While Kdramas are typically praised for their fierce male or female leads, swoony love scenes, and stomach-churning friendstabs in the back, there exists another, lesser-known power that we’re not actually conscious of until they’re totally breaking our hearts – the dads. And with Happy Father’s Day 2025 on the horizon, it just feels appropriate to light a candle (and also very likely to hold a box of tissues) for those fictional dads that weren’t just written well, but lived on through our screens in ways that we’ll never be able to shake.
These aren’t just dads who provided — they supported us, listened to us, stood up for us, and, even with their imperfections, made us feel seen. Think you’d recovered from seeing these kdramas? Prepare for that rough emotional rollercoaster all over again. Here comes the feels. Let us pay tribute to these six unforgettable Kdrama dads who reminded our brains what fatherhood is all about in its beautifully flawed perfection.
Happy Father’s Day 2025: 6 Best Kdrama Dads
When Life Gives You Tangerines’s Yang Gwan-sik
If I may quote it: Yang Gwan-sik is the blueprint. That earthy charisma was brought to life by Park Bo-gum and Park Hae-joon, and this man didn’t just raise a family — he redefined what it means to be a safe space. Sure, we’ve had swoony male leads before, but Gwan-sik was in a league of his own. He was soft-spoken and warm, an unimpeachable husband, and the most beautiful father anyone could ask for and one who knew how to listen. She had never played favourites, whether it was his daughter Geum-myeong or his son, daughter-in-law. He kept showing up, that’s all.
And there’s one line in this episode that’s just moved in for good in our hearts. When Geum-myeong, played by IU, was at the crossroads of her life, he said to her: ‘In case everything goes wrong, step back. You just run here to me, all right?’ And if that didn’t make you sob while you’re slurping down your midnight ramen, are you even a human? This wasn’t fatherly advice — it was a safety net of unconditional love. Every daughter deserves that safety net.
18 Again’s Hong Dae-young
It’s sweet, but what an idea — a father given a second lease on life and, instead of chasing his lost dreams, going out of his way to connect with his kids? That, naturally, is Hong Dae-young. This part, acted by Yoon Sang-hyun (and by Lee Do-hyun in a younger incarnation), broke a stereotype, and us along with it, to maximum effect. Dae-young wasn’t living his second youth in Ko U-yeong, but he was attempting to be a better dad this time around with a dash of experience to guide his moves.
He stood up for his son when he got bullied, he silently shielded his daughter from harm, and he learned, most importantly, to listen without bias. The manner in which he calmly guided his children through school, love, and stress, never once revealing his true self, was peak dad stuff. Real talk, 18 Again wasn’t a time-travel fantasy–it was a redemption tale for a dad with a dash of warmth and teenage anarchy.
Also Read: 6 Cdramas like The Prisoner of Beauty That Nailed the Enemies-to-Lovers Trope
Extraordinary Attorney Woo’s Woo Gwang-ho
Jeon Bae-soo’s character Woo Gwang-ho must be one of the nicest portrayals of fatherhood ever done in Kdramaland. As Woo Young-woo’s appa in Extraordinary Attorney Woo, he’s not showy or flashy — he’s just there. And for an autistic daughter, that was nearly more than enough. Brought to life with subtlety and empathy by Jeon Bae-soo, this father never once tried to make his daughter seem anything other than ordinary — he just believed in her when most of the world did not.
He gave up everything — his dreams, his life outside of the house, his own comfort — so his daughter could have hers. That he never overprotected her is what I loved most about him. Instead, he stoked the flame of her independence, even when it frightened him. Fatherhood, in this instance, wasn’t about fixing or defending — it was about riding alongside. And I’d do anything to have tteokbokki at his restaurant once.
Reply 1988’s Sung Dong-il
We cannot discuss kdrama dads without giving props to the GOAT SungDong-il. All the fathers in In Reply 1988 deserve to be appreciated, but his light was just something else. Hard on the outside but tummy-flutteringly sweet on the inside, he nailed the understated style of 1980s romance — the one that didn’t necessarily utter the words “I love you” but demonstrated them ten times over.
Who would ever forget his birthday bash he hosted for Deok-sun (Hyeri), or how he proudly sported the shoes his daughter Bo-ra (Ryu Hye-young) gave him after they got into a fight? And don’t even get me started on his dork-but-real younger relationship with the baby, No Eul. And how much he’d fought to suppress those feelings but never managed? Ugh. Daddies like these do not descend from a script — they descend from memory of what a dad can be.
Moving’s Jang Ju-won
And here’s one for the superhero dads — we mean that literally. Ryu Seung-ryong in Moving showed us Jang Ju-won, the man who would battle a hundred men, but first he’d prepare lunch for his daughter, all in silence. The emotional punch in his tale is how he used his superhuman strength not for fame but for using his phenomenal strength to help safeguard his daughter, Hui-soo (Go Youn-jung), and provide her a chance to live a normal life despite her gifts.
No matter how battered Ju-won looked, her instinct was always to ask about her. He was not just strong — he was infinitely patient, heartbreakingly committed and soft in all the right places. The self-deprecating humour with which he treated her, the little things they shared together, the big love that he kept in reserve because he didn’t want to overwhelm her with it — though she always ached to know it — the weight of the relationship was enough to make you wish for more dads like him. Hero by strength, dad by choice.
Flower of Evil’s Baek Hui-seong
This is going to be the one that’s going to be controversial, I know. But — just hear me out for a minute — Lee Joon-gi’s Baek Hui-seong was faking it, perhaps, but there was something real that flared over with his daughter. A man who believed he was unlovable but who still went and scooped up the doll of his baby daughter and cared for her like a quiet soldier? That’s the kind of thing that messes you up at 3 AM in the best possible way.
His fatherly nature asserted itself on its own — even when he was not entirely sure what it was. There is one unforgettable scene in which he exacts vengeance on a classmate who bullied his daughter, and this is not rage — it’s love. Distorted, imperfect, messy — and yet loves. And maybe there are moments that’s all fatherhood is: not perfect, but fiercely protective, even in its brokenness.
Have any of these best Kdrama fathers ever caused you to suddenly, inexplicably, want to send a text to your own appa saying, “Thank you”? Let us know in the comments, and, again, happy Father’s Day!
