, started checking out other genres and territories dramas I've been a fan since.

My First few Kdramas came a bit later with Iris (2009) and City Hunter (2011), i also got to watch the iconic incest makjang Autumn in my heart (2000). They have not aged well but i still love and defend them to this day.

It was much much harder to find subbed content back then, the internet was not as fast and not as cheap either as today.

Shout out to all the Dramaland fan-subbers who got us this far.

I’ve told this story before, but it was my husband that got me hooked on kdramas. It was 2016, and we just cut the cord on cable and went streaming only. We saw Asian content on Netflix and my husband picked My Love Eun Dong as his first kdrama. We watched all of it in a couple weeks. He couldn’t stop talking about it to everyone he saw for weeks on end and it was seriously annoying! (He was infatuated with the former Miss Korea.) Then he “made” me watch Love Rain which we both enjoyed. I stalked Dramabeans to see what some of the cultural references were referring to and have been here since. Then my Korean friend told me to watch her childhood friend in a live airing drama—a little known drama called Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim, and a even less know on actress (Seo Huyn Jin who came to her wedding). I must admit I rolled my eyes a bit when she told me over Thanksgiving that year. I had to find a different streaming service to watch it—enter VIKI. I was still a casual watcher, I thought, but started commenting on DB. That winter, we drove halfway across the country and had a few hours to kill and the DB community was raving about some actor I’d never heard of in his “comeback drama” *cough* Gong Yoo *cough* and we started the first episode of Goblin and the rest is history. The cinematography BLEW ME AWAY. The first two episode were so cinematic, Lee El was gorgeous, the set up was so compelling, I knew it was special. We have Amazon prime and so gobbled up some kmovies off of that (The Beauty Inside gave me a who’s who of chungmoro, and Won Bin in Man From Nowhere was a revelation—no wonder @girlfriday was obsessed with him coming back to dramas). And after a certain election in 2016, I swore off news and current events until the 4 years was over and only watched k-content. Then I had to watch the news again, unfortunately, because of a small pandemic. 😂 I still watch kdramas, a ton more than I used to and I like it better that way. And now, who can’t stop talking about them? So long answer, but Love Rain was my gateway drama. Yoona still holds a soft spot in my heart as does Kim Young Kwang, who played the second lead there.

I first discovered K-dramas when my husband and I stumbled upon episodes of Age of Warriors airing nightly on an independent public television station while on vacation. We were intrigued, but this was before the streaming era, and I wasn't able to find the show anywhere else (I still have never seen the whole thing). However, several years later I discovered that Netflix had the DVDs of Jumong so I started ordering them. It was love at first episode. And then when the DVDs inexplicably became unavailable half way through, I found the shiny new world of streaming apps and the rest is history. As someone who has always loved sprawling period epics, it was the best thing ever (oddly, it took me quite awhile to watch a contemporary drama - if it didn't have at least 50 episodes and warriors with great hair was it really worth it?).

ALONE IN LOVE. I had no idea who the actors were or how a kdrama story normally unfolds or at the time divorce was still very taboo in SK.

It still holds up as a show that does relationship drama right.

I have no idea... I have a bad memory. 😂 I think what I liked it's that it was different from the other stuff we watched. We always welcomed something that looked different. We were curious.

We watched "Stairway to Heaven" and then we were like "next drama", and then next and rewatch and kpop, and next... and that's it.

I think I started to get real reasons (besides it's "different", seems fun) after Flower Boy Next Door. That was the first drama that felt relatable, that made me heal, and made me truly happy.

My gateway kdrama was CLOY.

I kept seeing people recommending it on my twitter timeline and I finally decided to give it a shot in at the end of November 2020 and the rest is history.

I can't even put into words what sucked me in but I literally dropped all other TV shows and movies for kdramas. When I look at the 100+ kdramas I have watched since then, I still can't believe what happened 😂. It's indeed a rabbit hole.

I was lurking on DB and reading recaps in 2021 and only started actively commenting this year 😅

As a kid, I watched the Club Dorothée, it was an TV show for kids that aired Japanese animes. At that time, people were thinking that anime = for kids, so you could watch Hokuto no Ken, a pretty violent anime, or City Hunter during the day :p I loved those animes and being older, I still watched them but on internet with Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Code Geass, etc. I discovered Nodame Cantabile, a nice anime about classical music. By chance, I found the Jdrama. It was completely weird but the actress could make the FL very lovely and the music was great. I started to watch Jdramas. But because of the rights, it became more difficult to find. So I started to watch other dramas TW, C, K, Thai. For a very simple reason, I liked the Kdramas, the language was resanoting very well to my ears. I liked the fact they had a special OST for each dramas too.

First I had a new house all to myself. Then a family member was traveling to Korea. Netflix having great international content was a go to source to learn about this far away place. Beginning with movies, “Admiral, roaring currents” and “Assassination” then discovering and falling hard for “Descendants of the sun“, connecting with coworkers and friends; however it faded slightly with the busyness of life, and availability of reliable streaming services, but then the pandemic hit and Mr. Sunshine and CLOY re-entered my life with the full force of a heavyweight knockout. A couple of years and many, many dramas later (over 30, I’ve counted) I would say I’m a dedicated fan. Much love to Beanies, Viki, Netflix, IQIYI, etc….😊😉

I see that I am not alone in beginning my journey with T-dramas. It actually started pre-streaming with DVDs from our library with a desire to watch something in Mandarin, so that my son could retain some of what he had learned of that language in high school. This started with DVDs of the T-drama LOVE NOW (still a favorite of mine), MISS ROSE, IT STARTED WITH A KISS and then FATED TO LOVE YOU.

At that moment I saw that there apparently was a Korean version of FATED TO LOVE YOU sitting on a nearby shelf. I brought it home and watched as Jang Nara and Jang Hyuk proceeded to show me how much better Korea could do with that wonderful story- which has been remade by others since but never quite as well (No offense meant to Joe Chen who had actually done a fabulous job, as did Baron Chen). This was followed by FULL HOUSE and after that I was hooked- and discovered streaming, cut the cord and the rest is history.

A few years back, DB made me realize that Boys over Flowers was not the gateway drama for everyone. For people around me or even who I knew distantly, it certainly was. It remained the top recommendation for quite a while to hook people to kdramas. LMH's magic can work on a teenager who was totally new to the kdramaworld. City hunter preceeded BOF and then I took a break.

Checked Heirs again, dropped it but kept with the recaps. DB was the only place that was critical of the show rightly so but other recaps just seemed to ignore the problems of the show which I could see. So I remembered DB a year later when I saw dramas again thanks to Dramafever that kept me updated on dramas that are talk of the town and then started with MLFAS. I wasn't as impressed and honestly, I may have never returned to dramaland had I not come across someone's post on Healer. It was a private conversation on a social media channel but the name gave me an indication that it must be Korean. So I checked it and the rest is history. Didn't leave kdramas or DB after that. Marathoned several recommended dramas but also started live watching immediately after Healer. Sometimes I think I've done the most important things of my life when I put a stop on dramas and definitely feel that I need to cut them off for a while to actually live my life and have some other activity to look forward to than watching an episode. That said, it is still my favorite thing to do.

Is it that bad I don’t remember at all what my first kdrama was? I’ve tried to remember so many times over the years, but my brain just refuses to work. It must’ve been something truly garbage if I cannot recall a single detail, yet addicting enough that I decided to give the medium itself another chance. It was probably some Z-list drama starring idols who can’t act because I was (and am, to a certain extent!) a huge K-pop fan. I ultimately think that interest, as well as my existing interests in anime and East Asian cinema, made it inevitable that I would get sucked into this scene.

That said, I do, however, remember the drama that made me into an active watcher and a lifelong kdrama aficionado - Coffee Prince. Just as now, the power of Gong Yoo is unmatched and I never looked back after that. It may not be my actual first drama, but it’s definitely the first one worthy of being acknowledged as such.

I can't believe that it has already been about 15 years since I watched a kdrama for the first time. When my second son was born, I discovered English period dramas on YT and used it as a nice easy entertainment during my breastfeeding moments. I usually just followed what was suggested as the next watch and one day I clicked on Loveholic... and was blown away by the colours, beautiful shots and by the EMOTIONS! (I cried so much then 🙈 It was also my introduction to The Voice 😁 who then *gasp* played the Second Lead!). Then I watched My Name Is Kim Samsoon... and I fell in love. That drama I would call my Gateway Drama (and I rewatched it a couple of times and even bought a DVD set). Then You Are Beautiful came with the CRACK element (and music I downloaded and put on my playlist)... and the original version of 1% of Anything brought the first introduction to traditions, hanboks and FOOD. Since then I'm that strange member of the family who doesn't know what's on in Hollywood or on TV (*cough* I first heard about Frozen on Dramabeans *cough*) and wastes her time on some strange Asian TV. 😁
(And I think I have been with Dramabeans for 12-13 years.)

Conversation between me and a friend, ca. 2012:

Friend: "Do you want to watch Korean drama?"

Me: "Korean drama? What is that?"

Friend: "I am watching a really cool one right now. It is about a plastic surgeon who travels back in time."

Me: "Sounds interesting. Will give it a try."

10 years after "Faith", I am still watching Korean dramas. Sageuks are my favorite. Hard to say no to swords and manes of glory.😀

What’s your gateway drama?
The first korean dramas I watched were Jumong and Emperor of the Sea. I didn't fall for them that hard to call them gateway dramas. They mostly surprised me with their new-to-me storytelling. But then I watched Dae Jang Geum and I fell SO HARD that I watched all fifty plus episodes at least fifty times. I loved it so much that I was scared to try other shows for fear they would let me down. I started to watch other shows like Goong and others later, when kdramas srarted getting famous around the internet and my friend pressured me to watch them.

What sent you plunging down the rabbit hole into dramaland?
Dramabeans. I was reading so many conflicting comments about Coffee Prince that I started a thorough search to find a site which would tell me exactly what it was like. This lead me to dramabeans recap section. And Javabeans' in depth explanations about every single nuance in Korean shows. It was a revelation. I started looking at all shows, even those I had seen before differently. I still lament her absence.

How hard did you fall?
So hard that Kdramas are my sole source of entertainment after 17 years?

The first kdrama I ever watched was Coffee Prince and strangely enough I stumbled upon it by reading an 'Alternate Universe' Card Captor Sakura fanfiction that was based on it lol.

I was able to find the first few episodes subbed on youtube and got hooked practically immediately. It was fun and zany and this ensemble of weirdos stole my whole heart. I was hard pressed to find any more subbed content online so I ended up having to do some research and discovered an asian media store in the city.

It took me an hour by train but holy moly was it worth it - the kdrama DVD selection was huge! I picked up Coffee Prince, Goong (because I liked the actress) and Shining Inheritance (It was new to the store and had a recommended note on it from one of the staff members).

The quality of subs always varied from episode to episode which I found weird but they were always at least comprehensible and really, those 3 box sets were all I needed to become a kdrama addict for life!

Secret Garden was my gateway kdrama. I can’t remember EXACTLY why I decided to check out the show, but I remember being recommended to check out kdramas if I wanted some good romantic comedies. At the time I was watching a bunch of anime, and that was just a genre that wasn’t too well represented. So I went looking for some well reviewed kdramas, and a few that stuck out were my first viewing experiences. Secret Garden had just finished airing and shortly after finishing that, Coffee Prince cemented my fandom with both shows’ humour and melodrama that hit me just right.

Found Dramabeans a couple years later, and lurked for a couple after that before starting to post from time to time!

i too have shared my story of falling down the rabbit hole of k-dramas years ago. I'm cheap when it comes to buying cable (actually don't have it now.) so i just always bought the basic package. the cable company that i was with at the time (2005) offered every so often their whole gambit of networks as to entice us to buy larger packages. it never worked on me but i always enjoyed being able to scroll through all their offering for these spurts of times.

1 time i happen on this channel "asn" an all asian network that no longer exists. they showed everything from animes to Bollywood to news to k-dramas. 1 day i happen to catch this k-drama that hooked me & i remain so. the drama was "my lovely sam soon" or "my name is kim sam soon". it stared kim sun ah & hyun bin.

so what hooked me, simple her! sun ah's character of sam soon. she was everything, funny, self-centered, selfless, direct, confident, insecure, loving, tough, determined, giving up easily, respectful, etc...
sun ah's acting was superb. i believed this character & wanted to know her story.

well, the cable network only gave you about a week of their free offering before stopped it. i was so into it that i tried to continue watching through the fuzzy picture only hearing the korean audio, which i didn't understand, that's how hooked i was. this show forced me to join the 21st century. it was because of this show i bought a dvd player & a laptop. the 1st so i could get the dvd of the drama to watch the entire show & the computer so I could share it with my daughter in europe. won't go into it here about the difficulties i faced just to get the dvd, but it was all worth it.

i have shared the drama with loads of family & friends bringing them into the k-drama world.

I came to kdrama through such a cliched path I hesitate to mention it, but it was through the films of Bong Joon Ho, especially Memories of Murder, and Okja. Because of Memories of Murder, when my wife and I saw Stranger available on Netflix, we watched immediately, and that was we've probably watched every similar detective/crime/political corruption drama since then. With Netflix, it would have been inevitable that I would have watched romantic K-dramas, because of a weird psychological obsession (trauma from childhood, of course) that has compelled me to do things like watch every adaption of Jane Austen about 200 times.

I do want to say this, though, echoing several people above: one of the main reasons I watch as many k-dramas I do is Dramabeans. It is, hands down, one of the best discussion sites on the Internet, and I go through 10-15 such sites a day, on a range of topics-- sports, politics and other forms of culture.

I have read the scholarly article on Dramabeans by Prof. Regina Yung Lee, (in 2014's The Korean Popular Cultural Reader) and though I could do without the references to "Althusserian interpellation" and "critical code theory," she is probably right on the important mediating function of DB recaps. (I understand Prof. Yung Lee's at times impenetrable writing is the cultural studies apparatus you have to attach to an article to get it taken seriously in some circles, and her article is worth reading if you haven't already. )

Still, I myself don't need any fan culture theory to identify exactly what makes Dramabeans good--a combination of enthusiasm for and emotional responses to the show's stories and characters, with a great deal of historical genre knowledge, and then really intelligent analysis and criticism, so it becomes not just an essential supplement to the shows, but at times better than the shows themselves.

My Girl (2005)

In 2007, my eldest sister stumbled across it on Youtube. She enjoyed it so much, she made us watch it, and we got sucked in too.

It was our first time watching some East Asian (after Oshin as wee little kids), and everything was so fascinating! From Lee Dong-wook's flawless skin and slim fingers, Lee Jun-gi's feminine beauty (the original flower boy) and cool martial arts, a very cute Hwang Bo-ra, the snow, the invisible makeup, a robot vaccum cleaner (sorry Park Shi-yeon, that robot was more interesting than you were), the dichotomy between the western clothes and traditional customs, and most of all, a witty and naughty Lee Da-hae (where's she, she was such a great actress).

The Hong sisters wove magic with the push and pull, the angst (god such angst), will they won't they cliffhangers, damn the 64 Kbps internet, you'd have to hunt and buffer the next ⅙th part of the episode to find out.

I read the little information that was there on Wikipedia back then, downloaded the episodes so I could rewatch them, and boy did I rewatch so many times. But to find another subbed drama was a lot of work with a stuttering internet, so I gave up, but never got over the fascination.

So the next drama was way later in 2012, when I searched again for Korean dramas on YouTube, and saw a song from Goong. I downloaded it from a torrent (with some missing subs, alas) and binged the whole thing overnight. And i wanted MOAR.

A few dramas later, hunting for more of My Princess (2011)'s cute fluffy fun, I came across Dramabeans, and oh Javabeans and Girlfriday's wit and humour was as addicting as the dramas. Not to mention the hilarious beanies comments under most of Song Seung-heon's posts, that era on Dramabeans crackled with such wicked humour. Those were indeed great carefree times.

StartUp was my first kdrama. I saw a recommendation on an Internet newsletter I subscribe to and gave it a go. I was completely blown away by everything - the writing, the different pace to my usual fare - everything was given more time, the gorgeous actors! I was also fascinated by the culture, the food, the excessive drinking! I've never looked back and have existed on an almost exclusive kdrama diet since. Netflix didn't have it all, so Viki was added to the streaming list, and now my frustration is that Disney+ in Ireland has the grand total of one kdrama... this has really got to improve...
I found dramabeans almost as soon as I found kdrama and it's become the essential companion for my habit. I'm the only person in my family/friends etc with this obsession, so dramabeans community, you're central to my kdrama knowledge and info!