yap…it getting slower but the thing is when one web is closed there's always another who is coming out…hopefully everyone can find it according to region because sometimes region restrictions really sucks….
but some fans are really nice when they know how to unblocked they will teach you how just be patient in finding everything…
good luck to everyone then...

I live in Albania, and neither Hulu, nor Dramafever, nor Netflix, stream dramas available in my region. Even Viki sometimes is not available in my region. I get crazy, read recaps, and pretend everything is fine, then i look for another drama (which sometimes is not available in my region too) :@

I'm from Kenya and have never had access to Viki or DF. I usually end up downloading the 720p versions of shows I want to watch as long as subs are available.

I avoid streaming sites because they almost always end up being shut down sooner or later and I have to end up jumping through hoops to finish a drama I might be in the middle of watching. I'd rather download all the episodes and spend my time looking for subs later.

http://dramafire.com/

Here's the one I always use - it doesn't have everything but I like that its relatively ad free and so on :)

Thanks people for posting the names of the unofficial sites we actually use when we have no other options... If tomorrow they are offline cause they were targeted by DMCA notices, just blame your lack of smarts.

PLEASE REFRAIN FORM POSTING NAMES!!!
If you can access dramas using viki, Dramafever or whatever their names are. There are people who CAN NOT, not a single one and the only sources for us are those unauthorized sites.
It's not like DB is not well known around, everybody can see what is written in here!

Personally I have been watching dramas for 4 years and never had problems finding subs. So many sites such as dramacool, myasiantv, dramafire, gooddrama and epdrama are available with good subs for any kind of dramas, cable and public.

I posted a comment saying that people shouldn't write what sources they use since some people like me don't have alternatives & don't want those sites to close & then my comment has been deleted? I'm disappointed but then again, it's not surprising...

I have to agree with the comments warning people who post links and names. Not only can they get DB in trouble, but also those sites, which are for many the only option.

It would be a good idea if the ladies could go through those comments and moderate all those links out.

for me, it boiled down to 3 points:

1. fast and legal access to dramas i want to see
2. quality of production
3. word-of-mouth value.

(the same as for japanese doramas or even manga, actually).

there aren't so many new dramas i actually want to see anymore, and i don't usually go look for older big-time successes (mostly because i don't know the actors and/or i already know all about the story because of the fandom squee). but even those i do want to see are harder to find legally (yeah, not in NAm or Can either)... so the default is a "whatever" shrug and a move-on.

the second point - quality... i still remember "save the last dance for me" - my first kdrama. i was such a kid over it (i know it might not be the bestest and greatest etc - but i bet all of you feel the same about the first drama that got you hooked). since then, though, only a few were memorable and lately, it seems what appeals to me is not usually generally liked, so i get really disheartened when later in the show the story or acting values go down to some generic plot or "feels" just so it could ensnare a few more generic-loving viewers. after one or five such shows, i don't really want to start a new series before it has actually ran its course and i have an idea of what to expect (and that leads to not starting ANY new show for months.) is it me or have all kdrama plots found a common lowest denominator and it doesn't even matter what you watch, you can cast predictions on how it will end, and be right about 85% of the time, because it's ALL BEEN DONE THE SAME BEFORE?

and about word-of-mouth... this used to be the first thing i looked for when picking manga or dramas. but lately (in the last two-three years) since the japanese invented the iron curtain to put between them and the fans using free sites, the only info regarding either manga or dramas has been provided by fans of the production. which, sadly, tend to fall in the "OMG i LIKE this, like, SO MUCH" category (at most there's the nuance of "i don't USUALLY watch things like this, but THIS one is..."). of course there are a few voices that say "this one's meh too" but they get shouted down by the fans.
in consequence, whenever the following is the loudest, i tend to stay away (hey, it saved me watching "heirs'!). it also means i don't jump into popular series either til they're closing down, and by then they've devolved into the generic... so i give them a pass.

so i'm one who already kind of quit watching kdrama (and a few years back i lost interest in jdorama for much the same reasons), and i kind of stopped reading manga too... which shows that your theory of people moving on to easier-to-find, more satisfactory and less-disappointing entertainment is actually spot on, in my case anyway. i have read a lot of books since i stopped perusing drama and manga, and even if i still don't watch a lot of movies (american blockbusters in particular give me the creeps,...

"I don’t know how we’d go back to the ye olde ways of bootleg videos, syncing SRT files, softsubs, and all that."

Guess I'm forever doing it old skool haha. Earlier this year (after my brand new laptop died an unexpected death), I was forced to stream my shows via KDrama and Viki). It isn't so bad when you're looking at a small screen but when you're back on your laptop everything looks less HQ and I'm just not about that life (yeah...I'm not watching Secret Door if it's not super high quality). It's sad how not only do we have to pay for subs but we also have to pay for quality. And as a student, it's not something I can necessarily afford. I do like to be able to eat and drive places LOL.

So now that I'm back with a new laptop, I've gone back to my old ways. I think I may need to invest in a couple of new hard drives (maybe this upcoming Black Friday! haha).

I guess the corporations want to force people to pay for access to content, which makes sense because producing shows costs a lot of money. But really, if I find that I have to subscribe to multiple channels/sites to get access to the dramas I want to watch I'll probably just quit watching altogether. There's plenty of free entertainment on the internet and I really need to limit the time I spend in front of my computer anyway.

I live in the U.S. and Netflix (that I pay for) has reduced their KDramas from over 30 to about 15. They are all old and I have seen them. What a drag. But HULU which is free, has over one hundred - still has a good mix and some are new.

Actually HULU is better (even though they have ads) because they have the 10 sec rewind and you can customize the subtitles.

If a broadcaster of K-dramas doesn't require a subscription to view or use (annoying) advertising, how do they get money for offering a service? I know people want their k-dramas. (And yes, I'm not happy that many of the dramas I want to see aren't available anywhere except on (for example) DramaBeans recaps.
But to whine about not being able to find free, no ads versions of Korean Dramas seems hypocritical to me. The actors, the writers, the producers, etc. need to be paid somehow.
I'd pay to see subbed versions of many dramas. (3 Musketeers is the main one right now.) I am not upset because I can't find it free. I'm upset because I can't even find it anywhere that I can pay for it.

Hi! I'm from India and just a month into watching Korean dramas. I'm finding it really difficult to get videos with subs. I'm addicted to Korean romcoms and not interested in watching anything else these days.

There are quite a few names on my to watch list that I'm unable to watch cause of the unavailability of videos with eng subs! This is really frustrating. I've no friends who watch Korean dramas to ask for help either!

Venting it out here makes me feel slightly better!

There really is no easy fix though, is there? All the major streaming sites are competing with each other to get the most traffic and I'm sure there are several legal hoops ( and a whole lot of money) to jump through to stream certain dramas in certain areas.

Then of course there's the issue that there are a lot more dramas to watch then there used to be thanks to the rise of cable. There's 12 currently airing dramas on DB's side bar and that doesn't even include dramas that air only once a week (or dailies). That's a lot of dramas and no matter how big legal drama streaming has become, there's still a relatively small team of translators. They can't do it all (people have to sleep) so naturally they have to prioritize which drama to pick up and which area to cater to. This usually means that dramas with lesser-known actors or from small cable channels get sidelined and other countries get overlooked. But of course, if everyone's got the same license you've got, and they're pumping out subs faster than you are, then you're basically shooting yourself in the foot so then everyone starts scrambling for exclusive licenses.

*Sigh* At the end of the day, it's all about making money. Legal streaming really has come a long way, but I think we're always going to need secret fansubbers and illegal streaming sites.

I have to agree with your article. I read reviews on Han Cinema for episodes that aren't even available to watch.
And the choices of dramas seem to be less and less.
Even if they are available for purchase Yes Asia's prices
on most new ones are really expensive now. Very disheartening.

I have to agree. I live in the UK and I am always seeing this message. I tend to only watch dramas after they have finished airing and from the selection available on viki normally. But I do find it harder finding specific titles. I hope this doesn't become a trend. I agree in the long run they would be the ones to miss out. I too as others have mentioned am happy to subscribe to certain sites and get good quality products but sometimes that's not what you get. And then the selection is poor, grr. With viki they had several popular dramas added after they finished airing and they all aren't fully subbed. I had to watch elsewhere :-(

So I didn't read all the comments posted .
I've been watching not subtitled dramas on ondemandkorea.com

http://www.ondemandkorea.com

I'm from Finland so it's pretty much a given that I have to use VPNs to watch anything. I'm not annoyed by slow subbing since I know by experience how painstaking it is to sub anything but I am hugely annoyed by people online who whine and whine that they want their episodes they want their subs and they want them now.

Unfortunately I seem to have a weird taste for shows since most of the ones I'm really into are on cable (so I can't watch them live streaming) and they don't get picked up by subbers very fast or at all. So I've given up trying to keep up with shows in real time. I'll just watch them RAW when they come (Yoona's street, Bad guys) and rewatch whenever the subs come. I even torrent whenever I need to (Cheo Yong, Border). I must say that I've noticed that I'm learning korean fast this way :D

I have noticed an apparent narrowing in selection. If we are just talking about what the legal viewing options in the US are (since I am less familiar with what the options are elsewhere), then as far as I know the streaming options are: Netflix, Hulu, DF, and Viki. Other commenters may be able to come up with a few other legal sites.

At one point it appeared as though Netflix was expanding their library of Korean television series. They still have a few available to rent on DVD, but finally expanded to streaming services as well. However, this was shortly lived, and Netflix truncated their number of streaming titles which have mostly remained the same over the past year+. Currently if you search under the 'Korean TV Shows' submenu of the TV Shows tab, there are only 20 dramas available in contrast to the 100+ shows available on sites like Hulu.

The advantage of a paid subscription to a site like Netflix is the ad-free viewing, while a site like Hulu still shows ads even with a paid subscription. However, the upside of Hulu, DF, and Viki is that they all have a wider selection than Netflix (and each offer premium subscriptions for viewers to watch in HD). What I find...particularly curious...is that while these main players are in competition with one another, their selections appear to be almost exactly the same.

Hulu, DF, and Viki all carry many recent popular titles. The only exceptions are when one site (usually DF) gets exclusive rights to stream a particular drama among the batch of newer shows. However, these instances appear to be sporadic. If these sites expanded their libraries more along the lines of trying to obtain content their competitors don't already have, you might expect them to stand out more in comparison. (Anytime you want to get in on this game, Netflix...anytime...)

There are three shows in particular that I have been waiting for that have yet to show up on any of these four main streaming sites: Ojakgyo Brothers, Life is Beautiful, and Bad Family. It seems to me that if you were a streaming service trying to set yourself apart by offering content your competitors were not, for instance, one way to do so would be to start licensing a particular genre - like the family dramas - that are mostly not picked up here in the US. (Another option - expand your sageuk repertoire.)

At this point it continues to look like my wish of Japanese television being licensed in the US is not going to happen, but there was a time where I had hoped that with the popularity of Korean television shows stateside that we would eventually see an expansion in selection. For what it's worth, that would be something most viewers would be very happy to see.

I am also from Europe. I am seriously addicted to watch dramas, as my rutine of escapism.

I would really really pay the price of access to subbed currently airing dramas on any of the forementioned sites that cater for the US audience. Or even at viki.com, but that just cannot be done.

Hence my only option is to watch Kdramas illegaly and it is really frustrating. I can also understand how upset are the subbers who don't want they subs to be used on the illegal streaming sites... but I am left with no other option. Only if I don't watch Kdramas at all.

So in the end I am thankful for the pirates because they share what they put their hands on, while they live off the fansubbers. Even if I understood that fansubbers hated mysoju or kimchidrama, and the action taken agains these sites was right in legal terms, my heart broke for the people who put that much work into those neat and wast collections of dramas and movies.

Since then I got used to migrate time and again to another streaming site as the more frequented ones are shut down time to time, but my heart sinks each time when I look at the list of available titles getting always shorter.

I wish I watched all the older stuff when they were available on mysoju...
And I hope that if ever no subbed content will be available any more, by that time my Korean will be good enough to understand the raw uploads :)

The scene has become nothing more than an ouroboro, something feeding unto itself. For the wave to survive for the current and future generation of fans it really needs to stop trying to cut off access to those who wish to become part of its continued success.

Right now we have a few streaming sites available (not always accessible outside the states) and what we would normally have access to is normally dictated to/by those networks. Alternatively we have some cable/satellite access to the American arms of the big three but again it to is limited and often times woefully behind.

The site and its contributors have said time-and-again that there is simply too much content stretching from dailies, to bi-weekly, to music and variety shows that far too many people want access to and are more than willing to pay for that access. Problem is it doesn't appear as if anyone is listening to them, so we have to resort to alternative means to get access to that content.

I would like to say that my contributions to the second wave, that being for those who knew of me, has never been really that easy but it was a means to an end for so many people want to experience the wave for themselves. I enjoyed introducing so many people to it and seeing their reaction to an OTP or some evil "granny" character ruining this or that always made me laugh.

The fight to continue providing such things has claimed far too many people and groups over the last couple of years and it's at a point where even don't have any fight left in me.

For the sake of a continued wave I can only hope that they reverse course or at least re-think their current restrictive manner of allowing others to access any/all content or else we walk backwards into the past and and all too inclusive means of acquiring the shows we want and this wave we want to swell will surely diminish and die.

I have never had trouble finding the newer shows anywhere. Granted, I live in North America so it makes that easy. However I have a thing for older dramas from the 90's and early 2000's and most of those are impossible to find! About a year ago I saw The Sandglass and fell in love with older dramas. They just seem to have better acting and plots than the newer ones and they don't feel hurriedly produced and popped out in a matter of weeks. I wish there was a site dedicated to the older stuff cause I love it but can't find much of it. Because of this, I've resulted to some crazy methods like downloading subs from WITHS2 onto my phone and watching the unsubbed drama on my laptop while glancing down to read the subs when they talk. I am currently doing this for Eyes of Dawn. I do stream dramas because for some reason I can't download vids onto my laptop (I'm not tech savvy at all) but streaming has even become a chore for some sites because of the huge load of commercials that wont load, making the video not load! I don't know how to set up an add blocker and I don't know anyone that does... So to answer JB and GF's question yes it has become way harder to watch dramas than it was in the past, mostly because of ads (I don't have a problem using any site I can find to stream it on) I would also love to be able to watch dramas with Chinese subs but I have only been speaking Chinese for a few years and can't read the words fast enough. I feel that watching kdramas has somehow become a huge money making game now...

I'm in NA so I very rarely get "not available in your region", but it seems like it's getting harder to watch kdrama.

I started watching kdrama regularly on Netflix a couple of years ago, and they've gone from having, oh, 40+ dramas available to maybe 20? I'm not sure of the exact numbers but there are fewer now than when I first started watching there. Dramafever and Viki had a lot more, so I started using those sites as well, but recently I can't watch shows I'm interested in there (Cheon Yeong, Reset, Bad Guys - there have been more that I've looked for but I can't recall them now).

Plus some shows are exclusive to one site - which means that if I'm having trouble watching something on that particular site (as I had with Dramafever after an update a while back) then there aren't any other legal options. =/

question. what is dss? i want to go on it.

thnx DB & GF for bringing this up! i honestly can't imagine myself living these days w/out Kdramas, seriously! it's been a part of my daily life now & call it addiction but on a positive note actually but if these sites keep doing this unavailability in certain regions i wldnt know what to do! i find myself satisfied watching in other sites than viki these days, viki used to be one of the best after the defunct mysoju w/c was one of the first few who were good in giving us Kdramas, dramacrazy, etc. but albeit i miss them there's quite a few now that has been similarly good like dramago, gooddrama among them! epidrama too but the other two are so fast in subs as well! gone are the days when we can just watch kdramas w/out annoying ads but now u have to deal with them or pay if you prefer not to see commercials! woah what's this world coming into?

i'm still baffled what it meant by "this video is not available in your region" so where in the world would it be avail? in Timbukto (spell). or in Antarctic where there's nobody there to watch it? i miss the years where we can watch just straight through!

I began my drama watching by SRT file, soft sub..and packing external hard drive while visiting friends. I feel you. I really hope I don't have to go back to the old days.

I think rom-coms starring idols and young lead actors are likely to be picked up by legal sites. Dramas with older leading actors like Chaser (2012) and a Wife's Credentials are much less likely to be acquired, which makes me wonder if Bad Guys will ever be on a legal streaming site. Also there was a time that daily dramas were subtitled on Viki. I don't know if Viki can no longer get the licenses or if people don't want to sub a long drama, but daily dramas are no longer on Viki, even some of the dramas subbed prior are restricted now.

Plenty of things aren't available, including things that JB and GF write awesome recaps of. Their recaps of "Vampire Idol" kill me. But as a KD newbie, I'm thankful--Netflix buying rights to foreign content is what started me on this stuff less than a year ago. I wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for the Netflix "you may also like" algorithm.

Now I'm happily paying for a DF subscription (no pesky ads) and I've cancelled my Netflix subscription because I wasn't using it. I haven't owned a TV for years so no cable bill. It's amazing to me that big, licensed shows are often subtitled within 12 or 13 hours of airing in Seoul. Thanks to the time difference between Korea and East Coast US, I can watch a 10 pm Wednesday show at... um, 10 pm Wednesday. How is this possible??? Even if they were horrible subtitles I'd be amazed--and they're usually pretty good. I'm a volunteer editor at a high-quality manga scanlation site and it can take us forever to release a few chapters. Quality takes time, knowledge and talent. So the fast, pretty decent subbing is hard to believe. (Admittedly, some funny mistakes get through. I'd love it if they did some more QC in the first few days after making an episode available.

Because I'm a professional writer, I believe in paying for content when I can. The new legal subtitle sites in the US make it harder to get FREE shows. But here's the plus side:
--licensing agreements show American subtitle viewers are acknowledged as audience members, which kinda makes me feel like a "real viewer" not a ghost. (Can I put in requests for more shows with cool female leads and fewer shows with overly possessive males who treat their "women" like handbags?)
--competition between several sites means hopefully they have to keep the subtitling fast and good quality. (While the competition continues--after that, we may be in trouble. Or we may be loud complainers, aka not ghosts.)
--we get to show our appreciation to the writers, directors and actors whose work we enjoy (see above, not being a ghost).

Since I was into manga scanlations before K-dramas, I think of my philosophy as the "obscure manga scanlators code": if I can buy content legally, I should, as much as possible. If something isn't licensed in the US, then I'll go "gray market" with volunteer scanlations. And even then, I've occasionally bought Japanese books even though I don't read Japanese, just to give some love to my fave authors.

I don't know enough Korean to send fan mail to my favorite K-drama writers, so subscribing to legal subtitled sites is one way to say thanks. ALL television is a compromise between art and commerce, with commerce being the most important factor. Those hilarious almond PPLs were the funniest, most distracting PPLs ever, but hey, they paid for some Kim Woo Bin. The PPLs in That's Okay, It's Love were also pretty bad, but that show touched me on a personal level that very few stories have in the...

GREAT odds and ends topics, girls. Countless times, I go to youku in search of a past Chinese show/movie or Chinese subbed Korean drama (because there were no English subs or it wasn't out fast enough hehe) just to receive that "video is not available in your region" line.

When English subs are not available for a Korean drama, I turn to Chinese subs. But the cable ones or less mainstream ones do take a while to sub, or do not get subs at all.

Indeed, it's getting more and more difficult to find English subbed episodes. I was willing to subscribe to streaming sites but a lot of the ones I wanted to watch were georestricted (“This video is not available in your region”), so I thought "never mind."

To sum it up it's easier to access to new popular dramas these days (some of them can be found on youtube as well) but if you want to watch old dramas or movies then you'd have to dig deeper and maybe go torrent it. I mostly use dramafire and hotdrama and they really have loads of shows available. aznv.tv is good for older shows but you need a real fast internet connection for that.

This happened with manga years back, first everything was available then came the lawsuit threats and a lot of websites had to go underground. But this problem only happened when a manga got licensed in the freaking USA!! Same is happening with dramas now, it gets licensed in the US of Assholes and then God forbid if you host it on your drama sharing website or youtube you are the worst criminal of the century.

Once you start googling for dramas this shows up at the bottom:

"In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed xx result(s) from this page."

This is not even about ppl who actually own the rights for the dramas. So thanks a lot US!

Tbh I'm too poor to warrant paying a subscription for what is essentially a luxury. So that leaves me with only the options of Good drama and Drama fire, I have no problems finding dramas there (especially good drama which has a huge catalogue of dramas). I do have problems finding dramas completed especially long running taiwanese dramas. They say they are complete but then you get into the 20's to find the videos are not working, which is a pain but there are always more dramas to find. I'm not a big stickler for HD quality, Good drama is more than acceptable and I think drama fire has excellent image quality.

In 2007 I watched my drama on mysoju.com, than moved to viikii.com (now viki), I was a subber for many years, but I had to stop because I was not for people paying the suba. We have subeds the dramas by giving our free time, and you want to profit form that ? Many of my friends on viki quits after that.

it has gotten harder..

ugh hate getting the message "“This video is not available in your region”.. im in the US :O

I agree it is getting harder to access current ongoing dramas. unless you are aware of all sites that offer subtitles, it is easy to give up. My biggest frustration is the amount of adverts in each episode while as a paid subscriber their is no difference in access and availability of subtitles.
"V" seems to be going through a lot of growing pains and unless they iron out their problems soon they risk loosing a lot of fans/viewers.
DF had stopped allowing viewing unless signed in but as fan base decreased they have since allowed some of the shows even ongoing ones to be seen without signing in.
Though the owner of the shows have the last say in who streams their shows but decreasing visibility may change their approach much faster.
This discussion forum will also bring to their attention peoples concerns. Hopefully, They have interns that peruse the internet for information like this!
Thank you for all the drama recaps. They make watching the various dramas enjoyable and give us info on the writers, directors, and actors.
ASANTE