Counting down to Song Kang’s return: 5 must-watch K-dramas while we wait for the It Boy’s comeback

When Song Kang enlisted for his mandatory military service in April 2024, the K-drama world felt it. More than a pause in scheduling, it marked a turning point in the quiet rhythm of stories he once carried with such grace. With his magnetic screen presence and ever-growing range, he became something rare: a certified It Boy who could lead horror, romance, and slice-of-life stories without losing his quiet emotional pull. Now, as the countdown begins for his comeback, anticipation swells like the opening credits of a long-awaited sequel.

Whether he’s fighting monsters in bloodied sweatpants or falling in love with celestial elegance, Song Kang delivers moments that stay. His performances ripple through fan edits, spark discourse across timelines, and inspire more than a few late-night rewatches.

Now, while he's out of the spotlight (but about to return), his dramas remain, waiting, shimmering, ready to be experienced for the first time or again. The fllowing five titles capture the full scope of his rise, from soft-spoken son to supernatural seducer, and they offer more than entertainment. They’re a reminder of why we’re still watching the horizon.

1. My Demon

In My Demon, instead of arriving wrapped in comfort, love coils, teases, lingers, and lives. Song Kang steps into one of his most layered roles as Jung Gu-won, a centuries-old demon whose powers vanish after an unexpected entanglement with Do Do-hee, a sharp-tongued heiress played by Kim Yoo-jung. While the setup promises chaos, what unfolds is a visually stunning, emotionally decadent dance between fire and ice, contract and connection.

The chemistry between the leads became one of the most talked-about elements of the K-drama season, and for good reason. Their scenes together glimmer with electricity, shifting effortlessly from flirtation to genuine vulnerability. Critics praised the series’ bold visual style and magnetic energy, while fans were quick to crown Song Kang and Kim Yoo-jung the couple of the year. That recognition turned into trophies when the SBS Drama Awards named them Best Couple and honored Song Kang with a Top Excellence Actor award.

What makes this performance stand out how Song Kang plays with duality, balancing arrogance with affection, cruelty with charm. His Gu-won is both untouchable and undone, a being who’s lived for centuries and yet stumbles through love like a boy. The role allowed Song Kang to lean fully into his charisma without losing the fragility that defines so many of his characters.

He described the part as a new challenge in interviews, and it shows. My Demon glows with confidence, but underneath the flames, there’s longing and ache. It’s a show that seduces on sight, then lingers with quiet bruises. And in the center of it all stands Song Kang, smiling like sin, delivering one of the most iconic performances of his career.

2. Sweet Home

There are stories that burn slowly, devouring everything in their path. Sweet Home ignited one of them. In this visceral horror drama, Song Kang becomes Cha Hyun-su, a grief-stricken teenager teetering between surrender and survival. Just as he moves into a crumbling apartment complex, the world begins to rot, its people transforming into monsters born from their deepest desires. What follows is a descent into fear, hunger, and fragile hope.

This series carved a turning point in his career. Sweet Home transformed the apocalypse into a mirror, reflecting every crack in its characters. Song Kang’s Hyun-su moves through it like a wound made flesh. He doesn’t lead. Instead, he watches. He bleeds. And every silence he holds becomes more terrifying than any scream. His gestures tremble with guilt, dread, and the ghost of care.

Viewers watched as a boy without a future became something both sacred and terrifying. Through stillness. Through choice. That tension electrified the series, and its global reception reflected it. Sweet Home stormed into Netflix’s top rankings, reaching millions, and earned Song Kang a Baeksang nomination for carrying horror with such gravitas.

With Season 3 released in July 2024, the full arc of Hyun-su now stands complete. Rewatching his transformation is no longer just memory, it’s myth. A chronicle of how a quiet teen stepped into chaos and became a symbol of what it means to resist the end.

3. Navillera

When Navillera premiered in 2021, it arrived with the softness of snowfall, gentle, deliberate, and radiant. Song Kang plays Lee Chae-rok, a young ballet dancer pulled between discipline and doubt, whose future feels fragile beneath the weight of unspoken wounds.

Everything begins to shift when he meets Sim Deok-chul, a 70-year-old mailman who chooses to chase a dream long held in silence. Their bond becomes a quiet force, built on empathy, patience, and shared persistence.

To bring Chae-rok to life, Song Kang spent six months training in ballet. Every movement he performs speaks with precision and emotion, shaping a character who holds sorrow and beauty in equal measure. The choreography reveals what words cannot. His body becomes a vessel of grief, hope, and rediscovery, communicating through muscle and stillness, tension and breath.

The drama unfolds with remarkable tenderness. There are no monsters or tragic romances. What pulses beneath the story is connection. Each glance, hesitation, and stumble lands with meaning. And within this stillness, Song Kang offers one of his most grounded and luminous performances.

Navillera remains a favorite among critics and longtime fans alike. It captures a different kind of strength, the kind that steadies rather than strikes. Through Chae-rok, Song Kang invites us to witness growth not as a triumph, but as a quiet unfolding. Step by step, gesture by gesture, he honors a dream passed from one body to another.

4. Nevertheless

In Nevertheless, instead of arriving wrapped in comfort, love coils, teases, lingers, and lives. Song Kang steps into one of his most layered roles as Park Jae-eon, an art student whose every move carries a pulse of ambivalence. He sketches butterflies on strangers' arms, flirts without attachment, and drifts through connection like smoke curling through a warm room. And still, he captivates.

His dynamic with Han So-hee’s character, Yoo Na-bi, becomes the emotional center of the series. They orbit one another with charged silences and sudden gravity, pulled together by instinct more than logic. There’s a rhythm to their scenes, built on tension, breath, and bodies unsure of where to land. No declarations, no certainty. Just the flicker of wanting and the ache of retreat.

Song Kang plays this ambiguity with exquisite control. His charm never settles into comfort. It seduces and escapes. His glances suggest something deeper, but the series refuses to name it. That choice sparked fierce conversations across fandoms. Some called the story toxic. Others saw their own contradictions reflected in it. But everyone watched.

Through Nevertheless, Song Kang embraced a role that didn’t ask for sympathy or redemption. It asked for truth. And he delivered it in fragments, casual, intimate, devastating. The performance marked a shift in his career. Less idealized, more volatile. And in its volatility, something unmistakably real.

5. Forecasting Love and Weather

Some stories move like the seasons they portray. Forecasting Love and Weather pulls Song Kang into a more grounded, disciplined world where emotions simmer under the surface and every change in the atmosphere bears weight.

Young meteorologist Lee Shi-woo of the national meteorological service offers a version of himself molded by patience, observation, and a growing sense of care, trading explosive intensity for quiet consistency.

Built not on fate or fantasy but on daily conflict, mutual learning, and the subtle rhythm of working side by side, his chemistry with Park Min-young produces a sweet, grown-up relationship. Reading the heavens for signals of change, their characters negotiate professional pressure, broken relationships, and the vulnerability of beginning afresh.

Song Kang approaches Shi-woo with nuance and stillness. There’s less performance in this role, more presence. He listens closely, smiles with gentleness, and allows silence to speak. It’s a character that grows through consistency. And for an actor often cast in roles wrapped in spectacle, this subtlety becomes its own kind of power.

Forecasting Love and Weather may not shout for attention, but it stays with those who tune into its frequency. It marked a quiet evolution in Song Kang’s repertoire, adding depth and maturity to the emotional language he had already begun to refine. It’s a drama that drizzles rather than pours, and in its calm, he becomes something sturdier than before.

Quick reference guide: Song Kang’s top 5 K-dramas

A meteoric rise: how Song Kang became Netflix’s It Boy

Some careers unfold like eagles soaring with quiet intent across great distances, while others strike like lightning, fast and unforgettable. Song Kang’s rise has done both.

He moved from supporting roles in quiet weekend dramas to anchoring genre-defining series watched by millions in a few years. Every effort stretched him farther, not by seeking reinventions but by deepening what was already there: a stillness that speaks, a gaze carrying more than one emotion, and a body feeling every gesture.

Beginning in 2017 in minor roles in The Liar and His Lover and Man in the Kitchen, he gained further notoriety appearing on variety shows and hosting Inkigayo. But it was his casting in Love Alarm, chosen from over 900 applicants, that opened the door to global visibility. From there, his trajectory felt precise, almost architectural. Each role built upon the last. Each character added another facet to a persona that resisted being simplified.

When Sweet Home exploded onto Netflix, audiences saw a Song Kang capable of rage, despair, and tenderness without ever raising his voice. When Navillera arrived, they saw someone willing to inhabit stillness and softness. Nevertheless showcased his magnetism and ambiguity. Forecasting Love and Weather shifted him into adult, slow-burn storytelling. And with My Demon, he claimed full command of spectacle, timing, and romantic bravado.

His nickname, the “Son of Netflix,” reflects more than platform loyalty. It speaks to a rare kind of trust, one that allows an actor to explore without losing center. Across fantasy, horror, slice of life, and romance, Song Kang has built a filmography that pulses with variation, yet remains unmistakably his. Each performance feels like a continuation of the last, as if he’s writing a long letter to the viewer, one drama at a time.

Waiting for the weather to change

Song Kang may be away for now, but his stories continue to move through the timelines he helped shape. The quiet ache of Navillera, the violent beauty of Sweet Home, the twisted magnetism of Nevertheless, they echo in fan edits, rewatch threads, and screenshots that never lost their glow. Each performance still feels close, like a memory that hasn’t settled.

His absence carries a different kind of presence. Every drama he’s left behind offers a version of him to hold onto, tender, haunted, mischievous, unwavering. Together, they form a constellation that keeps his image vivid, not in waiting, but in motion.

When the next role arrives, it will feel like continuity. So far, these five dramas trace the shape of a career that never really left, only shifted into orbit, steady and shining.