Crash Landing on You

Crash Landing on You (Korean: 사랑의 불시착) is a South Korean television series written by Park Ji-eun, directed by Lee Jeong-hyo, and starring Hyun Bin, Son Ye-jin, Seo Ji-hye and Kim Jung-hyun. It aired on tvN from December 14, 2019 to February 16, 2020, every Saturday and Sunday at 21:00 (KST). It is also available for streaming on Netflix.

At the time of airing, Crash Landing on You became the highest-rated tvN series and the second highest-rated series in Korean cable television history in both viewership ratings and number of viewers.

Yoon Se-ri (Son Ye-jin) is a successful South Korean businesswoman and chaebol heiress. One day, while paragliding in Seoul, she is blown off course by a tornado and crash-lands in the North Korean portion of the DMZ. Ri Jeong-hyeok (Hyun Bin), a member of the North Korean elite and a captain in the Korean People's Army is patrolling and discovers Se-ri. He is persuaded to hide her and help her return to the South.

One day, while Yoon Se-ri (Son Ye-jin) is paragliding in Seoul, a sudden tornado blows her off course and knocks her out. She awakens to find her paraglide hanging in a tree in a forest in the North Korean portion of the DMZ. There she meets Ri Jeong-hyeok (Hyun Bin), who eventually gives her shelter and develops plans to help her return to South Korea secretly. Over time, they fall in love, despite the divide between their respective countries.

Back in South Korea, Yoon Se-ri's family suppresses the news of her disappearance, fearing it will depress the stock price of Queens Group. Just before Se-ri went missing, her retiring father had told his family that he intended to make her his successor, based on her ability as a businesswoman, which she proved by building her own company, Seri's Choice. Her half-brothers, Yoon Se-jun (Choi Dae-hoon) and Yoon Se-hyung (Park Hyung-soo), each hoped to be their father's replacement but they have struggled to manage the subsidiaries under their control. The brothers are supported by equally-ambitious wives, Do Hye-ji (Hwang Woo-seul-hye) and Go Sang-ah (Yoon Ji-min), respectively. In Se-ri's absence, Se-hyung uses unscrupulous means to win the succession battle, while his wife Sang-ah attempts to take over Se-ri's Choice.

Se-ri and Jeong-hyeok's story is intertwined with that of Seo Dan (Seo Ji-hye) and Gu Seung-jun (Kim Jung-hyun). Dan is the sophisticated daughter of a wealthy North Korean department store owner. She has been studying the cello in Russia for several years but returns to marry Jeong-hyeok, to whom she is engaged through an arranged marriage though they have only met a few times. As she returns to Pyongyang, she crosses paths more than once with Gu Seung-jun, who has fled to North Korea (with the protection of corrupt North Korean officials) in order to escape the pursuit of Se-hyung, under whose incompetent watch he had embezzled large amounts of funds.

The first half of the story (episodes 1–9) follows Jeong-hyeok's attempts to hide Se-ri and facilitate her return to South Korea. They are impeded by Cho Cheol-gang (Oh Man-seok), a corrupt and ruthless officer from the Ministry of State Security, who previously arranged the murder of Jeong-hyeok's elder brother, an officer who tried to expose him for crimes against the North Korean regime. Jeong-hyeok's attachment to Se-ri distresses not only Dan, his fiancée, but also his father, a high-ranking political figure. If it became known that Jeong-hyeok harbored a South Korean citizen, it could be used by rival officials to ruin their family.

In the second half of the story (episodes 10–16), Se-ri has returned to South Korea and resumes leadership of her company, surprising her family and others who had thought her dead. Cheol-gang is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment but escapes custody and infiltrates South Korea to go after Se-ri for revenge. Jeong-hyeok goes to South Korea to protect Se-ri from Cheol-gang. His subordinates follow, sent to Seoul by his father to retrieve him. Meanwhile, in North Korea, despite hostile initial encounters, Dan and Seung-jun fall in love and she shelters him when corrupt officers betray him to Se-hyung's gangsters.

• Hyun Bin as Ri Jeong-hyeok
  • Lee Chun-moo as young Ri Jeong-hyeok
  • Kim Seung-chan as teenage Ri Jeong-hyeok

A proficient but emotionally-reserved captain of Company Five in the Korean People's Army who is stationed along the North Korean portion of the DMZ. He is well-respected by the unit he leads and the locals of the rural village he resides in. A piano prodigy, he was studying to become a concert pianist in Switzerland before being forced to join the North Korean military after his elder brother died in a mysterious car accident. While he comes from a powerful political family, his father being the Director of the General Political Bureau, he prefers to hide his lineage in order to secretly investigate his elder brother's death. He protects Se-ri after she accidentally crash-lands into his patrol territory. As he tries to help Se-ri find her way back into South Korea, he begins to fall in love with her and realizes that he has met her before when he was travelling in Switzerland with Dan.

• Son Ye-jin as Yoon Se-ri
  • Kim Tae-yeon as young Yoon Se-ri

A successful South Korean CEO and chaebol heiress. She has a troubled family history as she is her father's illegitimate child, resulting in a strained relationship with her stepmother due to a childhood misunderstanding. She is also involved in an upcoming family succession battle, the latter making her the target of resentment from her half-brothers and their wives. After she rejects her brother's attempt to force her into an arranged marriage that would send her to the United Kingdom, she has numerous casual relationships with celebrities, but never develops any close companionships. She is nonetheless an independently wealthy businesswoman who runs her own successful fashion and beauty company, Seri's Choice. She is known for being a demanding boss, and a picky eater who practices intermittent fasting. She meets Jeong-hyeok after accidentally crash-landing in North Korea due to a paragliding accident, and falls in love with him as he shelters her in the North Korean military housing, where she becomes close to the ajummas and four of his subordinates.

• Seo Ji-hye as Seo Dan
  • Park Seo-yeon as young Seo Dan

A North Korean department store heiress and aspiring cellist who is also Jeong-hyeok's fiancée through an affianced marriage arranged by their parents. Seo Dan and Jeong-hyeok are supposed to get married as soon as Seo Dan finishes her study. While she has been infatuated with Jeong-hyeok since they were middle-school classmates, he doesn't reciprocate her feelings but agrees to the marriage out of a sense of duty towards his parents. Before the wedding, Dan desperately tries to prevent the marriage from becoming a sham after realising that Jeong-hyeok has never loved her from the start. She eventually falls for Seung-jun.

• Kim Jung-hyun as Gu Seung-jun / Alberto Gu

An intelligent, charming, but poor South Korean conman with British citizenship. After his father was scammed by Se-ri's father, leading to his family's bankruptcy, he ingratiates himself with Se-ri's brother, Se-hyung, in order to embezzle from Queens Group. Se-hyung attempts to marry off Se-ri to Seung-jun, but Se-ri senses his ill intentions on their first meeting and rejects him. Seung-jun nonetheless successfully cheats a fortune from the company under Se-hyung's watch, and flees to North Korea to avoid arrest, while under the pursuit of gangsters hired by Se-hyung. He eventually falls for Dan after they run into each other on many occasions.

• Yang Kyung-won as Pyo Chi-su

An acerbic sergeant-major in Company Five, who enjoys drinking "medicine" on and off the job, and antagonizing Se-ri because of his paranoia against South Koreans. Despite his grumpy attitude towards Se-ri, he eventually grows to care for her.

• Yoo Su-bin as Kim Ju-meok

A jovial corporal in Company Five who uses his fascination with Korean dramas to explain South Korean culture to his colleagues. He is frequently called out for watching dramas instead of working.

• Tang Jun-sang as Geum Eun-dong

An innocent lance-corporal in Company Five, who is the sole provider of his family and the youngest member of the unit. He has over nine years of military service left to complete and misses his mother dearly.

• Lee Shin-young as Park Kwang-beom

A quiet staff-sergeant in Company Five, oblivious to his model-worthy good looks.

• Nam Kyung-eup [ko] as Yoon Jeung-pyeong

Se-ri's father and the chairman of Queens Group. After serving time for financial malfeasance, he looks to name one of his children as successor.

• Bang Eun-jin as Han Jeong-yeon

Se-ri's stepmother. She struggles to reconcile her resentment towards Se-ri as a product of her husband's infidelity with Se-ri's sincere love and affection towards her.

• Choi Dae-hoon as Yoon Se-jun

Se-ri's immature and hot-headed eldest half-brother who sides with Se-ri against Se-hyung.

• Hwang Woo-seul-hye as Do Hye-ji

Se-jun's materialistic but supportive wife.

• Park Hyung-soo as Yoon Se-hyung

Se-ri's unflappable second elder half-brother, whose greed and naiveté allowed Seung-jun to embezzle funds from Queens Group.

• Yoon Ji-min as Go Sang-ah

Se-hyung's intelligent and ruthlessly-ambitious wife who covets Se-ri's company.

• Go Kyu-pil as Hong Chang-sik

Se-ri's over-stressed team manager who, along with Su-chan, tries to discover Se-ri's whereabouts after her disappearance.

• Im Chul-soo as Park Su-chan

Se-ri's insurance agent who becomes obsessed with proving that Se-ri survived the paragliding accident.

• Jun Gook-hwan [ko] as Ri Chung-ryeol

Jeong-hyeok's father, the Director of the General Political Bureau and a vice-marshal of the Korean People's Army. He is also a father who at first is most concerned about family and its reputation, but slowly has changed.

• Jung Ae-ri as Kim Yun-hui

Jeong-hyeok's mother and a former actress. Like her husband, she still grieves her elder son's death.

• Ha Seok-jin as Ri Mu-hyeok

Jeong-hyeok's deceased elder brother. He is an army captain who died in a staged accident after threatening to expose Cheol-gang.

• Jang Hye-jin as Ko Myeong-eun

Dan's ambitious mother who is also a successful North Korean department store owner. She is eager to see her daughter marry Jeong-hyeok and enjoys a playful, occasionally violent relationship with her brother, Myeong-seok. She has a tendency to insert English words into her speech to appear more sophisticated.

• Park Myung-hoon as Ko Myeong-seok

Dan's cheerful maternal uncle who is also a powerful major-general in the Ministry of State Security.

• Kim Sun-young as Na Wol-suk

The no-nonsense chief of the People's Unit (head of the village) who occasionally gets into arguments with Se-ri but eventually warms up to her. She has a tendency to drink and say embarrassing things.

• Kim Jung-nan as Ma Young-ae

Senior Colonel Kim's wife who strongly influences her husband. The other women in the village fawn over her and she is easily susceptible to Se-ri's flattery. She is frustrated by her son's subpar performance in school despite hiring a university student to tutor him.

• Jang So-yeon as Hyun Myeong-sun

Man-bok's supportive, shy and kind wife. She is the first to show support and bring food to Young-ae when the Senior Colonel is arrested.

• Cha Chung-hwa as Yang Ok-geum

A hairdresser who wears bright makeup. She is closest with Wol-suk.

• Oh Han-kyul [ko] as Jung Woo-pil

Man-bok and Myeong-sun's son.

• Gu Jun-woo as Kim Nam-sik

Senior Colonel Kim and Young-ae's son who gets bad grades.

• Lim Sung-mi as Geum-soon

A market vendor who secretly sells South Korean goods.

• Oh Man-seok as Cho Cheol-gang

A lieutenant-commander in the Ministry of State Security who is the principal villain of the story. An orphan, he is corrupt and heads a vast criminal operation that stretches across the Korean peninsula, including harboring fugitives such as Seung-jun while having no qualms about turning them over to the highest bidder.

• Kim Young-min as Jung Man-bok

A North Korean wiretapper coerced by Cheol-gang to facilitate criminal activities, which has made him feel guilty about his work. He is known as "The Rat" among members of the village due to his job, resulting in his family being ostracized. Forced to facilitate Mu-hyeok's death despite being a recipient of his kindness, Man-bok hopes to atone for his betrayal by assisting Jeong-hyeok.

• Kim Young-pil [ko] as Kim Ryong-hae

A senior colonel who is Jeong-hyeok's superior and Young-ae's husband. He is known to be controlled by his wife. He dislikes Jeong-hyeok but, after learning of his real identity as the son of the Director of the General Political Bureau, he tries his best to please him.

• Hong Woo-jin [ko] as Cheon Su-bok

A corrupt North Korean government official who helps people illegally enter and stay in North Korea.

• Yoon Sang-hoon [ko] as Manager Oh

An intermediate broker who connects Seung-jun to the North Korean "keeping business".

• Yoo Jung-ho [ko] as Chief Kim

Chief of the National Intelligence Service. He understands the relationship between Jeong-hyeok and Se-ri, and helps make their parting more bearable.

• Christian Lagahit as North Korean villager

• Jung Kyung-ho as Cha Sang-woo

Se-ri's South Korean ex-boyfriend.

• Park Sung-woong as North Korean taxi driver
• Kim Ah-ra [ko] as house villager
• Yoon Seol-mi as train salesperson
• Na Young-hee as North Korean wedding dress boutique owner
• Kim Soo-hyun as Won Ryu-hwan / Bang Dong-gu

A North Korean spy from Division 11 who is disguised as a village idiot.

• Kim Sook as North Korean fortune teller
• Choi Ji-woo as herself

An actress whom Kim Ju-meok idolizes from his secret viewing of Korean dramas.

The series reunited Son Ye-jin and Hyun Bin after their first collaboration in the 2018 film The Negotiation.

The premise of Crash Landing on You was inspired by a real event involving South Korean actress Jung Yang. In September 2008, Yang and three others had to be rescued after bad fog had caused their leisure boat to drift "into the maritime boundary between North and South Korea". Park Ji-eun, the drama's screenwriter, was introduced to North Korean defector turned film adviser and writer Kwak Moon-wan, who became part of the writing team. Kwak, who studied film directing in Pyongyang and had also been a member of an elite security force protecting the Kims, helped in crafting the plot and in conceptualizing the setting and scenes portraying North Korean life.

Netflix's investment also helped the show to garner the budget of US$20 million.

The production process proved to be "painstakingly meticulous", owing both to South Korea's relationship with North Korea, as well as to avoid any unintentional violations of the 1948 National Security Act which forbids public praise or propaganda of North Korea and the Kim family. The script avoided the use of the honorific Chairman to refer to North Korea's leaders, as well as visible propaganda signs and mentions of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, or Kim Jong Un (while their mandatory portraits were usually either blurred or obscured by the camera angles). In addition, the North Korean lapel pins used by North Korean characters were one third smaller than their actual size. Props manager Joo Dong-man said the crew did not have a "guidebook on multiple hurdles he had to hop over — skillfully and delicately — to accurately depict the country while dodging criticism" and, thus, had to be careful "not to misrepresent the state". Their research was also guided by North Koreans living in South Korea.

The first script reading took place on July 31, 2019, in Sangam-dong, Seoul, and filming overseas started at the end of August 2019. North Korean scenes were shot in South Korea and Mongolia. Scenes that took place in Switzerland were shot on location. The village of Iseltwald, one such location, experienced a tourism boom as a result.

The following is the official track list of Crash Landing on You (Original Television Soundtrack) album. The tracks with no indicated lyricists and composers are the drama's musical score; the artists indicated for these tracks are the tracks' composers themselves. Singles included on the album were released from December 15, 2019, to February 16, 2020.

Crash Landing on You was a huge success in China. The hashtag for the final episode received over 460 million views on Weibo.

The show was also popular in Japan during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic via Netflix. While the Korean Wave is a historically prominent component of media within Japan, Crash Landing on You has been especially influential there, in part due to its portrayal of daily life in North Korea. The series was featured on Japanese-Netflix's top 10 for 69 consecutive weeks.

In the Philippines, many viewers noted similarities between the plot line and the political narrative of the country during the COVID-19 pandemic. Philippine politician Sara Duterte was also a fan of the series.

In the United States, Variety named Crash Landing on You one of "The Best International Shows on Netflix", and one of the "Best International TV Series of 2020". Time also ranked it as one of the best Korean dramas on Netflix. Jo Walker of The Guardian's "Stream Team" called it "addictively off-the-wall, heartbreaking and hilarious." Adella Suliman and Stella Kim of NBC News also suggested that the drama "features all the ingredients a viewer could wish for" and has "drawn a global audience of millions, many no doubt searching for entertainment as they while away their time in coronavirus-related lockdowns".

Al Jazeera stated that it is a Hallyu success.

Although the series is a work of fiction, it has received positive reviews from North Korean defectors for its depiction of everyday life in North Korea. At the same time, some details, such as the availability of food, relatively warm behavior of the army and the ease with which the characters cross the border have been criticized. Kim Ah-ra, one of the extras who portrayed a North Korean villager, is a writer and actress from North Korea who states that she felt "like [she] was actually back in a North Korean village".

Kwak Moon-wan, a North Korean defector, who had served with the Supreme Guard Command (which protects the ruling Kim family) worked as an adviser for the series, providing the writers with details about life in North Korea as well as North Korean governmental agencies that added credibility to the show. He acknowledged some of the criticism, admitting that he has taken liberties with the depiction of North Korea (such as not mentioning food shortages), but rejected the claim that he was glamorizing the regime or drawing a false equivalence, saying that the show also depicted some of the darker aspect of life under the regime, such as the issue of kotjebi (child homelessness) and the frequent power cuts. Some North Korean refugees, such as Chun Hyo-jin, who defected from the border village of Hyesan at the age of nineteen, tend to agree: "Even if what they say, that it glamorizes North Korea, is true, would they choose to live there? I don't think so." Even though the drama leaves political matters aside, which are essential to the North Korea issue as she sees it, she says it still is of great significance: "Its depiction of North Korea is a bit far from reality, but it has made the people interested in North Korea." The drama's producer Lee Jung-hyo said during a press conference in Seoul in December: "I know some people are uncomfortable about our subject, North Korea, but we don't portray a wholly authentic North Korea in our drama. Most settings are closer to a fantasy, although some aspects do reflect real North Korean life."

Kang Na-ra, a North Korean defector who advised the show's production team, stated that about 60% of North Korea's depiction in the show is accurate:^{[unreliable source?]} "The richer families in North Korea like to show off their wealth by adding lace curtains to their windows. So that was pretty well portrayed." She also appreciated the detail about kimchi caves: "Since rural North Korea doesn't get electricity, they don't have refrigerators. They have kimchi caves where they store kimchi, and that was also recreated well." House checks are also a regular affair. She revealed that she once had to hide inside a furnace at the house of the broker who helped her escape in order to avoid detection. In the drama, the heiress has to hide in the kimchi storage area when security forces come knocking one night. As depicted in the drama, North Koreans are allowed to choose only from a fixed list of hair styles — 18 for women and 28 for men. Kang said that "there's a punishment for you if you don't comply" in an interview with YouTube channel DKDKTV. On the other hand, as she explained in a YouTube video, the characters were able to slip across the border much more easily than in real life: "I had to pay a broker 10 million won (US$8,400) to swim across the Yalu river [which borders North Korea and China] while being shot at from behind by soldiers [when I escaped]." Cartoonist Choi Seong-guk, who defected to the South in 2011, also said the drama set is 60% accurate. The portrayal of jangmadang, or local markets where all kinds of goods, including imports from South Korea, are sold is especially real, he told The Sunday Times. However, he felt that the drama "glamorized the soldiers too much, almost to an uncomfortable extent". He said North Korean men enter the military when they are 17 and serve for 10 to 13 years, and "during this time, they are...ruthless and harsh, robbing homes and raping women at night". Still, he hopes the drama will make its way to North Korea and go viral: "I hope the North Koreans who see this drama will realize how positively the South Koreans think of them and learn to change."

There were also critical responses to the themes of the drama in both regions. In January 2020, The Christian Liberal Party (CLP) filed a complaint in South Korea against tvN at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, accusing the network of glamorizing North Korea through this series, in violation of the National Security Law.^{[unreliable source?]} Then, in March 2020, a few North Korean media outlets criticized unnamed South Korean programs and films that explored relations between North and South Korea. While Crash Landing on You was not directly mentioned by the media outlets, it was perceived to be among the referenced works. Another is the 2019 film Ashfall, although that film was also not directly cited in the articles.

Stephen Epstein (Victoria University of Wellington) and Christopher Green (Leiden University) suggest that while Crash Landing on You is formulaic, it also "is a crucial text for evaluating ongoing change in South Korean popular representations of its neighbour. Indeed, given the concerted use of North Korean backdrops in Crash Landing on You and the size and global extent of its audiences, the show is likely the most noteworthy South Korean popular culture representation of North Korea yet produced." Yun Suk-jin, a professor at Chungnam National University concurs, noting that the series "changed the stereotypes on North Korea and candidly showed that it too is a place where people live". Sarah A. Son, lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Sheffield also agrees, noting that Crash Landing on You responds to the "socio-cultural divide" between the North and the South, which academic scholarship cites as one of the biggest obstacles to future unification. Son argues that "through the re-framing of stereotypes, albeit with some creative licence, Crash Landing on You arguably humanises the North for its audience in ways that inter-Korean dialogue has not in recent years. Despite its soft-focus romanticisation of the political situation, Crash Landing on You brings the pain of the division to a personal level for a generation of Koreans who, unlike their grandparents, have no memory of what it was like to be a single nation."

Joanna Elfving-Hwang, associate professor of Korean Studies at the University of Western Australia notes that "North Korea tends to appear in our imagination as the 'axis of evil', we think of [negative things like] nuclear weapons and human rights abuses...this drama has dared to think about North Korean people differently and represented them as quite human and quite Korean". Steve Hung Lok-wai, a Korean Affairs expert from the Chinese University of Hong Kong states that the drama sidestepped larger political issues through a narrative that did not end with the male lead's defection: "Lots of people questioned whether the male lead, the North Korean soldier, would end up defecting to the South for love, but they were able to sidestep that scenario and gave it a plausible ending where the two would meet in Switzerland." This, he argues, is "quite smart because they avoided all the real taboos but made it believable enough where it would make people think about these political problems". John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University, praised the series for its decision to draw parallels between powerful families in both the South and the North, and to humanize North Koreans beyond generic stereotypes.

The series was a huge rating success in South Korea despite airing on tvN, a cable channel/pay TV, which normally has a relatively smaller audience compared to free-to-air TV/public broadcasters (KBS, SBS, MBC and EBS). It is currently the fourth highest-rated drama in Korean cable television history. The final episode's ratings made it the second highest-rated drama in Korean cable television history at that time, overtaking fellow tvN dramas Reply 1988 and Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, until it was finally surpassed by JTBC's The World of the Married and Reborn Rich.

Crash Landing on You : South Korea viewers per episode (millions)

Source: Audience measurement performed nationwide by Nielsen Korea.

In May 2020 the show's scriptwriter, Park Ji-eun, was named "Person of the Year" by South Korea's Unification Ministry, for contributing to "unification education".

• On March 29, 2021, it was announced that Crash Landing on You would be adapted into a musical and the production companies Pop Music and T2N Media had completed a global copyright contract with Studio Dragon. The musical was performed at the Shinhan Card Artium, COEX, Gangnam District, Seoul from September 16 to November 13, 2022.
• In 2024, the Japanese all-female theater troupe Takarazuka Revue will stage a musical adaptation of the series under the title "愛の不時着" and it will run in November to December in Tokyo Tatemono Brillia Hall and Umeda Arts Theater. It will be directed by Kazunori Nakamura, and will star Jun Asami as Ri Jeong-hyeok and Aya Yumeshiro as Yoon Se-ri. This will be the debut performance of Jun Asami as the leading actress (Top Star) of the Snow Troupe.

• Official website (in Korean)
• Crash Landing on You on Netflix
• Crash Landing on You at IMDb 
• Crash Landing on You at HanCinema