Moving proved Korea can do superheroes properly!

Twenty episodes about superpowered parents hiding their superpowered children, and it became the biggest Korean original Disney+ has ever had.

I started Moving expecting a Korean take on the Marvel formula and got something closer to a family drama that occasionally involves flight. Twenty episodes later I understood why it became the most-watched Korean original on Disney+ within a week of release.

Why does this show take so long to get going?

Because it isn't in a hurry, and that turns out to be the point. The first stretch of episodes follows three teenagers at Jeongwon High School: one who floats when he gets excited, one who heals from anything, and one whose senses are impossibly sharp. Nobody tells them where any of it came from, and the show is content to let them be teenagers first and superhumans second.

Then the show pivots and spends several hours on their parents instead, and every one of those flashbacks recontextualises what you thought you'd been watching. Kang Full wrote the whole thing himself, adapting his own webtoon, and the structure only makes sense once you're deep into the second half. Park In-je and Park Yoon-seo co-directed, and the tonal handoff between the school material and the spy material is handled far more cleanly than that description suggests.

Who's actually in it?

The cast is heavyweight by Korean film standards. Ryu Seung-ryong plays Jang Ju-won, a man who cannot be permanently injured and who now runs a small noodle restaurant. Han Hyo-joo is Lee Mi-hyun, a former agent whose hearing and eyesight border on absurd, and whose quiet scenes carry most of the show's emotional weight.

Zo In-sung appears as Kim Doo-sik, an agent who can fly, in a performance that spends most of its time being deliberately withheld from you. Cha Tae-hyun turns up as Jeon Gye-do, Ryoo Seung-bum plays an assassin called Frank, and Go Youn-jung and Lee Jung-ha handle the younger half of the story with far more presence than newcomers usually manage. Kim Sung-kyun and Park Hee-soon fill out the adult side, and the sheer depth of that bench is part of why the flashback stretch works at all.

Was it actually a critical success too?

It swept the Asia Contents Awards at the Busan International Film Festival in 2023, taking Best Creative, Best Visual Effects, Best Writer for Kang Full, Best Lead Actor for Ryu Seung-ryong, and both newcomer awards for Lee Jung-ha and Go Youn-jung. Han Hyo-joo won Best Actress at the Daejong International Film Awards, where the show also took Best Series, and it picked up a Critics' Choice Awards nomination as well.

The production budget ran to somewhere between 50 and 65 billion won, which is why the flying sequences hold up comfortably next to anything Hollywood was putting out that same year.

See what people who are already watching are saying in the comments on my website: https://en.altertv.site.

Twenty episodes is a real commitment, but the first two are enough to know whether the tone suits you, and it plays fine on a phone during a commute or on the big screen at home. Disney+ pairs its on-demand catalog with live programming, so there's more than one reason to be there in any given month.

Season two is finally filming!

Production began in May 2026, nearly three years after the first season, with Kang Full writing again and Kim Seong-hun, who directed Kingdom, taking over as director. Ryu Seung-ryong, Han Hyo-joo, Zo In-sung, Go Youn-jung, Ryoo Seung-bum, Kim Do-hoon and Shim Dal-gi are all returning.

- The new season picks up days after the Jeongwon High School incident that closed season one.

- Won Gyu-bin takes over as Kim Bong-seok, since Lee Jung-ha stepped back for military service.

- Kang Full is building a connected universe here, which already extends to Light Shop on the same platform.

If a group of kids with abilities they don't understand being hunted by people who do sounds appealing, Stranger Things runs the same current through completely different scenery. https://en.altertv.site sets out what each service actually carries if you're comparing them.

The thing I keep thinking about isn't the powers. It's the scene where a mother realises the safest thing she can do for her son is teach him to hide what he is, and does it anyway.