Listicle: 10 K-dramas that flipped the rich-guy, poor-girl trope

She’s a famous children’s book writer. He’s a caretaker at a psychiatric hospital, and has an autistic brother. Their lives overlap. Seo Yea-ji’s character falls in love, becomes obsessed. At one point, she shows up at the hospital and wants to hook up. Damn, girl!

Jang Yoon-ha is a rich heiress and hates it. All she wants is to live a normal life. She finds a job at a supermarket, hoping this will help her delay her arranged marriage to a wealthy heir, and give her a chance to find real love. Of course, she falls for an honest, hardworking colleague. Her bestie falls for the heir. It’s so chaotic, it’s fun.

The CEO of a talent scout company falls for her secretary, a single dad. He doesn’t understand her aloof personality and workaholic nature. She’s intrigued by how his professional demeanour melts when he is around his two kids. Move over, What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim. We’ve got a new fav.

It’s like the city girl-town boy Hallmark movie trope, but cuter. When dentist Yoon Hye-jin’s city job gets messy, she leaves Seoul and decides to set up a clinic in the countryside. There, she bumps into the village’s beloved handyman. She loses her shoes in the ocean; he lends her his flip-flops. We know where this is going, but it’s still a smooth ride.

K-pop singer IU plays Jang Man-wol, the owner of a “supernatural hotel” visible to only a few humans. The staff and guests are all ghosts on unfinished business. The only human in the place is the manager, bright, young Goo Chan-seong. She’s not interested in romance. All she wants is to do her duty and pass onto the afterlife. But love makes even cold, dead hearts glow again.

When a famous actress descends on his staid, sober law firm, Kwon Jung-rok is bewildered. Oh Yoon-seo is flashy, name-drops all the time, has to have everything her way. Now she wants to learn what it’s like to be a lawyer’s secretary — for an upcoming project, and to hide out until a scandal dies down. This is no one’s workplace fantasy. Somehow, it works.

Cha Soo-hyun, the divorced daughter of a politician, meets a free-spirited young man while on a business trip in Cuba. She later realises he works at a hotel she received as part of her divorce settlement. Does she need this kind of scandal and public scrutiny, all over again? One more shot at love is worth it, she decides.

It’s the 17th century, and the mid-Joseon period. Someone is trying to assassinate the king, and so he goes into hiding, installing a court clown, who also looks exactly like him, on the throne. Except, the decoy does a better job of ruling. His subjects love him. The queen seems to think he’s a better husband too. He may be a faux ruler, but their chemistry is real.

A former mercenary, now an international fugitive, is hired to protect the illegitimate daughter of a Presidential candidate. He wants to use this opportunity to seek revenge on numerous enemies; the last thing on his mind is the rich and sheltered girl. But how can it not be love, when a snarky, lone-wolf bad guy and a beautiful, unloved young woman are thrown together?

It’s the late-1990s. Korea is emerging from a financial crisis. The family of schoolgirl Na Hee-do, an aspiring fencer, has been largely spared. But Baek Yi-jin went from riches to rags overnight. Now, he’s a college dropout struggling to make ends meet. Can the cheerful, bubbly Hee-do inspire him to chase new dreams?