Unfortunately for him, the one person he isn’t able to locate is Myeong-ja, the mistress of Ishikawa, the head of the Japanese police, who assures Tae-sang that he will lose his pawn shop and everything in it if he fails to find her.

10 of the best new Korean drama series to watch in December 2023

Enter the scrappy Yoon Chae-ok (Han) and her father, Yoon Joong-won (Jo Han-chul), sleuths who are also experts at finding people, but not through the usual channels.

After spending years in Manchuria, the pair have arrived in Gyeongseong following a lead they hope will lead them to Chae-ok’s mother, who has been missing for 10 years.

Following an obligatory confrontational run-in early on, Tae-sang and Chae-ok soon join forces when they discover that they may be able to help each other. Myeong-ja is the kind of person these sleuths can track down, while their lead, a Japanese artist named Sakomoto, is someone Tae-sang might be able to track down.

They set to work and before long their investigations lead them to the Ongseong Hospital, where the Japanese military are secretly conducting terrible experiments.

Their desperate search then becomes a bold rescue attempt – but little do they know that violent Japanese soldiers aren’t all that they will find in the bowels of the hospital.

This is at heart a K-drama about a cocky man about town who needs to learn how to play with others, and a feisty young woman with a chip on her shoulder who is looking for her mother.

Of course this is also a series about vile Japanese scientists experimenting on helpless Korean prisoners and creating a monstrous entity that tears through any humans unlucky enough to cross its path, regardless of whose side they are on.

Yet this is a rare case where the genre ambitions of the streaming era have been successfully transplanted onto the traditional boy-girl K-drama. The high concept and lavish spectacle embellish and enrich the central relationship between our attractive stars. That and lots of slo-mo hero shots, naturally.

Here the story is easy to follow and the world is clearly built through a manageable number of characters.

The show takes its time introducing its characters and slowly bringing them together, then inching them deeper into the murky bowels of the hospital where a wretched monster, some dark secrets and some classic derring-do await them.

Gyeongseong Creature isn’t without its weaknesses, which include a few repetitive scenarios and a monster-sized contrivance at the heart of its story, but the journey it takes us on more than makes up for its occasional missteps.

The story, characters and immersive visuals draw us in, making each episode more gripping than the last. And since Netflix has only made six of Part 1’s seven episodes available for media preview, we wait with bated breath to see if the show has saved the best for last.

Gyeongseong Creature Part 1 will start streaming on Netflix on December 22. All three episodes of Part 2 will follow on January 5.