The Blue Road Comes to Netflix on November 20, and It Is a Korea-Japan Serial Killer Hunt Set During the 2002 World Cup

Photo: Patrick Park, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Netflix has set November 20 for The Blue Road, and after the first three episodes played at Busan this month, it is the Korean series I am most looking forward to this autumn. Son Suk-ku plays Kim Seok, a detective in the Seoul mobile investigation unit, and Eita Nagayama is Inose, from the Tokyo police's first investigation division. A string of murders runs across both countries and the two of them have to work together to stop it.

Photo: Arielaortizb, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The setting is the hook. It is 2002, the year Korea and Japan co-hosted the World Cup, which was the first time the two countries had shared anything that size and was more tense than the football coverage let on. A crime series about cross-border cooperation set in that specific summer is a smart idea, and the show is adapted from a 2002 manhwa, so the period is baked in rather than a gimmick.

Photo: Dick Thomas Johnson from Tokyo, Japan, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Han Jun-hee directs. He made D.P., the military drama that was the best Korean series on Netflix in its year, and Shortcake produces. Son Suk-ku has been Netflix's go-to for a certain kind of weary masculinity since My Liberation Notes, and Nagayama was the best thing in Tokyo Vice as the detective who was always three drinks past caring. Putting them in a car together is casting I would have paid for.

Photo: 399scout, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Eight episodes, global release on the same day, and an early review from a reliable source called it brutal and brilliant with a four out of five. Netflix's Korean output has been uneven this year, a lot of romance and a lot of filler, and this is the one that looks like it was made by people who wanted to make it.

Photo: PaoPao1985, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

November 20 is also the Yellowjackets and Sunrise on the Reaping day, so the weekend is crowded. Do you follow Korean thrillers on Netflix, or has the volume put you off?