In no particular order:
White Christmas
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Setting: High School
Deep in the mountains of Gangwon, the private, elite Soo-sin High School is attended by the top 1% of students in the country. Their stellar marks are the result of constant pressure and a strict punishment system, to the point where students avoid any activities outside of studying. It is in this atmosphere that seven students and a teacher remain at school for the winter break, joined by Kim Yo-han (Kim Sang-kyung), a psychiatrist who was forced to take shelter with them after he was injured in a car accident nearby. Stranded from heavy snow, they spend eight days together ― from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day.
Park Mu-yeol (Baek Sung-hyun) is an honor student who chooses to remain in school during the winter break after receiving an abusive letter. Jo Young-jae (Kim Young-kwang) is a detested bully who attacks other people to hide his inferiority complex. Yoon Soo (Lee Soo-hyuk) is a disturbed, but rich student fronting a rock band. Yoon Eun-sung (Esom) was once a popular girl in school before having a sudden change of personality.[3]
At a time when everyone else is celebrating the holidays, the students realise that the anonymous letters they each received were not the result of a harmless prank; there is a murderer in their midst. A question lies unspoken: Are monsters created, or are humans born monsters?[4]
My thoughts: This is the kind of drama that gets you to reflect on your morals in all of the episodes so if you're the kind of person who doesn't like using their brain juices when watching dramas, I think this drama will only bore you. Also, this drama does not have romance in it but it does have some comedic moments to lighten up the atmosphere when things get too tense. Though there's no romance, I find the bonds that are formed between the characters as the drama goes on to be quite heartwarming. The last episode had me in tears. Actually, most of the episodes did.
My friends have asked me about the type of ending that White Christmas has. I responded by saying that it's all a matter of perspective. To me, the drama had a good ending, but that's just because I have a twisted mind and morals that aren't black and white.
"On the night when Christ was born, I curse you."
Hello Monster
Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Police Procedural, Romance
No specific setting, mostly in the police station iirc.
Genius profiler Lee Hyun (Seo In-guk), returns home to Korea after something from a case he’s been sent triggers a memory he thought he’d lost forever. Unbeknownst to him, one of his team members, Detective Cha Ji-an (Jang Na-ra), has been investigating him for some time. She is aware that his father was murdered and his brother disappeared under mysterious circumstances involving a criminal named Lee Joon Young (Do Kyung Soo) -- whom they both want found and incarcerated. Each seeks to unravel the other, unaware that they’ve been drawn into a dangerous game of cat and mouse by a master player and that both truth and evil are closer and far more twisted than they think.
My thoughts: THIS DRAMA was just... amazing. The cast was amazing, the storyline was amazing-- basically everything was AMAZING imo ( even though I felt like the romance was a bit unnecessary ) . You will feel the pain that each of the characters had gone/are going through and it will hurt. I dare say that you will even sympathise with the criminal that is Lee Joon Young.
Ah, the mind games in both White Christmas and Hello Monster... In both dramas, the predator is always looking for the answer to his question ( one using a more extreme way than the other ):
"Are monsters born? Or are they created?"
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