Updated: September 5, 2026
A veteran Korean film director walked into a theater this week with a new project.
Nothing unusual there.
Then the screen appeared.
It was vertical.
Lee Joon-ik—the director behind films such as The King and the Clown, Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet and The Book of Fish—has entered Korea’s growing short-form drama market with My Father’s Table.
The project was designed as a vertical series made of roughly two-minute episodes. Those episodes can also be connected into a feature-length presentation. It premiered at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival and is moving through theatrical and mobile-platform releases in September.
A few years ago, “vertical video” usually meant TikTok, Reels or YouTube Shorts. Now Korean filmmakers are asking a much stranger question:
What happens when the K-drama itself is built for the phone?
Korea’s vertical short-form drama boom is not simply about shrinking attention spans. Short-form viewing is already part of everyday mobile life, conventional film and television production is expensive, and new platforms want stories designed specifically for phones. Established directors and actors are now entering the format. That does not mean two-minute dramas will replace conventional K-dramas; they may simply capture a different part of the viewer’s day.
1. A Short-Form Drama Is Not Just a K-Drama Cut Into Clips
A vertical short-form drama is usually conceived for a smartphone from the beginning. Episodes often run for only one to three minutes, the frame is vertical, and the story has almost no time to wait before giving the viewer a reason to continue.
A conventional drama can spend several minutes letting someone enter a room and allowing tension to grow. A two-minute episode may need a scene, an emotional change and a small cliffhanger before an old 60-minute drama has finished its opening conversation.
2. Koreans Already Spend Part of Their Day in Short-Form Mode
The industry did not invent this habit. Viewers got there first.
The Korea Creative Content Agency’s 2025 Content Usage Behavior Survey found that 58.6 percent of respondents used short-form content. The most common reason was simple: it was short and therefore felt less burdensome.
This does not prove that Koreans stopped wanting long stories. The same person can spend an evening watching a Netflix series and then scroll through short videos in bed.
A Saturday night on the sofa can belong to a one-hour drama. Seven minutes waiting for a subway or ten minutes after lunch are different pieces of time. Short dramas are trying to claim those pieces.
KOCCA English overview: Short-Form Video Usage Patterns in Korea →
3. Two Minutes Requires a Different Kind of Storytelling
Lee Joon-ik comes from almost the opposite tradition: feature films that allow characters and history to breathe. In My Father’s Table, he had to work inside a completely different clock.
He said each roughly two-minute episode needed its own small narrative structure. The vertical frame also changed the way faces occupied the screen.
The episode is shorter, but the face can feel closer. The screen is narrower, but the emotion can feel more concentrated.
4. The Boom Is Also About Production Economics
Making conventional films and premium television dramas has become expensive. Large casts, longer shooting schedules, star salaries and increasingly high visual expectations make every production a larger financial bet.
Short-form production changes the size of that bet. Preparation can be faster, shooting periods can be shorter, and a webtoon or other existing IP can be tested without immediately committing to a full television series.
That does not mean short-form automatically means cheap or good. Lower barriers can discover new creators—or simply create more disposable content. The interesting question is which one Korea will produce more of.
5. Korea Did Not Invent the Vertical Drama
Korea is not the birthplace of the modern vertical microdrama. The format expanded rapidly in China before platforms such as ReelShort and DramaBox pushed similar storytelling into other markets.
That actually makes Korea’s position more interesting. Korean producers do not need to prove that people will watch stories vertically. They need to answer a different question:
6. Why Lee Joon-ik’s Entry Matters
One famous director does not prove that an entire industry has changed. But who enters a new market can tell us how seriously that market is beginning to be taken.
My Father’s Table was selected for BIFAN’s short-form cinema program, where vertically shot mobile episodes were connected into a theatrical presentation.
Think about that image: an audience sits in front of one of the largest screens it normally encounters, watching pictures shaped for one of the smallest.
7. Will Two-Minute Dramas Replace the 16-Episode K-Drama?
Probably not. That is the wrong way to frame the competition.
People already watch short videos and long series on the same phone. A vertical drama may not need to steal an hour from Netflix. It may only need to take ten minutes that previously belonged to random scrolling.
The future question may be: Which story belongs on which screen, at which moment of the day?
8. Three Things to Watch Next
Watch whether established directors and actors keep returning, whether Korean creators move beyond a small set of sensational formulas, and whether successful short-form stories expand into larger webtoons, streaming series or films.
If those things happen, “Can something shot vertically really be a drama?” may eventually sound as old-fashioned as asking whether anyone would watch a movie on a phone.
Three Fun Videos Before You Go
What it shows: Netflix K-Content’s official trailer for a 2026 Korean action drama.
Why watch: Enough industry talk. This gives the reader what most K-drama fans actually came for: characters, conflict and a reason to press play.
Watch for: Notice how quickly the trailer establishes stakes—the same attention battle short-form dramas are trying to win.
Watch on YouTube →
What it shows: One of BTS’s most recognizable official music videos, built around cinematic framing and emotional images.
Why watch: Korean screen culture moves easily between drama and music video; both rely on faces, framing and visual memory.
Watch for: Watch how much emotion arrives before you need any explanation.
Watch on YouTube →
What it shows: Mark Wiens moves through Seoul’s food, palaces and busy neighborhoods in an energetic English-language travel video.
Why watch: After a story about screens getting smaller, this opens the view back up to the real city—food, streets and places that make Korean content feel connected to an actual country.
Watch for: Notice how quickly food and place create a sense of Korea without turning into a formal documentary.
Watch on YouTube →
Sources and factual checks: KOCCA — Short-Form Video Usage Patterns in Korea; The Korea Times — Korea short-form drama market; The Korea Times — Lee Joon-ik vertical drama. Information checked September 4, 2026.
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