Every Lee Min Ho Drama in Order — and Why the World Rates Him Higher Than Korea Does

Lee Min Ho has been working in Korean television since 2002, but most viewers outside Korea met him in a single year: 2009. This is the complete Lee Min Ho filmography in chronological order, cameos excluded, with a short description of each project. After the list, an analysis of a question that comes up constantly in international fan communities and rarely gets a serious answer: why is he measurably more popular abroad than he is at home?

The early years: 2002 to 2008

Before the fame, there were six years of small parts, one cancelled show, and one catastrophic injury.

Romance (MBC, 2002) — A bit part as a troubled student. He had a single line of dialogue. He was fifteen.
Sharp 1 (KBS2, 2003) — A minor role in a long-running youth series that also featured actors who would become far better known. He was still credited under the stage name Lee Min at this stage, chosen because his agency found his real name too plain. He later dropped it, partly because it was written and pronounced identically to the Korean word for "immigration" and made him impossible to find in a search engine.
Recipe of Love (MBC, 2005) — Another supporting appearance while he was auditioning constantly and landing very little. He signed with Starhaus Entertainment the same year.
Secret Campus (EBS, 2006) — His first proper main role, in a school series on Korea’s public educational broadcaster. Weeks after it, in August 2006, he was in a head-on car collision that killed two friends sitting in the front seats. He was in a coma for a month and bedridden for months afterward. Surgeons implanted a 46-centimetre pin in his thigh; one of his legs is permanently shorter than the other as a result.
Mackerel Run (SBS, 2007) — His first leading role after recovery, and a failure. Low viewership forced the network to cut the series to eight episodes.
I Am Sam (KBS2, 2007) — A supporting role in a school comedy. Notable in hindsight because his co-star was Park Min-young, with whom he would reunite four years later on City Hunter.
Get Up (2008) — A television drama role in the last year before everything changed. He also worked in two films that year, listed further down.

The breakthrough decade: 2009 to 2016

Boys Over Flowers (KBS2, 2009) — as Gu Jun-pyo — 25 episodes. The Korean adaptation of the Japanese manga Hana Yori Dango, in which a scholarship student collides with four wealthy boys who run her elite school. Competition for the role was fierce and Lee found out he had won it by reading about it in the newspaper. The series drew ratings above 30% domestically and became the entry point into Korean drama for millions of viewers across Asia and beyond. It won him the Baeksang Arts Award for Best New Actor.

Personal Taste (MBC, 2010) — as Jeon Jin-ho — A romantic comedy opposite Son Ye-jin, in which a young architect pretends to be gay in order to move in as a woman’s roommate. He chose it deliberately as something light, saying he wanted to save heavier, more defined roles for when he was older.
City Hunter (SBS, 2011) — as Lee Yun-seong — 20 episodes, loosely adapted from Tsukasa Hojo’s manga. A man returns to Seoul with a list of names and takes a job at the presidential Blue House to reach them. This is the drama that established him as an action lead and expanded his following sharply in Japan, China, the Philippines and France. He was in a second car accident during filming and continued working.
Faith (SBS, 2012) — as General Choi Young — A fusion sageuk, meaning a historical drama that plays loose with the period, in which a Goryeo-era warrior brings a modern doctor back through time. Ratings sat in the 10% range, which was not enough to recover a large budget. It remains one of his most-loved works among international fans and one of his least-discussed at home.
The Heirs (SBS, 2013) — as Kim Tan — 20 episodes, written by Kim Eun-sook. Another chaebol heir, chaebol meaning a family-controlled conglomerate, and another scholarship student. It peaked at 28.6% domestically and passed one billion views on the Chinese platform iQIYI, a figure that tells you almost everything about the shape of his career.

The Legend of the Blue Sea (SBS, 2016–2017) — as Heo Joon-jae and Dam-ryung — A fantasy romance opposite Jun Ji-hyun, splitting between a modern con man and his Joseon-era predecessor. His lightest, funniest performance, and the one that gives his comic timing the most room.

Military service and the global pivot: 2017 to 2026

Lee served as a public service officer from May 2017 to April 2019, having been ruled ineligible for active duty because of the injuries from 2006. Everything after that release was built for a different distribution system.

The King: Eternal Monarch (SBS and Netflix, 2020) — as Lee Gon — 16 episodes, Kim Eun-sook again. An emperor of a Korea that never became a republic crosses into our world and meets a detective. Domestic reception was mixed and ratings slid after a record-setting premiere. Internationally it was the most-watched Korean drama on Netflix in India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, and one of the top two in the United States that year. He won Best Actor at the 2020 SBS Drama Awards for it.
Pachinko (Apple TV+, 2022) — as Koh Hansu — Eight episodes, adapted from Min Jin Lee’s novel and told in Korean, Japanese and English across four generations of a Korean family in Japan. He plays a broker whose money shapes a woman’s entire life. He has described the character as a villain produced by tragedy. His standalone episode, Chapter 7, appeared on the year’s best-episode lists at Rolling Stone, The New York Times and Collider.

Pachinko Season 2 (Apple TV+, 2024) — as Koh Hansu — Eight more episodes, premiering August 23, 2024. The timeline moves to wartime Osaka in 1945 and Tokyo in 1989, and Hansu attempts to take a more active role in his son’s life.
When the Stars Gossip (tvN and Netflix, 2025) — as Gong Ryong — 16 episodes, aired January 4 to February 23, 2025. An obstetrician buys his way onto a space station as a tourist with an undisclosed reason for going. It premiered to roughly 3% domestically against a reported 50 billion won budget and drew divided reviews, though the middle stretch is considerably stronger than the opening.

Lee Min Ho movies in order

Public Enemy Returns (2008) — as Jung Ha-yeon — A supporting role in the third entry of a well-known Korean crime franchise, playing a member of a high school gang. This was his first film credit of any size.
Our School’s E.T. (2008) — as Oh Sang-hoon — A school comedy released the same year. During filming he became friends with the actor Kim Soo-ro, who said publicly afterward that he had known Lee would become one of the country’s top actors.
Gangnam Blues (2015) — as Kim Jong-dae — Directed by Yoo Ha, a neo-noir set during the 1970s land development boom that built modern Gangnam. His first leading film role, and a deliberate break from the television persona. It won him Best New Actor at the Daejong Film Awards and Most Popular Actor at the Baeksang Arts Awards.
Bounty Hunters (2016) — as Yi-san — A Korea-China-Hong Kong co-production action comedy. It topped box office charts on release and grossed roughly 31 million US dollars in China alone — a number worth remembering when we get to the analysis.
Omniscient Reader (2025) — as Yoo Joong-hyeok — Adapted from the enormously popular web novel, with a cast that included Ahn Hyo-seop and Blackpink’s Jisoo. Filming began in 2023.
Assassins (2026) — as Young-il — Directed by Hur Jin-ho and set around the 1974 attempt on President Park Chung-hee’s life, in which the First Lady was killed. Lee plays a young reporter who witnesses the attack, opposite Yu Hae-jin and Park Hae-il. Reported for a September 2026 release.

One further project has been widely reported but is not confirmed. In July 2026, Korean outlets said Lee was in final discussions for a twelve-episode romantic comedy under the working title But Your Love, playing a game company director with a secret second identity as a member of a virtual idol group. His agency stated only that he had received the offer and was reviewing it.

Why Lee Min Ho is bigger overseas than at home

This is not a fan impression. It is measurable, and it shows up in the same places every time.

Start with the survey. In the South Korean government’s annual overseas hallyu study — hallyu being the international spread of Korean popular culture — Lee Min Ho has been named the world’s favourite Korean actor for thirteen consecutive years, in a 2026 edition polling more than 27,000 respondents across dozens of countries. No other actor in the industry has held that position for anything close to that long. Now compare it to his domestic record: his awards are heavily weighted toward popularity and new-actor categories rather than the acting prizes Korean critics hand out. Both things are true at once, and the gap between them is the whole story.

Five reasons for the gap

1. He arrived at the exact moment the second Korean Wave went global. Boys Over Flowers landed in 2009, when Korean television was pushing hard into China and Southeast Asia, and it was based on a manga that audiences across Asia already recognised through the Japanese and Taiwanese versions. For Korean viewers, it was one hit among many. For a viewer in Manila, Jakarta, Lagos or Lima, it was very often the first Korean drama they ever watched — and the first is the one you never stop being loyal to.

2. The archetype he plays travels better than it ages. The wealthy heir, the fantasy prince, the impossible man in a good coat. Korean audiences and critics tire of a repeated archetype quickly and reward visible reinvention; that is why domestic reviews of his romances have often been lukewarm even when the ratings were strong. Abroad, the same consistency is the appeal. Viewers are not tracking his career arc week by week. They are looking for a specific feeling, and he reliably delivers it.

3. Streaming decoupled his success from Korean ratings entirely. The King: Eternal Monarch is the clearest case: disappointing at home, dominant across Netflix in Asia and the United States in the same year. When the Stars Gossip repeated the pattern in 2025. Domestic broadcast ratings measure how many Koreans watched on a given night. They no longer measure whether a show worked, and his last three projects have been aimed at platforms where that number is close to irrelevant.

4. His commercial value is denominated in foreign markets. Look at where his endorsement deals come from: Lazada across Southeast Asia, SMDC in the Philippines, Bench in the Philippines, Roma in Indonesia, Azarine in Indonesia, Cuckoo in Malaysia, Semir and Taobao in China, Fendi and Boss globally. He was the first Korean celebrity to get a wax figure at Madame Tussauds, unveiled in Shanghai in 2013 and Hong Kong in 2014, and the first to perform at China’s CCTV New Year Gala in 2014. Bounty Hunters made 31 million dollars in China. His career has been financed, in significant part, by audiences who are not Korean.

5. He works slowly, and slowness punishes you at home but not abroad. Two-to-three-year gaps between projects break the domestic buzz cycle, which runs on constant presence. International fandom operates on catalogue logic instead. A drama from 2013 sitting on a streaming service is not old to someone discovering it in 2026 — it is simply new. Combine that with roughly 65 million combined social media followers, which made him the first Korean celebrity past 20 million on both Instagram and Facebook, and the audience is never actually waiting for him. They are working through the back catalogue.

What Pachinko changed

There is one more piece, and it runs in the opposite direction to everything above. The critical reassessment of Lee Min Ho as an actor rather than as a star did not start in Korea. It started with American critics writing about Pachinko, and it started with a single episode. That is an unusual sequence for a Korean actor, and it explains why the conversation about him now sounds different in English-language coverage than it does in Korean entertainment press. Overseas, he is an actor who happens to have been a phenomenon. At home, he is still, to a degree, a phenomenon who is also acting.

Frequently asked questions

How many dramas has Lee Min Ho starred in? Excluding cameos, he has appeared in around fifteen television series since 2002, roughly ten of them as the lead. His career divides cleanly into pre-2009 supporting work, a decade of Korean network stardom, and a post-2020 streaming phase.
What was Lee Min Ho’s first drama? His first credited television appearance was a single-line bit part in the MBC series Romance in 2002. His first main role came four years later in the EBS school series Secret Campus in 2006, and his first leading role was Mackerel Run on SBS in 2007.
Why is Lee Min Ho so popular in the Philippines and Indonesia? Boys Over Flowers aired widely across Southeast Asia in 2009 and served as the region’s introduction to Korean drama. He has since built the densest concentration of his endorsement work in those markets, including regional ambassadorships that keep him visible between acting projects.
Did Lee Min Ho serve in the military? Yes. He served as a public service officer from May 2017 to April 2019. Injuries from the 2006 car crash, including a metal pin in his thigh, made him ineligible for active duty. He completed four weeks of basic training at Nonsan in March 2018.
What is Lee Min Ho working on in 2026? The film Assassins, directed by Hur Jin-ho, has been reported for a September 2026 release. A twelve-episode rom-com titled But Your Love has been reported but not confirmed by his agency beyond acknowledging that an offer was received.

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