While browsing my archive of blog posts and drafts from our original anime club blog, BBAMAJAM—acronym for Boogie BAM Anime Jam, as we met at a Book-a-Million, in 2009; eventually renamed Scenic City Anime & More in 2011; which then was then revived in 2024 as just Scenic City Anime Club, I found a text file of a post I wrote of a website that no longer exists for those who are immersed in K-Dramas: DramaFever.

I was excited to have stumbled upon this as I have a screen cap of what the front page looked like at the time I wrote it, so everyone who had heard of the site but who did not get a chance to see what it was like in its heyday can see just a glimpse of what was available to watch with a subscription.

I’m not sure if I actually published this on the blog back then, but here it is as it was written in December 2010 for those in 2025 and beyond—with some editing done to improve clarity.

Since the mid 2000s, the “Korean Wave” swept all of Asia, especially in Japan where a few Korean drama actors and music artists have left a lasting impression with fans. After taking over the continent, the “Wave” hit US shores with K-Pop artists preforming in US major cities and their hits available for sale on the US iTunes store.

There’s proof that the Wave have fans demanding for more: the launch of DramaFever. Similar to Crunchyroll (and thanks to the interest of (legal) online streaming sites), DramaFever has a wider selection of titles to choose from.

The DramaFever website looks a lot like like another video portal website, but it’s easier to navigate especially with a dark background, which makes it easy on the eyes other the white background overused on so many sites. On the carousel, featured series that is popular on DramaFever right now and latest additions to the site is listed. At the bottom right, you can see a schedule of upcoming series on DramaFever. And at the very bottom, you can view popular series by genre: from historical, to romance, to documentaries.

When DramaFever first launched, there were only a few titles that have made it to Region 1 DVD thanks to YesAsia Entertainment. But DramaFever is expanding to other series not readily available in the US for legal viewing. DramaFever includes recent favorites like You’re Beautiful, Boys Over Flowers (Korean version of Hana Yori Dango), Personal Taste, and Iris.

K-Dramas dating back as far as 2000 and titles that have little to no interest in the R1 DVD market is available for viewing as well. Not just K-Dramas, but J-Dramas are making their way into the library with FUNimation’s Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture, and Tokusatsu series Iron King and Super Robot Red Barron from the early 1970s.

While the rest of DramaFever is free, there is also a subscription model with a few benefits such as no advertisements during viewing and VIP access to new episodes a couple of weeks in advance before free subscribers can watch them. The following subscription packages are as follows: $4.99 a month for the Uncommitted, $12.99 for 3 months for the Value Shopper, and $39.99 a year for the True Fan.

Regardless of being a subscriber, you can bookmark your favorite series to view them from where you stopped and have your DF account connected with Twitter to post status updates of what you’re currently watching 5 minutes after viewing.

DramaFever lacks proper community features, especially a message board to discuss favorite series with other K-Drama fans. I think this is important way to keep in touch with not just fans, but with the activity of the site. It’s not too important to have a community of K-Drama fans, although they do have a blog with latest additions to the site and interesting news stories syndicated from Ningin* and allkpop, where both sites contain huge fanbases of drama fans.

(Authors Note: for those curious about Ningin, it was a website similar to AllKpop and Koreaboo, but included coverage on anime, J-pop, and other Asian culture topics. However I would recommend not seeking out their website as the listing on Google looks like some squatter page. The last update on their Facebook page was in August 2013.)

Conclusion

DramaFever is perfect, but not quite. I wish the site included non-Drama shows such as Music Core (which they have, but hasn’t been updated in a long time) and other variety shows such as Strong Heart. At the time of writing, DramaFever’s library of series now includes simulcasts of dramas such as the recent Fugitive: Plan B starring Rain. The only problem I have with DramaFever is their video player, which is a little buggy when it comes to advertisements. Fortunately, it is being improved almost every week thanks to user feedbacks.

If you are familiar with watching dramas on Crunchyroll with anime in between in one place, it will feel weird watching dramas without them, unless they match the library of dramas. But when you think about it: Crunchyroll is for Anime fans, and DramaFever is for Drama fans… but one site has them all.