Wonder if you saw Tokyo Girl on Amazon Prime. I quite liked it. (I am based in New Zealand)

Thanks for this post, so helpful! I had been searching for Nirvana in Fire, good to know about Viki Europe. So werirdly specific ha ha.

If anyone ever comes across a site that has the original, English subbed version of my favorite Asian drama ever made, Nirvana in Fire, please pass that info along.

I watched it on Viki, and – thankfully – managed to finish it before they dropped the license, and replaced it with a horrible English dubbed version. It’s not available anywhere I can find – Prime, Viki (except awful dubbed version), Netflix, YouTube or anywhere else. (and it obviously won’t be on Kocowa, since it’s a Cdrama).

I email Netflix every once in a while to beg them to license it, but so far no luck.

Have you seen Netflix’s newest Original “Psycho But It’s Okay”? Two episodes in, it seems to meet the hype and then some, with its dark fairytale vibe, timely mental health commentary and explosive chemistry between the leads.

Hi! I’ve read almost all of the dream dramas before and I wanted to reread then but I can’t find them on app?
Where do I find them?

Look up the drama you want to see. Then type in Dramac**l after the title. It works. From Kansas

*Comment has been edited just to be sure to stay on the safe side of DMCA bots ~kfangurl

Hi KFG: This is a very useful post for someone like myself who is looking for the older Kdramas that typically aren’t on Netflix, especially after reading about them in various posts. I actually got a good start with alternative sources in your other post (found two older, great shows not on Netflix) about the bloom falling off the K-rose or is it the other way around?

Anyway, this topic deserves its separate billing, thank you.

Ah, the ever present dilemma of where to watch your dramas. 🙂 VPN is a godsend and I’ve been using a paid one for some time now. Quite a lot is available through Viki and Netflix here and oddly enough, surprisingly many cdramas are also available in my region. For jdrama one has to resort to ‘other means’, unfortunately.

Talking about cdramas… Cfensi, a blog on Chinese media content has a very handy page that lists all the leagal places to watch cdramas online. There’s also a list of dramas (currently airing + those already aired in 2020), where to watch them and if they have subs. I’ve found that pretty useful.

Hi Kfangurl, thank you so much for this post. I have had a bad experience of being exposed to nasties and as a result ended up losing everything on my computer and so I absolutely do not want to use illegal sites. I pay for both Netflix and Viki and they are both excellent for me but because I’m not in the US, I cannot watch a lot of the shows due to geo-restrictions. I have been wondering about VPN and so this post is super helpful. Thank you again. 🙂

I confess I don’t have any tips to add on, I just love the R1994 pictures! Hehe. Thanks for all the tips – we’re quite lucky to have good access to dramas but if I ever need I’ll come back to this post for answers!

I have just Netflix but it has a very decent collection where I am, especially when you’re just starting out in kdrama world, as I was. Amazon Prime seems to have decided not to bother – it has one show available and nothing available even for pay. I thank Netflix every day for the great joy it has given me these past few months😊 Truly!

Great list 🙂 It’s definitely hard for us drama fans to track down all of the shows we want to watch. So many sites and then each site has regional restrictions. Luckily in the US, most new shows can be watched through Viki and Netflix. A few slip through though. But older dramas are a different story and not near as readily available. Dramafever had the best library of old dramas, so it was terrible when that went away. Viki is has been adding more old ones in recently, so at least that’s a plus 🙂

I noticed differences in subtitles based on what streaming service I use. Since I don’t speak Korean, it is difficult for me to tell which is a more authentic translation. I’m wondering if there is a streaming service that offers better translations or if this is just a random thing?

Just to let people know, WeTV and IQIYI now have Websites where you can stream content with subtitles on your computer. You do not have to watch only on the Apps. IQIYI has a search capability which is great because not everything shows up in the browse area. You can just type in the title of the drama you are looking for and it will come up in the results if it’s available at IQIYI. Both WeTV and IQIYI are geo-restricted content, so some dramas may be available in one region but not another.

WeTV: https://wetv.vip/en
IQIYI: https://www.iq.com/

For anyone interested in Thai dramas with subtitles, Netflix and VIU have content. There is also a new service called Dimsum. It’s based out of Malaysia, so I can’t access here in USA, but if you have VPN or are in one of its regions, you can give it a try. They have content from all over Asia: China, Korea, and I think Taiwan as well as Thailand with subs, but they are best known for the Thai content.

Dimsum: https://www.dimsum.my

Very useful list….but alas, most of the sites are not active in the my region. My go to sites are Netflix (so glad it has huge collection if both old and new shows) and Viki.

Thank you, kfangurl and everyone who commented on this post! Kfangurl, can you make info about legal streaming services easily accessible on your site (like your full list of shows)?
Recently I discovered Tubi TV because I was looking for a free and legal way to stream Gu Family Book. They have small selection of kdramas.

Thank you for the tip on Opera. Will try it and report the results.

Any suggestions for Jdramas?

A nice list, and one that you can’t go too far wrong with. A personal favourite is Hotpot TV. The site is well set out, the shows and their episodes are well presented and it has videos from enthusiasts re Chinese culture and so on (well they are not as “excitable” as Avenue X when it comes to sharing information 😂).

In terms of shows and their different names, it’s always interesting. For those of us who use MDL to track the shows we watch, it generally has the full range of names for many dramas. My episode count has just topped 9,000, so I can generally spot a show on Netflix or Viki that may be called something else. I won’t mention how provocative the names of some Jdramas are though! There is no doubt that You Tube is handy on occasions. As for Amazon Prime, well anything and everything is ending up on there at the moment.

I recently read a report on two computer programmers prosecuted in the US late last year for creating two illegal streaming sites that were bigger than Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. Imagine that 😱

My wife has laryngitis at the moment, so we are having a little laugh about that at home, however, the laser beam eyes are still more than effective, as are the lightning fast texts. I took my mother-in-law to see my father-in-law in hospital today and he found it very amusing that his daughter can’t say much at the moment 😂🤣😂

I’m located in the US and use Viki a lot for kdramas (used to be Dramafever 😥), and I do like how the volunteers sub and explain idioms or puns that I might not get because it gets lost in translation. However, Viki has a decent amount of shows that I can’t access in my region, and it seems that number is increasing esp with older shows. I try my best to find legal sites and am willing to sit through ads because of how I think show numbers are factored in and licensing fees, but sometimes I just don’t know what region a show is available in.

For Cdramas now, I tend to use YouTube (channels like Tencent or MangoTV) where they often upload full eps with Eng subs. I’ve also turned to the Iqiyi app for so many Cdramas with high quality subs. They’ve recently added some Kdramas too (Dinner Mate and Backstreet Rookie)!!! I find the ads on Iqiyi easier to deal with than Viki’s, for what it’s worth, and sometimes it’s easier to prop my phone up and watch a drama while I’m using my laptop.

I didn’t know that’s what Kocowa stood for; I learned something new! I’ll have to consider that too because I didn’t know they were available in the US.

Tried most of these but sadly Europe is always geo restricted….
The VPN thing is kind of expensive here and you always have to do an abo of 1 or 2 years….

But thank you for showing me that there is more than in my opinion crappy Viki page 🙂

I’ll give my two cents here. If you are watching mainly from your desktop computer, use Opera browser. It comes with free, built-in VPN so you can bypass geo-restrictions. You’re out of luck if you want to watch from your TV (unless you do the whole mirroring thing, which is quite complex).

Another website I would like to recommend, is WeTV. WeTV is mainly catering towards the Chinese drama market, but they also have a handful of KDramas as well. It’s free to watch, except the super new ones in which you pay a fee to become a premium user to be able to watch it as it’s just released. However, most content become free after a few weeks, after losing its “shine”.

Other platforms I use mainly are Netflix and Viki too, though Viki is geo-restricting too much for my liking, and I can’t access it because I watch from both my desktop and my TV. TV box VPN are generally paid versions, no free ones, as far as I can tell.

I think I mentioned before that Netflix started my kdrama fling, so kudos for that, but it has its drawbacks. Mainly the available selection depending on country of origin and that it in general only features more recent releases. Plus, no release will remain available forever, at least, not to my knowledge.
I knew of Viki, but as of yet have not used it. Not sure about their retention rate; is availability permanent?
In my case it meant that getting older releases (say older than 2 years) was a bit of an issue. So I did resort to “other options” (specifically torrents) and personally I can live with the “guilt”. If there were strictly legal ways available for me to get to see those older releases I would use those. Like Netflix for example which I do still use for newer releases.
I would even buy DVD/Blu-ray releases of some favorite series (with English subtitles), but, the chance for those kind of releases happening is practically nil…
Anyway, I will be following the comments here to see what other options might turn up.

This is an excellent list. You should be able to easily get around geo-restrictions at Viki etc with a VPN service. That’s what I have. Viki was great when they had things to themselves but now it’s a much more fragmented market unfortunately. That is unless you’re prepared to take the, ahem, ‘unofficial’ route where there is pretty much everything on tap in very high quality.