Itaewon Class

Itaewon Class (이태원 클라쓰) is the K-drama for anyone who loves an underdog who simply will not bend. It's a story about principle, pride, revenge served slowly, and the kind of ragtag "found family" that makes you want to cheer out loud. Adapted from a hit webtoon, it became one of 2020's most talked-about dramas. Here's my honest, friend's review.

No major spoilers beyond the setup.

I want to be upfront about how I came to this one. I started Itaewon Class on a slow Sunday, half-watching while I folded laundry, fully expecting to get two episodes in and drift away. Instead I put the laundry basket down somewhere around the courtroom scene and didn't move again for three hours. There's a particular kind of K-drama that grabs you not with a twist but with a person — a character so stubbornly, infuriatingly principled that you find yourself arguing with the screen on his behalf. That's what happened to me. By the time the first episode ended I'd already taken Park Saeroyi's side in a fight that, technically, I knew almost nothing about yet.

My Honest First Impression

The opening hour is heavy. I'll be honest — the first episode is not the warm, cheering, found-family show that people rave about. It's a tragedy. A teenager stands up for a classmate who's being bullied, refuses to apologise to the rich kid who deserves the blame, and watches his life come apart for it. His father dies. He goes to prison. And the boy who caused all of it walks away untouched because his family owns half the food industry. I remember feeling genuinely angry, the helpless kind of angry you feel when you watch injustice land on someone who did nothing but the right thing.

What kept me watching past that grim setup was a single quality in Park Saeroyi: he never once considered bending. Most dramas would have him learn, painfully, to play the game. Itaewon Class is built on the opposite idea — that a person can refuse to compromise their values for fifteen years and, against every realistic expectation, win anyway. Whether you find that inspiring or naive probably says something about you. I found it inspiring, and a little bit ridiculous, and I loved it for both.

What It's About

Park Saeroyi is a young man with one unshakeable rule: he lives by his principles, no matter the cost. After standing up to the arrogant son of Jangga, a giant food conglomerate, his life is destroyed — his father killed, himself sent to prison. He comes out with a single long-game goal: build his own business and bring the empire down from the bottom up.

He opens a small bar-restaurant called DanBam (단밤, "sweet night") in the buzzing, multicultural neighbourhood of Itaewon, and slowly gathers a staff of outsiders and misfits — including a brilliant, sharp-tongued manager, Jo Yi-seo. What follows is fifteen years of patience, setbacks and slow-burning revenge against Jangga's ruthless chairman, Jang Dae-hee. It's part business drama, part character study, and entirely about refusing to compromise who you are.

What I appreciate about the way the story is told is that the "revenge" isn't a single explosive act — it's an entire life lived as a rebuke. Saeroyi doesn't want to burn Jangga down with a bomb; he wants to beat them at their own game, fairly, and force the man who ruined his family to watch a person he considers worthless succeed without ever lying or cheating. That's a slower, stranger kind of revenge, and it gives the show its spine. The drama spans roughly fifteen years, so we watch DanBam grow from a struggling hole-in-the-wall into something that can genuinely threaten a conglomerate, and we watch the characters age, change, and in some cases lose themselves along the way.

It's also, quietly, a show about Itaewon itself — about a neighbourhood in Seoul where people who don't fit anywhere else come to build a life. That setting is not decoration. The whole point of DanBam is that it's a place where a transgender chef, a young man of mixed heritage, an ex-gang member and a genius dropout can all belong. In a K-drama landscape that doesn't always make room for those characters, that felt deliberate and, for 2020, fairly bold.

What It Does Well

An underdog you'll fight for

Park Saeroyi's stubborn integrity — he'd rather lose than betray his values — is the beating heart of the show. Watching a principled outsider take on a corrupt giant is endlessly satisfying. What makes it work is that the drama never lets him off easy: his refusal to compromise costs him constantly, in money, in opportunities, in the people who walk away because he won't play dirty. The victories matter because the price is always visible.

A found family of misfits

DanBam's diverse, unconventional staff give the drama real warmth and a modern edge. Their loyalty to each other is half the reason fans love it. The show genuinely cares about each of them — the chef Hyun-yi, the manager Yi-seo, the gentle giant Geun-soo, the reformed gangster Seung-kwon. These aren't background figures who exist to react to the hero; they get their own arcs, their own dignity, their own moments to step forward. By the end, the bar isn't just a business. It's a home that Saeroyi built for people who didn't have one.

Park Seo-joon at his best

One of Korea's biggest stars anchors the show, with Kim Da-mi a scene-stealer as the genius, ruthless Yi-seo. The cast chemistry carries every episode. Park Seo-joon plays Saeroyi with a kind of quiet, immovable calm — he's not a shouter, he's a man who has decided something and will not be moved, and Park communicates that with stillness more than speeches. It's a restrained performance in a genre that often rewards big emotion, and it works.

A propulsive, webtoon-tight structure

It's adapted from a popular Korean webtoon, which gives the story its tight, propulsive structure — and its now-iconic theme song, "Stone Block" (started, fittingly, by Gaho), became a hit in its own right. You can feel the webtoon DNA in how cleanly the chapters move: each episode tends to set a goal, complicate it, and pay it off, which is a big part of why people describe the show as bingeable. There's always a next move on the board.

What Might Not Be For Everyone

I love this show, but I'm not going to pretend it's flawless, because the honest answer is that the back stretch divides people. Itaewon Class is at its strongest in the first half, when DanBam is small and the stakes are personal and human. As the business grows and the plot expands into corporate manoeuvring, stock manipulation and high-finance scheming, some of that grounded warmth gives way to a glossier, more melodramatic register. A few late-game developments lean hard on coincidence and last-minute saves, and your mileage will vary on how much that bothers you.

The romance is the other sticking point. The central love story is intense and, depending on your taste, either swoony or a little one-sided and uncomfortable — Yi-seo's devotion to Saeroyi is so absolute that it can read as obsessive rather than romantic, and the show takes its time letting him notice her at all. I have friends who adore that slow burn and friends who found it frustrating. And the villain, Chairman Jang, is so thoroughly, almost cartoonishly evil by the end that he tips into pure pantomime. None of this ruined the show for me. But if you go in expecting the restraint of the first few episodes to hold all the way through, the tonal shift can catch you off guard.

Who Should Watch This

Watch Itaewon Class if you love an underdog story and you don't mind a hero who is, frankly, a bit of an idealistic fantasy. It's perfect if you want a drama with momentum — something you can binge — and if you respond to found-family stories more than to conventional romance. It's a great pick for people who like business and ambition wrapped around a strong moral centre, the sort of viewer who enjoyed shows about building something from nothing.

I'd steer you elsewhere if you want a subtle, ambiguous character study, or if heavy melodrama and broad villains are a dealbreaker for you. This is a show that wears its heart and its politics openly. If you want that — and most nights, I do — it delivers.

A word on the cast and characters

If I had to credit one thing for the show's success, it's the casting. Park Seo-joon as Saeroyi is the anchor, but it's Kim Da-mi as Jo Yi-seo who runs off with the whole thing. Yi-seo is a social-media-famous teenager with a genius IQ, no filter, and a complete inability to suffer fools — and Kim plays her as both ruthlessly capable and quietly lonely. She's the most modern character in the show, and arguably its most interesting, because she's the one wrestling with whether to become a better person or just a more successful one.

On the other side, Yoo Jae-myung as Chairman Jang Dae-hee is genuinely chilling in the early episodes — a man so used to power that cruelty has become casual to him. Kwon Nara's Oh Soo-ah has the hardest job in the show, playing a character caught between the man she loves and the company that gave her a future, and the writing isn't always kind to her. But the real heart of the ensemble is DanBam's staff — Hyun-yi, Seung-kwon, Geun-soo and the rest — who turn what could have been a simple revenge story into something warmer and more communal. They're the reason the show lingers.

Where to Watch

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Frequently Asked Questions

Itaewon Class is comfort food for anyone who loves rooting for the little guy. It's emotional, it's stubborn in the best way, and its found-family of misfits will stay with you. If you want a drama that makes you want to stand by your principles, this is the one.