Netflix K-drama The Rat to bring one of Korea’s most twisted webtoons to life — everything we know so far

The Rat crawls out of the shadows, claws scraping at the edge of the screen, ready to invade your Netflix queue and maybe your nightmares. This is no ordinary K-drama. It’s a twisted tale spun from one of Korea’s darkest webtoons, where folktale horrors come alive and reality slips like silk through your fingers.

Imagine waking up one day and the world no longer knows you. Your phone rejects your touch, your bank account vanishes, your face fades from memory. That’s the nightmare Moon Jae faces when someone or something known only as Rat steals his identity, name, fortune and life.

And here’s the kicker: this story draws from an old Korean legend where a mouse, after feeding on human nail clippings, transforms into a human. Yeah, grotesque. Yeah, fascinating.

So buckle up. Because The Rat isn’t just here to entertain. It’s here to gnaw at your mind, whispering questions about who you really are and what’s left when the world stops recognizing you.

What is The Rat about?

The Rat spins a dark nightmare where identity isn’t just stolen, it’s devoured. At the heart of this series is Moon Jae, a reclusive writer who clings to his small routines, his solitude, his controlled world. But one day, everything unravels. His fingerprints no longer unlock his phone. His bank accounts are emptied. His friends are gone.

The culprit is a figure only known as Rat, an entity that has slipped into Moon Jae’s skin, taken his name and started living his life. What begins as a case of stolen identity twists into a surreal, bone-chilling descent, drawing on the grotesque Korean folktale of a rat that eats human nail clippings to transform into a person.

But the series doesn’t pull this darkness from nowhere. It’s based on Field Mouse (also known as The Rat Trap), one of Korea’s most twisted webtoons by creator Ludovico, a story infamous for its blend of raw psychological terror and grotesque, folkloric horror.

Netflix is taking on a fan-beloved nightmare and giving it flesh, sound and shadow.

Cast and creative team behind The Rat

A nightmare like The Rat needs actors who can carry raw tension on their faces and directors who know how to turn shadows into living things. At the center is Ryu Jun-yeol, the magnetic talent from Reply 1988 and The 8 Show, taking on the role of Moon Jae. His knack for playing tightly wound, complex characters makes him a perfect fit for a man whose world is slipping out from under him.

Backing him is Sul Kyung-gu, known for hits like Kill Boksoon and The Whirlwind, stepping into the role of No Ja, a loan shark turned detective who first comes knocking for money but ends up pulled into Moon Jae’s unraveling nightmare. No Ja is street-smart, morally gray and just desperate enough to chase down something as strange as Rat.

Behind the camera, director Kim Hong-seon brings the slick, nerve-wracking tension he honed in Money Heist: Korea and The Guest. And with writer Lee Jae-gon, whose work on A Model Family and Special Affairs Team TEN showed a talent for dark, layered plots, The Rat is in the hands of a team that knows how to balance suspense, horror and psychological depth. Netflix has assembled a creative force ready to pull viewers deep into the maze.

Production timeline and expected release

The cameras are already rolling. Since April 2025, The Rat has been creeping through dark alleys, abandoned apartments and eerie sets, with filming expected to run until November.

Every scene is another brushstroke on this unsettling canvas, pulling viewers toward a 2026 release date that’s already starting to buzz among K-drama thrill-seekers.

But this isn’t just another title tossed into Netflix’s vast library. This is a beast that dares to scrape at the rawest parts of human fear, the loss of identity, the invasion of the self, the horror of being replaced by something that wears your face but is not you. It draws on grotesque Korean folktales and breathes them into a modern nightmare, one that promises to ripple across screens worldwide.

Why The Rat could be Netflix’s next big K-drama hit

There’s something deliciously unsettling about The Rat. It’s not just another thriller or horror story. It’s a folktale nightmare reborn, dressed in modern skin, creeping through the cracks of city life and whispering ancient fears into the ears of a streaming generation.

Netflix knows how to hook global audiences, but with The Rat it’s playing with something riskier, stranger, sharper. This show will gnaw at the edges of identity, turning every reflection, every locked phone, every missing friend into a question mark.

It comes not with promises of simple scares. It offers dread that coils slowly, wrapping around you until you can’t tell where the story ends and your own shadow begins.

The Rat promises to deliver a unique fusion of psychological tension, grotesque folklore and stylish execution that could push Netflix even deeper into the dark corners of Korean storytelling. It’s not here to play nice. It’s here to bite.

More than just gore: how The Rat plays with horror

While many Korean horror webtoons lean heavily into body horror, grotesque transformations and splatter visuals, The Rat takes a more psychological path. Sure, the premise is grotesque, a rat feeding on human nails to become a person, but the terror here doesn’t lie in blood and guts. It’s in the slow erosion of identity, the creeping doubt, the feeling that the ground under your feet is turning to quicksand.

This sets it apart from other famous horror webtoons like Sweet Home, which Netflix adapted into a hit series packed with monstrous visuals and apocalyptic tension. Where Sweet Home thrives on physical monstrosity, The Rat thrives on psychological disintegration. It’s closer in spirit to something like Hell Is Other People (Strangers from Hell), another webtoon-turned-K-drama that tapped into claustrophobic dread and social paranoia rather than flashy horror effects.

In other words, The Rat aims to make you squirm not with what it shows, but with what it suggests.

Dark webtoon adaptations: why Netflix can’t get enough

Netflix’s K-drama slate has increasingly leaned on the rich world of webtoon adaptations, especially those that explore darker, grittier stories. Hellbound turned a philosophical webtoon into a meditation on cults, fear and morality. All of Us Are Dead took zombie mayhem to high school hallways. Sweet Home painted apartment blocks with nightmarish creatures.

The Rat slots into this growing trend, but it brings a uniquely unsettling flavor. It’s not about the collapse of society or the rise of monsters. It’s about the intimate, personal horror of being erased and replaced, of watching someone else step into your skin.

That tension between folklore and modern existential dread makes it stand out and it gives Netflix another sharp weapon in its arsenal of dark K-dramas designed to hook global audiences hungry for sophisticated, multilayered horror.

Little details that make The Rat so intriguing

Part of what’s fueling buzz around The Rat is the level of detail woven into its plot and aesthetic. The source material, Field Mouse, is infamous for its sharp, spare art style, using stark contrasts and minimalist imagery to create a sense of unease. Translating that into live action means the show has to balance visual restraint with atmospheric weight, something director Kim Hong-seon has experience with.

Fans are also paying close attention to how the folklore elements will be portrayed. The idea of a creature transforming by consuming discarded human parts isn’t just horror for horror’s sake, it ties into older cultural fears about the boundaries between human and nonhuman, the sacred and the profane.

How the series brings these ancient threads into a modern setting will be key to its impact. Will the show lean into the literal horror, or will it leave viewers questioning whether the real monster is something closer to home?