How It Works

K-Drama Bingo watches Korean dramas — as many as we can handle — and scores them based on how many of the K-Drama Bingo Spaces they hit in the course of the series. And yes, we made all of this up. But If we're going to invest 16 hours of our life watching a series unfold, we need to make sure it ticks as many of these comforting boxes as will satisfy us. Reviewers can keep track of the episodes in which a score is made, and details of why it was scored that way (with screenshots where possible) but the K-Drama Bingo hides the specifics on the site by default, since they may contain spoilers.

How to read the scores

Below the series description is a checklist of Bingo Spaces. Every green, checked Bingo Space indicates that the current series successfully fulfilled the criteria for that space. Click the "Toggle Descriptions" button at the top to be reminded of the criteria for each Bingo Space. Click the "Toggle Spoilers" button on the scorecard to see more information about how and when each space was fulfilled. (Warning! This may contain even more spoilers.) At the bottom of the page you will see a list of the unfulfilled Bingo Spaces for reference.

The "Running Commentary" section of the score card — if there is one — gives the reviewer the opportunity to provide notes during the ongoing process of rating the series. It's a great place for visitors to check in while the show is still on the air. With an average of 13 to 16 episodes per series, there are hours and hours of opportunities to score, and endless space for reviewers to share all those comments they normally reserve for Twitter.

Want to help?

If you are starting to watch a new show and would be interesting in scoring it for K-Drama Bingo, it's easy! Each show (if we don't have it listed, ask us to add it!) has a downloadable, print-ready score sheet. You can print your own and keep score as you watch the show — make notes on the back if you have commentary (funny, insightful, or snarky notes encouraged!). Send us an email at editors@kdramabingo.org when you're done, and we'll upload your scores to the site and publish the results. We're setting up a system that will allow you to create an account and submit your scores directly to the site yourself, so stay tuned.

Technical Notes

K-Drama Bingo is built on a PHP-based CMS and platform called Manifesto. It's a simple setup that consists of a database of Dramas, Bingo Space definitions, and Bingo Cards which associate Dramas with the Spaces they fulfill. While specifically developed for K-Drama Bingo, the system was designed to be generic enough that it could be easily adapted for scoring any film or TV genre using custom Bingo Spaces. The software supports multiple Bingo Cards per Drama (with one designated as the "canonical" card by the editors), and can  support multiple Bingo Space sets, so you could specify which set to apply to a particular drama.

This initial incarnation was designed for full-run (largely modern) Korean dramas, usually between 10 and 23 episodes running an hour or more per episode. There are lots of opportunities to hit a bingo card in this configuration. The sageuk (사극) "historical dramas" aren't likely to ever hit "The Playground" card, but in the future, we may create a custom "Sageuk" bingo card set tailored to the Joseon era. It's not entirely fair to judge all dramas by the same tropes. Another obvious variation for this system, of course, would be a "Hallmark Xmas Edition" set of Bingo Cards for those Christmas TV movies.