Winter Sonata, it was airing on a local station and I was able to watch most of it, my dormmate was addicted and she used to beg us not to change channels. In the end all 10 of us got hooked and we were all present for the finale we even had ice cream to celebrate the occasion. My second drama was Save the Last Dance, I love the OST of this drama, I begged my DVD supplier to procure me a copy and luckily she came through, its still in my Ipod!

I started watching kdramas since I was about 10 so it's hard to remember which one exactly I fell in love with first, but I would guess Save the Last Dance for Me. It's no Full House or Coffee Prince, but it was one of my firsts and the whole memory loss idea was very appealing to me (that idea has actually been gone for a while... it'd be interesting to see them start using it again). I fell in love with Ji Sung at first sight :)

Email: [email protected]

Hmmm.. It would be You're Beautiful. It wasn't the first kdrama I watched but it was the one that turned me into an addict. I know I'm too late but I only got to watch it last 2011. Last year was a year full of kdramas for me. I was watching the drama until dawn and I could already hear the roosters in the neighborhood. I would only stop by 5am because my mom might check on me.

From then on, I download dramas and watch them by heart. Haha. I also encourage my friends to watch because it's sad if you can't rant to others about a certain drama.

PS. Congratulations and Happy Birthday! Thank you for all your hard work. I will always be a fan. >:D<

Happy Anniversary!! Thank you for bringing us all the news, gossip, hilarious awards show commentary, recaps, everything that us English-speaking fans crave!

The hook for me was Coffee Prince, I started watching it before dinner and stayed up until 5:30 am to finish the series because I couldn't stop pressing "next episode". Work the next day was difficult but filled with all of the amazing scenes, the tears, and love from that terrific drama! I couldn't get enough!!

My first drama love was Boys Over Flowers. I wasn't a huge tv watcher, but was really big on watching videos on youtube back then, and BOF episodes were always the most watched videos at the time. I clicked on one out of curiosity and my love affair/obsession with kdramas was born. I regret nothing!

Happy 5th Anniversary Dramabeans!

My Name is Kim Sam Soon, for me. I was a Japanese drama addict before that and having only watched the makjang Stairways to Heaven, I was always skeptical about watching Korean dramas which always seemed to veer towards melodrama. That changed when I started watching My Name is Kim Sam Soon and it has still remained one of my all-time favourites. I followed that up with Full House, My Girl, Goong... and then came along Coffee Prince. And that sealed it for me. I love Korean dramas, cultures, language, history and Korea in general, leading me to go on vacation once a year to Korea in the last 4 years. Thank you, My Name is Kim Sam Soon for opening the door to a wonderful world, that is, Korean dramas.

CoNgRaTs dramabeans!! this is my first comment on your site but ive been a fan for awhile now:)my first drama was Boys Over Flowersa friend introduced me tothe love for k-dramas and ever since then ive gone over to the darkside and never looked back!!

You're Beautiful...my long-time friend mentioned her love of Korean Dramas and convinced me to watch it...after the foursome of Jang Goon Seuk, Jung Yong Hwa, Lee Hong Ki, and Park Shin Hye what other choice did my brain have...it was an overload of cool and I have never returned
*you can't make me!*

Autumn Tale.

I re-watched the scene where Eun-suh meets up with Jun-suh for the first time on the beach a la backhug, and their acting was awkward and over-the-top at times.

But, SSH and Won Bin, dayyuummm.

Mine has got to be MNIKSS. It was only then I realised how witty, insightful a good k-drama can be! I survived on Samsoon's words of wisdom just as I was going through relationship problems during that period. And MinI've on the dark side ever since! :D

Congratulations Dramabeans for making it to five years! Without this site I would have been lost to the world of K-Dramas. (You guys have definitely helped a Sista out! :)

But as to your question, the first Asian Drama that pulled me in and lead me into the dark side was a Taiwanese Drama called Fated to Love You (which came out in 2008). That Drama blew me away and to this day remains one of my favorite dramas of all time.

It had everything that you could want in a drama, nerdy girl who falls for, the rich hot guy who has a meddling (but nice) grandmother, who doesn't like his current career driven girlfriend, who is secretly the sister to the 2nd lead guy who is like the "godmother" to our heroine, to which he promptly falls in love with! NOT to mention that our heroine discovers shes pregnant...and the father is....well lets just say this drama, has a lot of drama! and good acting.

This drama had me hooked from the very start, and it turned me into the Drama Addict that I have become today.

But hey, I have No Regrets ;)

Delightful Girl Chun Hyang! Or whatever the translation is hehe. 퀘걸춘향 was like the best drama ever and I totally plan on rewatching it during spring break!

Boys Before/Over Flowers.
Kim Bum<3
GaEul and YiJung so cute!
It was... Addicting.

My Girl, definitely! I had watched some jdrama before but it's My Girl that totally threw me to the dark side, watching episodes one after another night-long and nodding off day-long...!

Off course, Its Your'e beautiful..(obviously,, )

I was always a drama junkie but I never thought that Minami Shineyo would bring out the "fever" in me..Literally,,

Funny story behind it was during the time that this drama was posted on Viiki.com, (I guess during those times that the subbed episodes were too difficult to find because of the property rights) I almost had pneumonia because of frustration. Minami Shineyo has become my regular dose of vitamins during my last year in college so whenever that there are soft subs of the drama, I would print out the recaps then I would watch the raw video. Then Tragedy struck, my bag where all my thesis drafts and recap print outs got stolen (poor thief.. he must've thought that those huge piles of binded paper was a laptop.. still those were treasures >,< ) First love? Yes,, because whenever I feel down due to corporate stress, YB was my bliss..

I love the simpleton character of Go Mi Nam, The magnanimous Hwang Tae Kyung, the lovable Jeremy and Robot 2.0 Shin Woo (although yeah,, Jung Yong Hwa has improved)

Im still on the dark side.. with pig rabbits in leotards by my side,,

Congrats for the five years!

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FULL HOUSE!! It was my first drama and first kdrama marathon. Watched all 16 eps in one night/day and got addicted to kdramas after (and all nighters).

Wow first drama LOve how could i forget. the enthusiastic and nervous feeling that would come upon me after every episode i watched :) after watching dramas close to 5 yrs i can still remember the 1st drama that was able to capture my heart and turned me to the korean drama fever :) the one and only drama that made that possible was Coffee Prince... ill never forget that episode where Gong Yoo returns to the coffee shop and tells Yoon Eun Hye that he wont mind being gay for her!! And the KISSS!!!! wow!!! I LOVE THIs drama!!! THIS is DEfinItely MY FIrst Love :)

First off, congratulations!

And you crack me, as always. Now you're finally old enough for kindergarten, huh? :-)

Although I only started watching dramas this year, I can't 100% remember my first drama. I'm almost sure though (after lengthily racking my brain) it was You're Beautiful. I slipped into dramas via movies (Do Re Mi Fa So La Di Do - and that I found via mangas).

Let me say I found it profoundly weird, particularly the first episode or two. I totally didn't get some of the characters (the guy who drags PSH to join A.N.JELL), but the plot and some of the other characters kept me watching. And at some point I even got to like the manager - not because he got any less weird, but because his character was developed solidly throughout. Which kind of made me realise that this was a well-written drama, especially retrospectively now that I have seen tons more (including plenty that I started and dropped because they were not well written).

Anyhow, congrats again!

Happy New Year and Happy Bday!! First, I have to say this is an amazing place and thanks for all the hard work :) i just started watching kdramas recently when a tv channel in South America (where i'm from) started showing Goong; it was subtitled in spanish and it was love at first sight <3. I search the web and found a world i didn't even know existed, full of hundreds of beautiful stories and a new culture that grew on me with every episode. After that, i couldn't stop watching dramas and i'm hooked forever jaja, however i'll never forget that cute and romantic drama that caught my attention and made me a kdrama fan!! ;)

My gateway drug into drama addiction was Autumn in My Heart. The storyline and acting drew me in and after i finished it, I wanted MOREEE.haha.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND CONGRATS ON THE BIG 5. :)

My first ever kdrama was Goong/Princess Hours. I hated watching movies or shows with subtitles, so it took a lot of convincing from a friend before I actually watched an episode. From then I never looked back and fully brought me over to the dark side!

it was Autumn in My Heart. That was the drama that started it all..
Although my taste has changed from liking the melodramas to liking ones with either more humor or dark stuff.

When I cry... I don't want it to be because the two switched daughters have found their real families and have to leave the ones they had loved, but from being touched by some deeper (and more real) life situations.
I'd rather cry from being touched rather than having my heart be wrenched apart.

ANYWAY, that was like what? more than 10 years ago? DAMN how time flies.....

LOVERS.

The first Korean drama I fell in love with, and still my #1 drama.

I fell in love with Lee Seo-jin's character and still am!

Congratulations Dramabeans! Continue rocking :)

My love for kdrama was fueled on by dramabeans in 2007 when I started consistently watching kdrama and stumbled upon this site, though my first kdrama addiction was Full House back in 2004.

My gateway drama was Coffee Prince. I started out with K-Pop then one day I saw a parody of Coffee Prince by Big Bang (I'm a VIP) and although I had no idea what the hell was going on it sparked my interest. Still one of my favourites, kind of like a k-drama first love, you can never forget it.

I first started out with tw dramas then moved on to j dramas like they were phases but then I watched you're beautiful! and I was hooked on kdramas for longer than I have been on anything else
This has become my most frequented website with me reading everything oN it and always checking for updates.

Both my 1st drama and my 1st drama love are the same - Unstoppable marriage from KBS 2008... that was the year we got kbs world in India... i remember, it used to air around 1.30 IST afteroon, and my college used to end around 1.00, and i used 2 ride my bike so fast, not stopping 2 chat or hang-out with friends, 1ly staying back if the college work was very very important, and my friends used to be so pissed off!!!

but then i introduced them to delightful girl chunyang when i found, quite by accident, that these dramas were streamed online, and the rest, as they say, is history! they fell in love, and would download the dramas for me (what a reversal!), since i used to have 1ly a dial-up connection that time...

that time kbs world was airing dgcy twice a week at night around 9, and 1 of my friends bet me as 2 who would finish it 1st (fyi, I did since i started 1st), but my friend had had a limited broadband plan, and unknowingly charged around rs-9000 in her monthly bill (around $180-$200)... that was quite a shock, with her being not so well-off.. but that didn't abate her passion for k-dramas, eventhough both of us felt guilty...

so i can say it was both unstoppable marriage and DGCY which are my 1st loves since searching about the actors of Unstoppable online (i love Kim Dongwook) led me to finding out about dramas online and DGCY brought to me over to the dark side of mad downloading and watching (since Unst was too long to be recommended & downloaded by friends) :)

honorable mention would be Mom is dead upset aka mom has grown horns whixh we used to watch as a family without fail and have family discussions about the plot, characters, etc...

P.S. the dramas mentioned are from KBS since KBS world introduced me to the world of k-dramas..

Congrats on hitting 5 years! I've always enjoyed reading Dramabean recaps & thoughts on dramas, even when I don't entirely agree :)

As for the first K-drama that brought me into this wonderful world, there are actually two: Delightful Girl, Choon-Hyang and Life is Beautiful. These are two of my all-time favorite dramas still, and are really what I measure melodramas & romantic comedies against. :)

Secret Garden. It's not the first one I watched but it certainly brought me over to the dark side.

Well my first drama was Biscut Teacher Star Candy, but I never really got into it, that was back when I was still dabbling in k-drama land.

I wanted to get into k-drama land tho, feel sucked in, get lost in something. I obviously had and have too much time in my hands.
So I discovered Coffee Prince and it was just the perfect drama to get my obbsession started.
I'm not a really big fan of gender bend stories just because they all tend to be the same, but then they did the thing were the guy starts doubting his gender and I instantly knew I was going to love it.
It was the best thing ever, cute guys, cute make-shift family, cute cafe, not to mention I loved the scenes when they made coffee, made me want to become a barista.
Although the story did get annoying sometimes, and the ending did not really satisfy me (it's hard to find a k-drama with a statisfying ending) Coffee Prince has been one of the best shows i have ever seen and it is amazing how it still holds up after 5 years...? Is it 5?
Anyway Coffee Prince is historically what brought me over to the dark side and I cant get out, even though the obbsession's been pretty chill nowadays.

Oh just a random thought after reading some of the comments, so many people that put coffee prince hehe.

Full House! Now that I look back, I'm not so sure what the appeal was since their acting was below mediocre and Rain's style was absolutely horrifying. And yet at the time, the cliche plot hit all the right points in my young teenage self to get me hooked and laughing in the early wee hours of the morning.

Winter Sonata. I watched it in Japanese but since my Japanese was pretty pathetic I managed tracked down a book that had the scripts in both Korean and Japanese. I would first find the parts that I REALLY wanted to understand in the drama, then try to find the corresponding section in the book and then slave over the Japanese trying to translate it into English... Talk about labor intensive! Talk about motivated!

MY GIRL! SEO GONG CHAN! <3

I have watched a lot of k-dramas beforehand just because it was shown on television before my favorite animes. My dad was so addicted to Summer Scent that everyday after work, he had to run to the house to be able to catch it on television. LOL!But, My Girl was the first one I watched undubbed. And I just fell through the dark side indefinitely.

CoNgRaTs dramabeans!!this is my first comment on your site but ive been a fan for awhile now:)my first drama was boys over flowers a friend introduced me to the love for k-dramas and ever since then ive gone over to the darkside and never looked back!! thanx again for your site and HaPpY NeW YeArS everyone!(e-mail [email protected])

wow my journey to the unhealthy addiction of kdrama started with all about eve LOL so old!!! well since young ive been brought up with asian family drama...gotta blame my mom ><" heh. and then full house....omg that drama...don't even get me started....i was a lost cause since then....now im a drama junkie....wish it can be a full time job LOL and reading dramabean recaps dont help cuz it just makes me watches more dramas LOL /sigh theres a prob when you spend more time watching dramas than studying :P

My Lovely Sam Soon.

I've watch this show 7 times from start to finish without skipping parts. I love it so much, I even read the recaps for it on this site.

I was a freshman in college back in 2006. I turned on the television on night and there was this Asian channel and on it My Lovely Sam Soon was showing, I watched one episode and I've been hooked on Korean Dramas since.

I've watched almost 150 different dramas Korean (80%), Japanese (15%), and Taiwanese (5%). But My Lovely Sam Soon will always be number 1 to me.

The first kdrama I watched was "Winter Sonata" in 2002. My cousin had just came to America from China and with her, she brought along a bunch of DVDS.

Within that massive pile of DVDS, she had a boxset of "Winter Sonata" Chinese (Cantonese) dubbed. It was the hit series all over Asia at the time. Got my mom and I hooked ever since.

Discovered D-Addicts in late 2003 and for a few years (before the boom of massive drama sharing on the internet), got all my dramas off there.

I'd have to say the one that made my heart fall and ache would have to be Stairway to Heaven. KSW's gut-renching crying scene sunk my heart. I watched it dubbed oh-so-long ago, but will definitely find time to go back and watch it subbed this year; just have to choose a non important day to have swollen eyes and bloated face!

First K-drama was FullHouse but it's been on hold for quite sometime (around 2 years).
Then there was Boys Before Flower because I'm a Hana Yori Dango fan (manga). But same I didn't manege to finish it (I watched the whole thing only recently)
I watched Personal Taste which I maneged to finish.
But it was thanks to You're Beautiful that I ended up completely adicted to K-dramas...

If I think back on it, my first head-over-heels-I-love-everything-give-me-more drama was Hello, God with Yoo Gun and Kim OkBin. The love triangle was real to me and I couldn't help but feel for all of the characters. I could really sympathize with how the characters interacted with one another and how that interaction changed them internally.

My first Korean drama was Full House, however, my first drama in all was Hana Yori Dango. It all went SO downhill shortly after!

Happy 5th anniversary dramabean : ) Ur site is one which i always can trust in : ) Tanx for ur hard woking

My first drama was winter sonata which i watched it previus spring ang i cant forget it ...untill then choi ji woo and bae yong joon live in my heart...

Our tv station brought Kdrama to us just a few years ago with old dramas (I found out later). Well, between Fullhouse (my first OTP ^^) and Bae Yong Jun's Hotelier (once a young girl dreamed to be an hotelier*smh*), the winner is Hotelier... BUT I crossed over to J-dorama and despite all the hotness in BOF, imo it can't beat Matsujun's Hana Yori Dango. The Great Jang Geum brought me back once to K-drama land and after City Hunter... somehow I just can't stop this addiction to drama. And YOU too, Dramabeans, has to take responsibility for my addiction!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GUYS! (^_^)

Growing up in a household that contained a family full of drama-addicts, I was introduced to many many dramas, mainly cantonese/taiwanese. I think the first drama that I actually fell in love with was the tw-drama, Silence. That drama contained a very touching story and it was the first drama that made me cry :]

If we're talking about k-dramas then my first k-drama i loved was Hello My Teacher :] The storyline was great and that got me hooked on k-dramas.