My Demon (마이 데몬) is a 2023–2024 fantasy romance from SBS — a contract-marriage rom-com with a supernatural twist. It pairs Do Do-hee, the cold, shrewd heiress of the Mirae Group conglomerate, with Jeong Gu-won, a demon who has lived some 200 years by feeding off human contracts. The hook: after an incident, Gu-won loses his powers, and his abilities become tethered to Do-hee, forcing the two to stay close. If you’re deciding whether to start it — or where to stream it outside Korea — here’s the rundown, kept spoiler-light.
The premise, kept spoiler-light
Do Do-hee (Kim Yoo-jung) is the kind of heiress who runs a room by freezing it. Jeong Gu-won (Song Kang) is a centuries-old demon who needs human contracts to survive and has long treated mortals as a means to an end. When his powers short out and reattach themselves to Do-hee, the two strike a deal that becomes a contract marriage — proximity is now a survival requirement, not a choice. From there it does what the genre does best: forced closeness slowly curdling into something real, against a backdrop of inheritance intrigue at Mirae Group and the growing sense that their bond may be putting each other in danger.
It’s high-concept but plays warm — romantic comedy first, fantasy framework second. The series runs 16 episodes, directed by Kim Jang-han and Kwon Da-som and written by Choi Ah-il.
The leads, and the chemistry
The show lives or dies on its central pairing, and that’s where it’s strongest. Kim Yoo-jung plays Do-hee as guarded and exacting, the kind of performance that makes the eventual thaw land. Song Kang’s Gu-won is the inverse — imperious, used to centuries of getting his way, suddenly humbled by needing a human he can’t intimidate. The friction between cold heiress and de-powered demon is the engine, and the supporting cast gives it room to run: Lee Sang-yi as Joo Seok-hoon, Do-hee’s foster brother and investment manager; Kim Hae-sook as Joo Cheon-sook, the Mirae Group chairwoman and Do-hee’s foster mother; and Jo Hye-joo as Jin Ga-young, a performer at Gu-won’s Sunwol Foundation.
Where to watch, by region
- South Korea: first-run on SBS TV, Fridays and Saturdays at 22:00 KST, from November 24, 2023 to January 20, 2024. Episodes streamed domestically on Wavve.
- International: on Netflix in selected regions, where it streamed alongside the Korean broadcast. If you’re outside Korea, Netflix is the simplest legal route, and now that the run has finished it’s a clean binge rather than a weekly wait.
A practical note: because the show released week to week during its original run and trended fast internationally, the inheritance and bond twists got dissected quickly online — if you’re spoiler-averse and coming to it now, it’s worth avoiding K-drama recap channels until you’ve caught up.
The popularity story, told straight
Here’s where honesty matters. Domestically, My Demon was a moderate performer, not a record-breaker — Nielsen Korea nationwide ratings averaged roughly 3.9%, peaking around 4.7%. Solid, but not a phenomenon at home.
The international streaming numbers are the real headline. The drama entered Netflix’s Top 10 for non-English TV, trended in around 70 countries, and reached #2 on the Netflix Global Top 10 (Non-English TV) chart at its peak. It went on to become one of the most-watched K-dramas on Netflix in the first half of 2024 — second only to Queen of Tears. So the accurate framing is a split: modest ratings on Korean TV, standout reach as a global stream.
Filming locations and a Korea trip
Unlike many fantasy dramas built on closed soundstages, My Demon leaned on real, visitable Korean locations — and several are upscale hotels you can actually book or visit. The blind-date meeting scene was shot at the 32nd-floor rooftop bar of the Sofitel Ambassador Seoul; the lavish wedding was filmed at the Grand Hyatt Seoul; and the Eliena Hotel in Gangnam also features. For something more distinctively Korean, the production used Gyeongwonjae Ambassador Incheon, a hanok-style hotel in Songdo, Incheon, alongside Geowoong Studio in Namyangju and the Santorini-style blue-roofed buildings at Ilsan Lake Park. All of it is domestic — no overseas shoots were reported — which makes a Seoul-and-Incheon location trip genuinely buildable. If filming-location travel is your thing, our K-drama locations itinerary for Jeju is a good template for turning drama sites into a real route.
What to make of it, and whether to start it
The honest pitch: if you like a contract-marriage premise carried by a strong central pairing, and you don’t mind a supernatural framework draped over what is essentially a chaebol romance, My Demon is an easy yes — the global numbers weren’t an accident. If you came strictly for grounded drama, the demon conceit may read as too broad. Either way, with the full 16 episodes long since aired and sitting on Netflix in many regions, it’s a clean binge to catch up on now.
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