Friendly Rivalry 2025 Korean GL mystery drama poster - Lee Hye-ri and Chung Su-bin

Friendly Rivalry

CompletedTV Series🇰🇷

What happens

Friendly Rivalry (선의의 경쟁) is a 2025 South Korean mystery-thriller drama adapted from a 2020 Naver webtoon of the same name. Set at the fictional Chaehwa Girls' High School, it follows two students whose rivalry is shaped by South Korea's college entrance exam system and by a conspiracy that reaches into the school.

Yoo Je-yi (Lee Hye-ri) is Chaehwa's reigning academic star and the daughter of hospital administrator Yoo Tae-joon; brilliant and coldly self-possessed, she rules the school's social hierarchy. Woo Seul-gi (Chung Su-bin) is the transfer student who upends that order, an orphanage-raised outsider searching for the truth behind her father's suspicious death, a search that leads her directly into Je-yi's orbit. Joo Ye-ri (Kang Hye-won) and Choi Gyeong (Oh Woo-ri) are two classmates whose own ambitions complicate the group's shifting alliances, while Nam Byeong-jin (Choi Young-jae), a figure from Seul-gi's orphanage past, resurfaces to pull her toward more dangerous territory. Yoo Tae-joon (Kim Tae-hun) sits at the centre of the conspiracy plot.

Friendly Rivalry was directed by Kim Tae-hee from a script by Kim Tae-hee and Min Ye-ji, and produced by YLAB with STUDIO X+U. Its sixteen episodes streamed on U+ Mobile TV from February 10 to March 6, 2025.

CONTENT DETAILS

Native Title
선의의 경쟁
Original Title
Friendly Rivalry
Also Known As
Seonuiui Gyeongjaeng
Adaptation
Friendly Rivalry is adapted from the Naver webtoon of the same title (선의의 경쟁), written by Song Chae-yoon and illustrated by Shim Jae-young, which debuted on Naver Webtoon on July 1, 2020, and quickly climbed into the platform's rising rankings. Song, a former actor who left an eleven-year acting career in 2016 to become a comic writer, wrote the original story before YLAB and STUDIO X+U developed it into this live-action drama for U+ Mobile TV.
Genres
Coming-of-AgeDramaMelodramaMysteryRivalrySchoolSuspenseThrillerYouth
Themes
GL
Key Themes
Elite Girls' SchoolCSAT Exam PressureObsessive FriendshipMissing Father MysteryCorrupt Academic RingClass HierarchyOrphan BackstoryWebtoon AdaptationBest Couple AwardToxic Power Dynamics
Country
South Korea
Language
Korean
Director
Kim Tae-hee (Director)
Screenwriter
Kim Tae-hee (Director), Min Ye-ji
Original Author
Song Chae-yoon
Networks
NetflixOnDemandKoreaViki
Seasons
1
Episodes
16
Duration
30 min
Aired Start
Aired End
Release Year
2025
Content Rating
MA
Production Co
STUDIO X+UYLAB

NEWS

Where to watch Friendly Rivalry

NetflixRakuten VikiOnDemandKorea

MAIN CAST & CHARACTERS

Hyeri, South Korean actress and singer, Friendly Rivalry cast portrait
Hyeri
Yoo Je-yi
Chung Su-bin, South Korean actress, Friendly Rivalry cast portrait
Chung Su-bin
Woo Seul-gi
Kang Hye-won, South Korean actress and singer, Friendly Rivalry cast portrait
Kang Hye-won
Oh Woo-ri, South Korean actress, Friendly Rivalry cast portrait
Oh Woo-ri
Choi Gyeong
Kim Tae-hun, South Korean actor, Friendly Rivalry cast portrait
Kim Tae-hun
Yoo Tae-joon
Choi Young-jae (Youngjae), South Korean singer and actor, Friendly Rivalry cast portrait
Choi Young-jae

Before You Watch

  • A 2025 South Korean mystery-thriller of sixteen episodes, about thirty minutes each.
  • Aired Monday to Thursday at midnight KST on U+ Mobile TV from February 10 to March 6, 2025.
  • Adapts a 2020 Naver webtoon written by Song Chae-yoon and illustrated by Shim Jae-young.
  • Directed by Kim Tae-hee, with a screenplay by Kim Tae-hee and Min Ye-ji.
  • Lee Hye-ri and Chung Su-bin won Best Couple at both the 2025 APAN Star Awards and the Korea Drama Awards.
  • Available internationally on Netflix, Rakuten Viki and OnDemandKorea.

Reviewed by Renkaze

8.2/10

Friendly Rivalry arrived on U+ Mobile TV in February 2025 as a sixteen-episode mobile drama, and its mystery plot carries as much of the season as the tension between its two leads.

What Works

Lee Hye-ri and Chung Su-bin anchor the series with a tense, guarded dynamic that turns a school mystery into something stranger and more absorbing. The elite-school setting gives the story its pressure: the entrance exam turns ranking into stakes, and the conspiracy plot grows out of that pressure.

Half-hour episodes keep the story moving, since the mystery has to advance in every one of them.

What to Know Going In

  • The central mystery around Woo Seul-gi's father was added for the drama and is not part of the webtoon.
  • The conspiracy thread widens as the season goes on, so the mystery moves steadily to the foreground in the later episodes.

Final Verdict

Friendly Rivalry is closer to a psychological thriller than a conventional school drama, using an intense rivalry between two brilliant students as its emotional center. The performances of Lee Hye-ri and Chung Su-bin hold it together.

Final Score: 8.2/10

The mystery around Woo Seul-gi's father was written for the drama, and the Naver webtoon does not contain it.

The webtoon was written by Song Chae-yoon and drawn by Shim Jae-young. Song left an eleven year acting career in 2016 to become a comic writer, and YLAB and STUDIO X+U developed the comic for the screen.

After the drama aired, the webtoon rose to number one on Naver Webtoon's Top 30, with average daily sales rising twentyfold and weekly paid transactions up by more than 470 percent.

The release calendar has an unusual structure. Sixteen episodes of about 30 minutes, 480 minutes in all, were released in four blocks of four consecutive nights, Monday to Thursday, across four weeks from 10 February to 6 March 2025, and the soundtrack followed the same pattern with one new single a week in step with each block. The season therefore reads as four short chapters of about two hours each.

The setting gives that pattern a natural rhythm. Chaehwa Girls' High School runs on rank, and the college entrance exam turns every result into a public position, so a week of nightly episodes can move through one round of pressure at a time. The series suits viewers who like school-set mysteries with a thriller pulse and who prefer to watch a story in concentrated bursts.

Themes

선의의 경쟁 is not a dramatic phrase in Korean. It is administrative language, the term a school reaches for when it wants to describe its own ranking system as healthy: competition conducted in good faith. Applying it to these two girls is the series' first and driest joke, because what the title names is the gap between the vocabulary an institution uses about itself and what it produces in the people inside it.

The two leads are built to make that gap legible. They arrive at Chaehwa from opposite ends of the same institutional machinery, and the school is the one place where the paperwork treats them as interchangeable. Everything that passes between them happens inside a ranking that insists the two positions are comparable, and the pressure of the drama comes from how plainly they are not.

Director Kim Tae-hee has said she accepted the adaptation almost immediately for two reasons: that none of the characters were purely good, and that it was a story filled with women. Set beside the title, that reads less like a provocation than like a design brief.

Interesting facts

  • The soundtrack was released one single a week. "Burn It Down" by Kim Ye-ji (Kardi) on 10 February 2025, "Eternal Maze" by Elaine on 17 February, "BloodStain" by Yezi and Yel of Fiestar on 24 February, and "PainDrop" by members of TripleS on 4 March.
  • Further recognition. Lee Hye-ri took Best Actress at the 2025 Asia Artist Awards, the series was named to Bechdel Day 2025's Bechdel Choice 10, and it drew Blue Dragon Series Awards nominations for Lee Hye-ri as Best Actress and Chung Su-bin as Best New Actress.
  • Charting abroad. In Japan it ranked first among Asian dramas on Hulu and among Korean dramas on Abema and Watcha; in Taiwan it took first place on OTT Friday.

How it was made

The series took four years to reach the screen. Kim Tae-hee was first asked to write the script in 2021 and accepted immediately, and across the development period she met with female high school students and consulted psychiatrists and teachers, which is an unusual amount of field research for a sixteen-part mobile drama.

Casting moved quickly once it began. STUDIO X+U named the four lead actresses on 23 July 2024 and Choi Young-jae on 24 July. Filming started the following month and was more than half complete by October 2024. Kim Dong-wook composed the score.

OFFICIAL TRAILER

OFFICIAL OST

Episode guide: Friendly Rivalry

16 / 16 episodes aired · Completed
EP 1
10 Feb 2025
Aired
EP 2
11 Feb 2025
Aired
EP 3
12 Feb 2025
Aired
EP 4
13 Feb 2025
Aired
EP 5
17 Feb 2025
Aired
EP 6
18 Feb 2025
Aired
EP 7
19 Feb 2025
Aired
EP 8
20 Feb 2025
Aired
EP 9
24 Feb 2025
Aired
EP 10
25 Feb 2025
Aired
EP 11
26 Feb 2025
Aired
EP 12
27 Feb 2025
Aired
EP 13
03 Mar 2025
Aired
EP 14
04 Mar 2025
Aired
EP 15
05 Mar 2025
Aired
EP 16
06 Mar 2025
Aired

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How were sixteen episodes fitted into four weeks?

Four a week, on consecutive days. Episodes went out Monday to Thursday at midnight KST, then paused over the weekend, repeating that block from 10 February to 6 March 2025. At about 30 minutes each the whole series runs roughly eight hours.

Where did it stream first?

On U+ Mobile TV in Korea, before reaching international audiences on Netflix, Rakuten Viki and OnDemandKorea.

What was the source, and who made it?

The Naver webtoon of the same title, written by Song Chae-yoon and illustrated by Shim Jae-young, which debuted on 1 July 2020. YLAB and STUDIO X+U developed it into this live-action drama.

Who directed and wrote it?

Kim Tae-hee is credited as both director and co-writer, with Min Ye-ji. Kim Dong-wook composed the score.

Which actors carry the central pair?

Lee Hye-ri plays Yoo Je-yi and Chung Su-bin plays Woo Seul-gi. Kang Hye-won appears as Joo Ye-ri, Oh Woo-ri as Choi Gyeong and Kim Tae-hun as Yoo Tae-joon.

Written and verified by Renkaze · Last updated 3 October 2026

Where a title can be watched, and who is credited on it, may have changed since publication, as our disclaimer explains.

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