Hottest K-drama this spring is 'Phantom Lawyer'

"Phantom Lawyer" is proving to be one of the hottest properties on Korean television this spring, outpacing competition including Netflix's mega-tentpole rom-com "Boyfriend on Demand."

The 16-part SBS drama, airing Fridays and Saturdays, centers on I-rang (Yoo Yeon-suk), a rookie attorney with the ability to see ghosts. Constantly hounded by spirits seeking justice for their wrongful deaths, I-rang assents, only to find himself cracking major cases with the help of voices only he can hear.

Ratings-wise, the show has cleared a peak minute rating of 11.3 percent with its fourth episode, according to SBS. Crossing into double digits is widely regarded as the threshold for a terrestrial K-drama hit, and doing so this early in a run is something few series have pulled off this year.

On the streaming front, "Phantom Lawyer" overtook "Boyfriend on Demand" — one of the most buzzed-about K-drama releases of the first half of 2026, led by Blackpink’s Jisoo — on Netflix Korea’s Top 10 list within two days of its debut. As of Monday, it ranks No. 2 on the local chart, trailing only "BTS: The Comeback Live," while also placing No. 7 on the platform’s global non-English series list. The performance is all the more striking given that "Phantom Lawyer" only premiered on March 13 and has released just four episodes to date.

Beyond domestic success, the series has also garnered international recognition, having been invited as a special screening selection to the 28th Far East Film Festival in Italy on April 24. This marks the first time a Korean drama has received such an invitation from the festival, which stands as one of Europe's largest showcases dedicated to Asian cinema.

Part of what has driven the show's momentum is its genre-blending formula: a mix of B-movie comedy sensibility, grounded human drama, and a cathartic procedural hook in which a supernaturally assisted lawyer dismantles seemingly impenetrable cases surrounding the wrongfully deceased. The pacing is brisk, with one legal case wrapped within two episodes, keeping the audience hooked while cycling through distinct ghost-of-the-week storylines.

Its blend of shamanism and courtroom drama also gives it a unique identity in a landscape where both genres are well-worn individually, and the timing also appears fortuitous, arriving amid a broader cultural moment of renewed interest in shamanism within Korean pop culture.

And central to the show's appeal is Yoo's performance. The actor leans into physical comedy as his character occasionally becomes possessed, temporarily assuming personalities — at one point that of a gangster — that stand in sharp contrast to his default persona as an elite attorney. The tonal whiplash, by design, keeps what is otherwise a show rooted in heavy subject matter from becoming a weighty watch.