The Glory is still the Netflix revenge K-drama to start with
Song Hye-kyo’s school-violence revenge thriller still streams on Netflix in the U.S. and Canada. Here is why The Glory remains the sharp gateway after softer K-drama nights.
Mina Park
If When Life Gives You Tangerines left you soft and you want something sharper, start The Glory.
Song Hye-kyo plays Moon Dong-eun, a woman who spends years building revenge against the high-school bullies who burned and broke her life while adults looked away. Lim Ji-yeon is Park Yeon-jin, the ringleader who grows into a polished news-anchor life. Lee Do-hyun is Joo Yeo-jeong, the doctor who drifts into Dong-eun’s plan.
Writer Kim Eun-sook (Crash Landing on You, Descendants of the Sun) and director Ahn Gil-ho made it for Netflix in two parts: Part 1 on December 30, 2022, Part 2 on March 10, 2023. Sixteen episodes total.
It is still on Netflix in the United States and Canada. Current platforms are on our Where to Watch page.
Why it still matters
Part 1 climbed to No. 1 on Netflix’s global non-English TV chart in early January 2023. That was the first signal this was bigger than a Korean-language revenge niche.
Part 2 opened with about 124.5 million viewing hours in its first tracked week and held No. 1 again the week after with about 123.6 million. Variety later put it at No. 7 on Netflix’s Most Popular non-English TV list, with roughly 380 million hours in the first-28-days math after Part 2.
The engagement report locked the scale in. In Netflix’s first-half 2023 “What We Watched” release, The Glory: Season 1 logged 622.8 million hours viewed, third worldwide behind The Night Agent and Ginny & Georgia Season 2. A Korean revenge thriller sat next to English-language hits, which is why group chats still treat it as the sharp starter.
Awards followed. At the 59th Baeksang Arts Awards it won Best Drama, Best Actress for Song, and Best Supporting Actress for Lim.
Yeom Hye-ran, who also turns up in Tangerines, plays Dong-eun’s complicated mother figure. The bullies are not cartoons either. Their adult lives have money, cameras, and cover stories, which is what makes the revenge land.
What you are actually watching
Dong-eun takes her time. She becomes a teacher near Yeon-jin’s child, studies architecture on the side, and maps each former tormenter with patience that can feel colder than a chase. The school violence is graphic. Netflix rates it mature for a reason. If you need a content warning before you press play, take that seriously: burning, battery, and the social machinery that protects rich kids.
Class sits under the cruelty. Teachers look away. Parents buy silence. A news desk becomes a costume. That is why diaspora viewers who are tired of “bullying episode 3, forgiveness episode 12” keep recommending it. Watching the plan unfold is the show.
Who should start it now
Start here if you want Korean-language stakes after a soft show, or if Squid Game felt too game-show and you still want Netflix Korea with real tension. Song’s stillness does a lot of the work. Lim makes Yeon-jin watchable and awful at the same time.
Skip it, or wait, if you are not in the mood for school violence on screen. Pair it with something gentler after, not before. Our horror and thriller streaming guide and first-timer list help you choose the next temperature. If you want the warm Jeju counterweight, go back to Tangerines.
Our take
The Glory is still the cleanest Netflix revenge on-ramp for people who want craft with the catharsis. Kim Eun-sook’s name brought casual viewers in. Song and Lim are why they stayed through Part 2.
Our verdict: queue it when you want a long, controlled burn rather than a comfort weekend. Confirm Netflix on the live lookup, clear both parts, and do not expect forgiveness to be the point. Dong-eun is here to finish the plan.
