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Published Jan 25, 2026, 10:00 AM EST
Shealyn Scott is a Senior Writer at Screen Rant. She has been writing for the site since 2024, focused on network, reality, streaming, and classic television.
A creative writer, journalist, and lover of the written word in all its forms, Shealyn enjoys deconstructing scenes from her favorite shows, using context clues and historical precedent to predict major plot points (which, due to her successful track record, has sparked rumors of clairvoyancy).
As an award-winning student journalist, Shealyn spent her college years advocating for the humanities while studying English Literature. Her love of storytelling propelled her to expand her degree with minors in Writing and History, believing life to be a mere collection of stories that can be framed in as many ways as a movie scene.
As a Senior member of the TV Team, Shealyn treats the series she covers like books, analyzing every line, camera angle, and lighting choice. Thankfully, her personal mission statement lines up perfectly with Screen Rant: every creative work deserves just as much thought from the viewer as it received from its creator.
K-dramas have created countless unforgettable romances, but many of the best stem from an opposites-attract storyline. Undeniably one of the most common K-drama tropes still prevalent today, the opposites-attract dynamic pits two characters against each other at a granular level. Whether it’s a shy introvert meeting their boisterous counterpart or a prototypical hero and villain, K-drama characters can easily clash.
Beyond creating beloved K-drama couples, the opposites-attract trope provides an unavoidable sense of tension from the get-go, offering the viewer a compelling conflict to latch onto. Coming from drastically different backgrounds can lead to power imbalances, prejudices, miscommunication, and general incompatibility on paper. Yet, the best K-dramas prove that opposites not only attract; they balance each other in perfect harmony.
10 Boys Over Flowers
2009
Boys Over Flowers is a classic K-drama that centers on Geum Jan-di (Koo Hye-sun), a down-to-earth scholarship student who inadvertently gets caught in the world of F4, an infamous clique comprised of the most popular boys at school. The group’s leader, chaebol heir Gu Jun-pyo (Lee Min-ho), is everything Jan-di isn’t: wealthy, entitled, and completely ignorant of the real world.
When Jun-pyo finds himself incomprehensibly drawn to his opposite, he tries increasingly baffling tactics to get over her — and, later, to court her. In response, Jan-di gives F4 at large priceless lessons in humility, kindness, and acts of sacrifice. Boys Over Flowers remains one of the most iconic K-dramas of the 2000s, pioneering many genre conventions that are now ubiquitous.
9 Mad For Each Other
2021
Some K-dramas have carefully crafted main characters that end up feeling flawlessly bland, but Mad for Each Other embraces the quirkiness of its two protagonists, subverting the judgmental stigma surrounding mental health. Noh Hwi-oh (Jung Woo) and Lee Min-kyung (Oh Yeon-seo) could have felt like cruel caricatures, but Mad for Each Other takes a refreshing, nuanced approach to its opposites.
While Min-kyung is paranoid and easily startled, Hwi-oh has a short fuse and can’t contain his outbursts. As a result, the neighbors get decidedly off on the wrong foot. Nevertheless, the heated bickering between the pair quickly turns endearing, making Mad for Each Other the perfect unconventional love story and an incredibly bingeable K-drama, clocking in at just over seven hours.
8 King The Land
2023
The rich male lead and poor female counterpart trope has largely fallen out of fashion in modern K-dramas, but King the Land is a modernized take that breathes new life into the dynamic. Cheon Sa-rang (Yoona) may originally work at Gu Won’s (Lee Jun-ho) hotel, but the protagonist has ambitions of her own that make her distinct.
Cheon Sa-rang and Gu Won are polar opposites at the start of King the Land, with Gu Won having an aversion to smiles juxtaposed with Sa-rang literally winning awards for her hospitable grin. Their hostility soon bleeds into tension, making the romantic K-drama’s main pairing ironically compatible, with palpable chemistry to boot.
7 Shooting Stars
2022
With so many office love stories to watch, workplace romance K-dramas rarely feel innovative. Nevertheless, Shooting Stars takes an incredibly basic setting — the entertainment industry — and puts a unique spin on it by focusing on what happens backstage. A-List actor Gong Tae-sung (Kim Young-dae) is a global heartthrob, but PR manager Oh Han-byul (Lee Sung-kyung) is the one who truly keeps his career afloat.
Despite going to college together, Han-byul and Tae-sung have a noticeable love-hate relationship. There’s an understandable disconnect, given that one is always in the limelight and the other lives in the shadows, but the central couple ultimately share the same goals and find common ground amid moments of chaos. Consequently, both their professional and personal relations fall into perfect synchronicity.
6 Semantic Error
2022
After ruthless computer science student Choo Sang-woo (Park Jae-chan) directly delays Jang Jae-young’s (Park Seo-ham) graduation, the senior artist vows to get revenge by any means necessary. Throughout Semantic Error, however, it’s slowly revealed that Jae-young’s vibrant personality and fiery passion are exactly what Sang-woo needs to break out of the emotionless shell he shows to the world.
The pair start out as full-blown nemeses, with nothing but bad blood between them. Of course, a few vulnerable conversations and steamy K-drama kisses later, Sang-woo and Jae-young both realize how thin the line truly is between love and hate. Furthermore, they change each other for the better, with Jae-young growing calmer and more collected while Sang-woo becomes more exuberant.
5 Hotel Del Luna
2019
Hotel del Luna isn’t just one of IU’s best K-dramas — it’s a timeless romance about two people who, at first glance, could never be together. Gu Chan-sung (Yeo Jin-goo) is a typical human who is forced to repay his father’s cosmic debt by becoming the titular hotel’s new manager. Immediately, he clashes with Jang Man-wol (IU), Hotel del Luna’s owner.
After nearly a thousand years of purgatory, Man-wol spends her days wallowing in pure hedonism. In direct contrast to her lavish lifestyle, Chan-sung is pragmatic and subdued. Despite colliding like fire and ice, the unlikely pair have to band together to help the hotel’s lost souls find peace.
4 Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha
2021
Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha is an idyllic K-drama set in a small town, and its coastal village is the perfect reflection of its opposites-attract couple. Yoon Hye-jin (Shin Min-a) grew up living a lonely life in Seoul, but she experiences extreme culture shock after ditching the city to open her own dental clinic in Gongjin.
There she meets village chief Hong Du-sik (Kim Seon-ho), a jack-of-all-trades who ambles around town tinkering, renovating, and repairing whatever the local residents need. Du-sik’s seemingly blasé approach to life clashes with Hye-jin’s high-maintenance standards, but acclimating to life in Gongjin is the key to the female lead finding true love and an invaluable sense of belonging.
3 Love To Hate You
2023
Despite airing as recently as 2023, Love to Hate You has earned a well-deserved glowing reputation as a quintessential enemies-to-lovers K-drama. Yeo Mi-ran (Kim Ok-vin) is a spitfire lawyer who uses her streetfighting expertise to moonlight as a feminist vigilante. Due to a string of disappointing exes and a dash of pure cynicism, Mi-ran has a baseline distrust of men.
Following a comedy of errors, she ironically ends up in a fake relationship with A-list actor Nam Kang-ho (Teo Yoo) — who has a full-blown fear of women, complete with psychosomatic responses. Kang-ho and Mi-ran have to confront their own biases in order to maintain their cover, but the pair quickly realize fake dating can easily cultivate real feelings.
2 Crash Landing On You
2019
When it comes to juxtaposing characters, Crash Landing on You takes the cake. While Yoon Se-ri (Son Ye-jin) is a successful chaebol heiress in South Korea, a paragliding accident leaves her at the whim of Ri Jeong-hyeok (Hyun Bin), a stringent captain in the North Korean army.
Crash Landing on You’s legacy as one of the most influential K-dramas of the 21st century is undeniable, and the forbidden romance between Se-ri and Jeong-hyeok is one of the genre’s best love stories to date. Though they start off in diametric opposition, the main characters are more similar than they seem once they strip back the border dividing them.
2019
Without question, brewing discord between characters can be endlessly exciting, but the beauty of opposites coming together doesn’t have to be such a hostile affair. As evidenced by Extraordinary You, antithetical archetypes can just as easily create a heartwarming juxtaposition — all the same chemistry, just without the volatile reactions.
Eun Dan-oh (Kim Hye-yoon) is talkative and headstrong, but her spirited presence is evened out by Ha-ru (Rowoon), her introspective, reserved love interest. In every lifetime, the two are separated by circumstances beyond their control. Nevertheless, the magnetism between opposing charges is stronger than any intervening force, making the K-drama a truly fated love story.
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