Baseball is about to take over Korean television. With the professional baseball season over, five baseball-themed dramas starring Kim Woo-bin, Han Hyo-joo, and Kim Rae-won are lined up to air from December through next year, filling the off-season gap for fans still hungry for the sport, TenAsia reported on Sunday.
The first to arrive is tvN’s “Gift,” premiering December 5. Kim Woo-bin stars as Jung Min-yong, a former professional baseball pitcher turned coach who gains the ability to see another player’s talent after an unexpected accident, then takes charge of the country’s worst high school baseball team. Adapted from a webtoon of the same name, the series blends baseball with a fantasy twist as the results-driven coach leads his players’ growth. The series is co-directed by Kim Kyu-tae, known for “Our Blues,” and Ham Seung-hoon, and is slated for twelve episodes, according to Dramabeans. Seo Eun-soo, Seo Hyun-woo, and Kim Won-hae co-star.
Six days later, MBC’s “Your Ground” follows on December 11. Han Hyo-joo and Gong Myung lead the baseball romance, which centers on an ace pitcher whose career stalled after injury and the former lawyer turned sports agent who helps him chase a comeback. Gong Myung plays Kang Hae-hwan, a pitcher in his second year of rehabilitation, while Han Hyo-joo plays Seo Hee-seung, the agent guiding his return. Rather than wins and losses, the drama focuses on a fallen player’s second chance and the relationship between its two leads.
SBS takes a darker turn with “Full Count,” scheduled for February 2027. The sports political drama follows the cutthroat race for a professional baseball manager’s job, with Kim Rae-won as Hwang Jin-ho, acting manager of the popular Stars club as it teeters on missing the fall playoffs, and Park Hoon as Jo Dong-hee, the team’s legendary former pitcher and the leading candidate for the permanent job. Their rivalry exposes the power games inside a pro club’s front office.
The baseball wave also reaches streaming. TVING’s “Sunny Baseball Team,” planned for next year, stars Oh Jung-se and Jeon Hye-jin in a slice-of-life comedy about fathers in their 30s and 40s who gather every weekend to play social baseball and take on an amateur tournament. ENA’s “Green Light,” also due next year, pairs Choi Hyun-wook and Jung Chae-yeon in a 1990s campus romantic comedy about a high school ace pitcher who follows his first love into law school. Choi Hyun-wook, a former baseball player himself, plays the gifted pitcher Han Tae-yang.
The sudden rush marks a sharp change for a genre that has been rare on Korean TV. The benchmark remains SBS’s “Stove League,” which aired in 2019 and peaked at 19.1 percent ratings. “Full Count” is SBS’s first baseball drama in eight years since that hit, according to Soompi, and it marks Kim Rae-won’s return to the small screen for the first time in four years. The timing is no accident: Korean professional baseball has entered a 10-million-spectator era, NewsPim reported, and broadcasters are moving to keep that audience through the winter.
Not everyone is convinced the boom will last. With five baseball dramas arriving in a short window, TenAsia noted concerns about viewer fatigue from similar settings and storylines, even as the shows stake out different ground — from high school ball to front-office politics to weekend-league comedy. For now, the race is on: “Gift” opens the season on December 5, and the off-season suddenly looks a lot like baseball season.
