There are some stories that draw you into the black side of life, and 친애하는 X is one of them that makes you love the darkness. The dark, glamorous, traumatic, and predatory charming mix-up of Baek A-jin creates a very rare villainess in the series, and to audiences now looking for Kdramas Like Dear X, the appeal is clear: Her life is made of isolation, hardships, deceit, and intense craving for power, and to watch her go from a shattered childhood to ruling with no one to contest her that the whole experience is turning out to be both spooky and captivating.
One of the factors that makes the kdrama Dear X a page-turner is the way it keeps revealing the monster in it. The actress Kim You-jung, playing A-jin’s character, shows that she has developed her instincts for survival into weapons. Her character turns out to be a beautiful manipulator and a lover who always has a pawn on her side. The drama becomes a game of chess in which every relationship is a board.
What is even fascinating is that you cannot hate Baek A-jin as a character, yet there is not one minute when you do not feel sorry for the men used as stepping stones, especially the characters played by Kim Young-dae and Kim Do-hoon, who fall under the crushing weight of her ambition. The Drama’s horrifying clarity is one of the reasons for its addictiveness.
In case you have watched and re-watched all episodes and want more of the grey-morals heroines, mind games, revenge-driven plots, or characters whose sufferings make them cruel, you are at the very spot. The following are a few Korean dramas similar to Dear X in their intensity, in passion, with their embodiment of coercive characters, dark emotional places, and tales shedding light on the disappearance of the demarcation line between the victim and the villain.
Best Kdramas Like Dear X
Anna
Starring Bae Suzy in a career-defining performance, Anna follows Yu-mi, who flees her suffocating life by getting hold of somebody else’s identity. What started as a small lie surmounts to a fabricated existence of wealth, power, and control. The drama explores how childhood neglect, pressure, and desperation can turn someone into a compulsive liar-or even a sociopath in the making. Echoing some of the themes seen in Kdramas similar to Dear X, it tells the story of a woman who reinvents herself through the use of deception as currency.
Anna is perfect if you were drawn to Baek A-jin’s climb from misery to perfection. Both women rewrite themselves because the world denied them love and safety. Both weaponise performance and appearance. Both live double lives that are precariously fragile. The slow psychological burn with Suzy’s nuanced acting makes Anna a stunning character-driven thriller for fans of morally grey female leads.
The Frog
Led by Go Min-si as Yoo Seong-ah, The Frog is a suffocating psychological thriller situated in a rural motel where the arrival of a single woman unravels every semblance of peace. Seong-a is quiet, unreadable, and hauntingly mysterious. She slips into the life of Yeong-ha with softness that feels deceptive, a presence that suggests both danger and desperation. As their interactions heighten, the drama explores trauma, suppressed violence, and how some people learn to survive by becoming unpredictable forces of their own. Seong-ah, much like Baek A-jin, is one of those women whose stillness hides storms.
While Baek A-jin’s duality drew you in, Seong-ah will mesmerise you in an entirely different way. She does not dominate with glamour; she does so with silence, vulnerability, and an eerie emotional distance that leaves one on a constant edge. The Frog echoes Korean drama Dear X in its slow-building dread and fascination with morally fractured characters, which is great for viewers who want a female lead wrapped up in secrets, being shaped by her past, and dangerous in ways you understand only slowly and painfully.
Less Than Evil
Meet one of the most brilliant female psychopaths in K-drama: Eun Sun-jae, played masterfully by Lee Seol. Drawing great inspiration from Alice Morgan in the BBC’s Luther, Sun-jae is wickedly intelligent, eerily calm, and flawlessly manipulative. Blurring the line between ally and enemy, she toys with cops and criminals, especially detective Woo Tae-seok himself, enacted by Shin Ha-kyun. Calculated killings at her whim and emotions hidden behind a mask, her mere presence sent shockwaves akin to Baek A-jin’s chill of duality.
If A-jin fascinated you with her charm-turned-weapon and the way she would manipulate everyone, Sun-jae will absolutely grip you. She possesses an eerie composure, soft-spoken and smiling, yet lethal beyond doubt. Less Than Evil also explores the dangerous bond between predator and pursuer, making it a must-watch for viewers who enjoy complex mind games, moral dilemmas, and chilling female masterminds.
The Glory
In this blockbuster revenge drama, Song Hye-kyo is Moon Dong-eun, a woman forced to live most of her life for the destruction of those who ruined her youth. Though different from A-jin, Dong-eun is not a psychopathic character is shaped by trauma and driven by a relentless desire to reclaim power. Bullying, revenge, emotional scarring, and how sometimes victims turn just as ruthless as their abusers are navigated in this drama.
If the trauma-to-power arc resonated with you in Dear X, The Glory echoes it back with emotional sharpness. Dong-eun doesn’t manipulate with charm, as A-jin did, but she is strategic, calculating, and unforgiving. What really makes this compelling is how it forces you to root for someone who has embraced brutality to fight brutality. It is a different flavour of darkness, but one that lovers of psychological vengeance will adore.
It’s Okay to Not Be Okay
This psychological romance stars Seo Yea-ji as Ko Moon-young, a children’s book author with antisocial tendencies, a traumatic upbringing, and an exterior that is as chillingly cold. Moon-young is bold, unpredictable, emotionally detached, and unsettling in ways that echo Baek A-jin’s layered personality.
The drama combines mental health themes with fairytale symbolism to explore just how monsters are formed-and where healing truly begins: by confronting your own shadow. Moon-young holds the same duality as A-jin: elegant yet unstable, charming yet dangerous, vulnerable yet vicious.
If you enjoyed A-jin’s inner broken child hidden behind a mask of a predator, Moon-young provides a softer yet equally intricate struggle with that conflict. It is unique in that it has made its anti-heroine so lovable, at her worst, while also delving deeper into generational trauma and emotional scarring. It is among those unique Kdramas such as Dear X, for fans who enjoy emotionally heavy, psychologically rich female lead portrayals.
