Disney+ K-drama Snowdrop: Blackpink’s Jisoo and D.P.’s Jung Hae-in star in controversial period romance that risks being cancelled over political content

Set against the backdrop of South Korea’s June Democracy Movement, Snowdrop has been accused of historical distortion over its inclusion of North Korean agents

A petition to take it off the air has garnered more than 325,000 signatures and sponsors have pulled out, professing ignorance about the show’s content

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Jung Hae-in (left) and Blackpink’s Jisoo in a still from Snowdrop, Disney+‘s controversial new K-drama.

Published: 11:19am, 22 Dec 2021Updated: 4:02pm, 10 May 2022

Disney+ has taken a very unfortunate first step into K-dramaland.

For its initial foray into Korean content, the global streaming giant opted to license the JTBC period romance Snowdrop, featuring Jung Hae-in (from Netflix’s military drama D.P.) and Blackpink superstar Jisoo in her first leading role.

Set in 1987, the show features Jisoo as Eun Young-ro, a student of Hosu Women’s University. She is a carefree youth who shares a room with three other young woman in an idyllic dormitory, which is run with an iron fist by the matronly Pi Seung-hee (Yoon Se-ah).

Most of them prioritise social activities over academic ones, as they wait for calls from potential suitors on the phone downstairs, but that means dealing with prickly phone operator Gye Bun-ok (Kim Hye-yoon).

One day, a call comes from some young men looking to go on a group blind date with the four women. Bun-ok muscles her way into the group when the bookish Yeo Jeong-min (Kim Mi-soo) declines the offer, but the men only number three so they rope in graduate student Lim Soo-ho (Jung Hae-in), who recently returned from Berlin.