Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Made in Korea’ on Netflix, An Indo-Korean Film About Starting Over in Seoul
Where to Stream:
Made in Korea
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Now streaming on Netflix, Made in Korea is a joint venture between the streamer’s Indian and South Korean production arms—and shouldn’t be confused for the 2025 Disney+/Hulu crime series of the same name. Written and directed by Ra. Karthik, the film employs notable South Indian and Korean actors with Tamil, Korean, and English languages spoken throughout. Should this be your weekend watch? Read on to see our verdict.
The Gist: Shenba (Priyanka Mohan) has had an obsession with Korean culture since she was a little girl, but was dissuaded from pursuing a life there by her parents who wanted her to get married and take over their family restaurant. Shenba convinces her longtime crush Mani (Rishikanth) to ask for her hand in marriage—something he isn’t ready for as he’s trying to pay off his family’s debts. He devises a plan to steal money from her father and ship her off to Korea with a fake job, and soon she arrives in Seoul with a broken heart and no job.
Making lemons out of lemonade, she takes a job as a caretaker for a sick, elderly woman. But soon she finds out that the woman is faking her illness as a way to resist her son’s suffocating demands. The two women bond and decide to follow their passion to open a restaurant together, which quickly takes off. But when her son finds out about their enterprise, their secret world comes crashing down and Shenba’s future in Seoul is threatened.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The premise is similar to the 2013 Kangana Ranaut film Queen, which followed a woman who rediscovers herself when she decides to forge ahead alone on her planned honeymoon after being left at the altar. Made in Korea has similar beats about female independence in a patriarchal society.
Photo: Netflix
Performance Worth Watching: Park Hye-jin plays the elderly Korean woman who soon becomes a mother figure to Shenba as someone with a lot of life left. She’s playful and encouraging, and is a vision of the type of woman Shenba is becoming.
Sex And Skin: Nada. This one is pretty wholesome in this regard.
Our Take: Made in Korea gets off to a rough start. Shenba’s Korean obsession is well-documented, but her relationship with Mani is not, even as it plays a crucial role in her fate. We see them together as kids but not as adults, and unfortunately, it’s this toxic romance that becomes the hinge upon which Shenba’s life actually catapults forward. Mani manipulates her into going to Korea (which, in itself is confusing because how did he buy an international flight when he’s having money problems?) and it’s a disservice to Shenba that she lands up there through no agency of her own. Shenba doesn’t see Mani as unstable, even after his transgressions, and the film lets him off the hook with a cursory explanation for his behavior.
Things get better once we meet Park’s character who fills the world with more color and pushes Shenba to want more for herself. Made in Korea comes alive with their chemistry, though it’s too short-lived for the 2-hour runtime—especially when the film wastes time with other half-baked subplots (like an inexplicable music video that Shenba funds).
Our Call: SKIP IT. While there is an emotionally satisfying relationship at the center of the film, Made in Korea has too much noise in its subplots to completely satisfy.
Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a film and TV writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Vulture, Teen Vogue, ELLE, and more. She is the co-host of the podcast PromRad with fellow Decider contributor Proma Khosla. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.
