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40 free Korean Drama trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
A paraglider blown into North Korea, a goblin who can only die if his bride pulls a sword from his chest, a visitor who has been hiding in Seoul since 1609 and 456 debtors playing children's games for their lives: Korean dramas have been hooking the world since the first hits made Japan swoon in the early 2000s. These 40 questions run from that first wave to Squid Game, Extraordinary Attorney Woo and Queen of Tears. They cover the shows themselves (Crash Landing on You, Goblin, Itaewon Class, Reply 1988, Kingdom, The Glory), the stars who broke out of them, the ballads that topped the charts, the channels that aired them, and the words every fan picks up along the way. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, and each explanation adds one more detail. Play it solo, or print it for a K-drama night with friends.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which playground game, watched by a giant doll based on a textbook character, opens Squid Game?
Red Light, Green Light
Red Light, Green Light opens the contest, and its robot doll was modelled on Young-hee, a girl who appeared on the covers of South Korean textbooks in the 1970s and 1980s.
Q 02In Crash Landing on You, which hobby carries heiress Yoon Se-ri over the border into North Korea?
Paragliding
Paragliding goes wrong when a tornado blows Se-ri into the North, where army captain Ri Jeong-hyeok finds her. The finale's 21.7% rating was a record for its cable channel at the time.
Q 03In My Love from the Star, what kind of being is Do Min-joon, unaged since he arrived in Joseon in 1609?
An alien
An alien who arrived in 1609 during the Joseon period, Do Min-joon falls for the actress next door, Cheon Song-yi, played by Jun Ji-hyun of My Sassy Girl fame.
Q 04Which Korean term for family-run giants like Samsung and Hyundai also tags K-drama's rich heirs?
Chaebol
Chaebol are the family-controlled conglomerates that dominate South Korea's economy: in 2019 the revenue of the largest, Samsung, was worth about 17% of the country's GDP.
Q 05Which term for the worldwide boom in Korean pop culture was coined by Chinese journalists in 1999?
Hallyu
Hallyu, the Korean Wave, got its name from Chinese journalists in 1999, after the 1997 broadcasts of First Love and Star in My Heart in China set off the first craze.
Q 06Which 2002 drama, shot on Nami Island, made Bae Yong-joon an idol to middle-aged Japanese women?
Winter Sonata
Winter Sonata is credited with carrying Korea's pop-culture boom into Japan: when Bae first visited in 2004, more than 3,000 women met him at the airport, guarded by 350 police.
Q 07In Goblin, Lee Dong-wook plays what supernatural figure alongside Gong Yoo's undying Goryeo general?
A grim reaper
A grim reaper, Wang Yeo, shares the screen with Kim Shin, the Goryeo general framed as a traitor and killed by his young king, whose immortality only his bride can end.
Q 08Which animals fascinate Woo Young-woo, the autistic rookie lawyer of Extraordinary Attorney Woo?
Whales
Whales surface in almost every episode as Young-woo's special interest, and the cable channel ENA saw the finale hit 17.5% nationwide while the show topped Netflix's non-English chart for weeks.
Q 09Who created Squid Game, whose script sat unsold for ten years after studios called it too grotesque?
Hwang Dong-hyuk
Hwang Dong-hyuk wrote the script in 2009, put it aside without any takers and made three other films over the next ten years; in 2022 he won the Emmy for directing its first episode.
Q 10My Love from the Star's Cheon Song-yi craved which snack pairing, sparking a craze across China?
Chicken and beer
Chicken and beer, chimaek in Korean, boomed in China after Song-yi's line about a snowy day being perfect for it; by late 2014 fans queued an average of three hours at Korean chimaek shops.
Q 11Which Squid Game star became the first Asian man to win the Emmy for lead actor in a drama series?
Lee Jung-jae
Lee Jung-jae's 2022 Emmy was also the first ever won for a non-English-speaking role; he then directed himself in the spy thriller Hunt, his debut behind the camera.
Q 12Which candy of melted sugar and baking soda do Squid Game players carve a shape from in game two?
Dalgona
Dalgona sales doubled for street vendors after the show aired, and the candy seen on screen was made by a street vendor from Daehangno.
Q 13Which country's Interlaken region staged the first encounters of Crash Landing on You's leads?
Switzerland
Switzerland hosted the opening weeks of filming, and the lakeside village of Iseltwald is where Ri Jeong-hyeok, then a piano student, plays by the water in the scene Se-ri later calls destiny.
Q 21In Signal, profiler Park Hae-young talks to a detective in the past through which discarded device?
A walkie-talkie
A walkie-talkie found in 2015 connects Hae-young to Detective Lee Jae-han, and the cold cases they chase were inspired by real crimes, including the Hwaseong serial murders.
Q 22Born a Joseon slave, Mr. Sunshine's Eugene Choi returns to Hanseong as a captain in which military?
The US Marine Corps
The US Marine Corps captain, attached to the American legation in Hanseong, falls for Go Ae-shin in Kim Eun-sook's ₩40 billion production, which Netflix streamed worldwide in 2018.
Q 23Reply 1988's Deok-sun trains as Madagascar's placard holder for which event's opening ceremony?
Q 14Which co-stars of Crash Landing on You married each other in a private ceremony on March 31, 2022?
Hyun Bin and Son Ye-jin
Hyun Bin and Son Ye-jin had first paired up in the 2018 film The Negotiation, and their son Kim Woo-jin was born that November.
Q 15Who played Gu Jun-pyo, leader of the F4 and heir to the Shinhwa Group, in 2009's Boys Over Flowers?
Lee Min-ho
Lee Min-ho's Jun-pyo made the show a cultural phenomenon across Asia, a far cry from his earlier role in Mackerel Run, and it was adapted from Yoko Kamio's manga Hana Yori Dango.
Q 16Which drama sends captain Yoo Shi-jin and surgeon Kang Mo-yeon to Uruk, a fictional disaster zone?
Descendants of the Sun
Descendants of the Sun modelled Uruk on Iraq and built it on a 19,500-square-metre set in Taebaek, with Greece's Zakynthos standing in for its coast; Yoon Mi-rae's Always was the love theme.
Q 17Probing the king's mystery illness, Kingdom's Joseon Crown Prince Lee Chang uncovers what threat?
A zombie plague
A zombie plague ravaging 1601 Joseon made Kingdom Netflix's first original Korean series, written by Kim Eun-hee from her own comic The Kingdom of the Gods.
Q 18Which institution's medical school does Sky Castle's Kang Ye-seo chase with a coordinator's help?
Seoul National University
Seoul National University is the S of SKY, the acronym for Korea's three most prestigious universities, alongside Korea University and Yonsei University.
Q 19The World of the Married, whose 28.4% finale set a cable ratings record, remakes which BBC series?
Doctor Foster
Doctor Foster, Mike Bartlett's drama about a GP who discovers her husband's affair, became Ji Seon-u's story of betrayal and revenge, overtaking Sky Castle's record in 2020.
Q 20In Secret Garden, what magical twist befalls store boss Kim Joo-won and stuntwoman Gil Ra-im?
A body swap
A body swap keeps the pair switching back and forth in the 2010 SBS hit, with Ha Ji-won playing the action-school stuntwoman who ends up inside the arrogant boss's body.
The Olympic Games
The Olympic Games opening ceremony falls on Deok-sun's 18th birthday, and the show about five families on one Ssangmun-dong alley ended with an 18.8% finale, a cable record at the time.
Q 24In Jewel in the Palace, orphan Jang-geum rises from kitchen cook to the king's first female what?
Physician
Physician to the king was a post no woman had held, and Lee Young-ae's Jang-geum was exported to 91 countries, earning US$103.4 million worldwide.
Q 25In Full House, writer Han Ji-eun and actor Lee Young-jae share her home under what arrangement?
A contract marriage
A contract marriage is Young-jae's idea, to make his crush Kang Hye-won jealous, and the 2004 hit starring singer Rain and Song Hye-kyo helped push Korean pop culture across Asia.
Q 26Hotel del Luna, run by Jang Man-wol as a thousand-year punishment, takes which guests only?
Ghosts
Ghosts are the only guests at the supernatural hotel, where Yeo Jin-goo's hotelier Koo Chan-sung is hired to handle the living world; the 2019 finale drew a 12% nationwide rating.
Q 27Which singer, born Lee Ji-eun, played Hotel del Luna's Jang Man-wol and a lead role in My Mister?
IU
IU was Korea's little sister as a teen singer before critics embraced her acting, and in 2025 she headlined When Life Gives You Tangerines, Best Drama at the Baeksang Arts Awards.
Q 28Twenty-Five Twenty-One's Na Hee-do loses her school team to the 1998 IMF crisis in which sport?
Fencing
Fencing is Hee-do's obsession at Seonjung Girls' High School, and Kim Tae-ri's teenage athlete shares the 2022 hit with Nam Joo-hyuk as Baek Yi-jin.
Q 29In Business Proposal, Shin Ha-ri poses as her friend on a blind date and discovers the man is whom?
Her company's CEO
Her company's CEO, Kang Tae-moo of Go Food, is the date she was sent on in place of her friend Jin Young-seo, in a 2022 SBS hit that grew from HaeHwa's web novel.
Q 30In The Glory, what job puts Moon Dong-eun in the elementary school of her main bully's daughter?
Homeroom teacher
Homeroom teacher to Park Yeon-jin's daughter Ha Ye-sol is the first move in a revenge plot partly based on a 2006 case in Cheongju, where schoolgirls beat and burned a classmate for a month.