Three of the six on that list had already crossed the border

An outlet recommended five Korean BL titles and added one line beside them: cross-nationality casting is still largely rare in Korean BL. But open that list one title at a time and three of the six have a foreign actor in a lead role. One of them is the very show the outlet was recommending. It is not rare — the gap between announcement and release is so wide that only one is visible at a time.

At a glance

The English titles alone do not even tell you which country made these, so here they are again with their Korean titles and nationalities.

The row the original article missed most badly is the last one. It closed by saying the production country of First Note of Love was not specified in the source. The answer is Taiwan and Thailand — meaning a list of Korean BL recommendations had one non-Korean title sitting in it.

Open the five and three had already crossed

The original pointed at Eccentric Romance and called it a case of two scenes genuinely touching. For that sentence to hold, the rest would have to not be touching. The list itself contradicts it.

The most awkward case is the show being recommended. Love Class 3 has the Thai actor Panutuch Saelee playing Khun. So the outlet introduced a Korean title with a Thai actor in a lead role, and beside it wrote that a Thai actor in a lead role is rare.

And First Note of Love did not cross a border — two countries made it together from the start. A Taiwanese director, Taiwanese leads, and a Thai actor attached.

That leaves three titles on the list where nationality does not come up. Half. Half is hard to call rare.

But the country doing the crossing is not Korea

But line the three up and the direction becomes visible. In all three the counterpart is Thailand. Korea–Thailand, Taiwan–Thailand, and Korea–Thailand.

Thailand is regarded as the world's largest consumer market for this genre. There the format is called Y-series, it has been produced steadily for years, and Thai BL actors hold fandoms across several countries — fans travel to Bangkok for their fan meetings.

That changes who the subject of the sentence is. Korean BL has not started crossing borders; Thailand is pairing up with several countries at once, and Korea is one of them. The Thai actor in the Taiwanese title is the proof. The difference is not academic — the first framing tells you to watch a list of Korean titles, the second tells you to watch Thai actors' names.

Eccentric Romance was a co-production, not a casting

But the way the original described this show is off by one step too. The observation that a Thai actor plays a Thai character is correct, but that is the result of the arrangement, not its cause.

Here is how Korean outlets announced it on 21 June 2022: a Korea–Thailand co-produced BL drama. Produced by Hanyang Studio and Studio Sky, directed by Gong Ja-gwan, with Yoon Jun-won as Seong-hun and Save Saisawat as Jay. At announcement the air date was undecided.

Co-production and casting tell a reader different things. A casting is one actor's choice, and that actor's next project goes back to his own country. A co-production is a contract between two companies, which means the next one is probably already being made. It was.

What makes it look rare is 28 months

The problem is the dates. Put two of them from the same show side by side and you can see why the original believed that sentence.

• Leads announced: 21 June 2022
• First episode: 10 October 2024
• Between: about 28 months (two years four months)

Korean content always has a span sitting between the day something is announced and the day you can watch it, and its length varies enormously. One title left that entire span on the record — 19 months from commission to release.

Consider what two years and four months does. Even if four co-productions were announced in 2022, they arrive on screens in 2024, scattered across several months. Which means whenever you build a list, the number of cross-nationality titles currently out is one. When the people who saw the announcement and the people who saw the show are two years apart, something common looks rare.

The same trap repeats in casting stories — read an announcement as an arrival and you end up waiting for something that has not begun shooting.

All four co-productions came from one company

Yet this is also where it becomes clear the outlet's sentence was not entirely wrong. These are not rare — they are concentrated in one place.

The four confirmed Korea–Thailand BL co-productions share a producer. Hanyang Studio, which made Eccentric Romance, made the other three as well.

According to Korean reporting the company works with six Thai partners. So this is not a genre-wide current but one company's business model, and that fact is more useful to a reader, not less. Following a current gives you nothing to look at; following a company is something you can actually do.

One more note: Love Class was introduced in Korea as the first Korean BL series to reach a third season. Seasons arriving at all means the supply is steady — across Korean drama in general, a second season stopped being an exception only recently.

What this means where you are

What you can do with this list differs a little by country.

• In Thailand — Eccentric Romance and Love Class 3 are both cases of a Thai actor leading a Korean title, and they are not the same kind of case. The first was built by companies in two countries; the second is a Korean producer casting a Thai actor. They make a good pair for seeing how differently those two read on screen
• In Vietnam, Indonesia or the Philippines — three of the five are on Viki, so they compare easily in one place. Love Class 3, though, is spread across Wavve, Watcha, Viu, GagaOOLala and Channel K, so start by checking which window opens in your country
• To find the next one, follow the producer, not the actor. Four Korea–Thailand co-productions came from Hanyang Studio, and the Love Class series is Box Media. Searching those two company names catches the next title at announcement stage — and as above, budget two years from announcement to release
• When you meet a sentence like "still rare," count the list it is printed on. Here the counting took about as long as searching each title once, and the result came out the other way

What I could not confirm is also worth stating. Platform availability and subtitle languages differ by country, and I did not check them country by country. Being on a list does not mean you can watch it in your language where you are. Rules on distribution and age ratings for this genre also differ by country, so blocked access is easy to mistake for a platform error. Which services are gated by a country list and which are not is checked on entirely different screens.

The outlet's one sentence was already contradicted inside its own list, and the likely reason is that it was counting something else. So the "not yet" sentence you are reading right now — what exactly is it counting?

Read next

• Between the day it is announced and the day you can watch — 19 months, fully dated — how that span actually breaks down
• What happens when you read an announcement as an arrival — reading the verbs in a casting story
• Korean dramas are starting to get second seasons — what a season count implies
• Services gated by a country list — a press release's markets and the actual selector are different things
• A Korean drama made for Southeast Asian viewers first already exists — a title released for Thai viewers only

Sources

• Newsis — Yoon Jun-won to lead Eccentric Romance, a Korea–Thailand co-produced BL drama
• Sports Khan — Yoon Jun-won cast in Korea–Thailand BL co-production Eccentric Romance
• Hankyung — Korea–Thailand co-productions pick up, targeting global markets through BL
• Wikipedia — Love Class 3
• Wikipedia — A Shoulder to Cry On