With their tight storytelling and beautiful, engaging main casts, K-dramas (or South Korean scripted television series) are steadily finding success worldwide. Many of the greatest K-dramas of all time are immaculately paced, especially with plot twists to catch audiences off-guard and on the hook for more. These range from sudden tragic developments just as a happy ending comes into focus to betrayals that leave our protagonists reeling in the lurch. Often coming at the heels of long-standing misdirection, a good plot twist is both shocking and makes perfectly logical sense to the story when revealed.

Some plot twists are given, especially when it comes to crime thrillers and murder mysteries trying to keep its audience guessing on identifying the culprits. But some K-dramas deliver their show-stopping turns out of nowhere, dramatically raising the narrative stakes and making the story all the more unpredictable. Those moments are precisely why we love shows like these,...