I'm casting Kim Ji-won as the meanest girl in the G-4 group. Specifically, I'm casting Hong Hae-in from Queen of Tears.

For the ML, I'll highly recommend Sung Hoon.
Any other actors/actresses can be cast in the other capacities.

Can we make them university students instead although I won't mind casting them as college students though. I'll gladly and willingly overlook their ages just to make it work.

I have not watched Boys over Flowers, but I have watched the chinese Meteor Garden (2018), so I think I understand the story enough to think of a possible cast.

As the ML, Son Sang-yeon (The Matchmakers, Racket Boys...). But he would be nice, naive, and a very good boy. As the FL in Meteor Garden.

For the G4 I would cast:

_ In the main role, the leader would be Arin (Alchemy of souls).
_ The elegant member who would be SFL, Jung Chae Jeon (My first first love).

The other two G4: Kim Hwan Hee (When the weather is fine) and Jung Da Eun (Our Blooming Youth).

I think a cast full of "new" faces would be positive for this remake.

Jo Boa?

Our scholarship student ML - Song Geon Hee

G4
Meanest and dumbest FL - Kim So Hyun
Most caring elegant SFL - Kim Yoo Jung
And the other two - Ha Yoon Kyung and Joo Hyun Young

I would have to cast my favorite young actresses as the G4:
Yeonwoo is the rich, mean, sheltered, spoiled, but socially clueless leader. Her father owns an investment firm and her mother a large bank. As a single child, she was raised by old nannies and a crazy, gloating aunt (Jo Yeo Jeong) who constantly gives her terrible advice on love, life and friendship.
Kang Mi Na is the quiet, shy but street smart member who is the only one with a drivers license (she does deliveries for her family’s office supply company) but who wants to fit in with “the rich crowd.” She has no time for dating because she is studying hard and secretly working for her family business. The G4 relies on her academics and “friendship” for their class assignments.
Kim So Hye is the flirty rich party girl from a broken chaebol family who guilts her divorced parents into large allowances. She weekly goes through a new private tutor because of her lack of attention and hangover “snippiness.”
Jo A-Ram is the middle class party girl who has latched on to Kim to move up in social ladder to live like a chaebol. She has the allure to manipulate boys around her finger, usually getting sneaky nice gifts that she pawns for cash.

Lee Do Hyun a destitute, kindhearted, spunky boy who is bullied by the G4’s high school friends Song Kang, Yeo Jin Goo and Nam Yoon Su. Kim and Jo find the bullying as “playful pranks” by their drinking club but when Kang intervenes she constantly judo hip throws a bully but smiles “aw, I’m just being playful!”

Lee’s first year college “push (bully) and pull (Yeonwoo’s smothering attention) comes to a head during finals week when the G4 and high school group panic at the new Dean’s (Yoon Na Moo) zero tolerance policy in regard to passing grades: one F or 2 Ds equals expulsion. The G4 meets with the Dean who will not be bribed, seduced or grant extensions to “make up” missing assignments. Kang is only concerned with one class, so she seeks out Lee’s help to pass the final. When Yeonwoo sees them studying together, Yeonwoo threatens to “expel” Kang from the G4. Kang responds “I don’t care. I need to pass this class.” Later that night as they are going home, Lee and Kang are ambushed by the G4 who beat and kick the two until the high school friends intervene telling them “they are in enough trouble as it is” after they spot the Dean coming out of a convenience store. The Dean comes across the scene and asks what happened to them. Kang says “I am a student not a snitch.” When she barely passes the class, she gives a hug to Lee. The rest of the G4 are with their grumpy and rude parents complaining that all their children “passed” their exams (by the same charms and spells that did not work with the Dean.) He smiles, “technically they passed.” He hands them expulsion papers after he shows them the convenience store CCTV footage. “Dumb and violent children have no place here,” the Dean concludes.

Jeon So Nee, Kim Dami, Go Minsi and Roh Yoon Seo as G4. (I know these first 3 will most likely not do another high school drama but who knows)

Lee Jung Ha as the kindhearted but spunky ML.

I'd rather stay at home and stick needles in my eye.....too harsh?

Okay, please tell me I’m not the only one who thoughts that this prompt is basically asking for a Korean version of “ Mean Girls” 😑

I'd like Seo Ye-ji of "It's Okay to not be Okay" to be the mean Chaeboless, and Lee Junho to play more or less that side of Kang-doo that is unimpressed and hardworking and always hungry - not the selfmedicating and fight-as-coping-method side.
In the Korean version of Boys over Flowers the FL was hilarious - sympathetic, down to earth, and also rustic bordering on the disgusting. (Eating like I don't know what, getting drunk, and falling to sleep with her head - DUNK - on the table.
Lee Junho is obviously attractive, but I wonder if he that is something that could be just gradually flaunted? We all know him, but letting the ML start displaying his looks the most plain way while just reacting to injustices, getting humiliated, and trying in all sorts of reasonable and unreasonable ways to get by encountered with chaebol ignorance and that mixture of "I am privileged and hence better than you" combined with a total lack of understanding of the seriousness of those fallbacks for people who do not have money that I have seem in several tsundere stories.