Kian84 did not arrive at Netflix with the global name recognition of a K pop idol or a Squid Game star. His fame was built largely inside South Korea, where the former webtoon artist became one of the country’s most prominent reality television personalities. In 2023, he won the grand prize at broadcaster MBC’s annual entertainment awards, the network’s highest honor for variety television.
Netflix nevertheless made him the center of Kian’s Bizarre B&B, a reality series built around his eccentric ideas for running a guesthouse. The decision gained more weight after the first season reached No. 6 on Netflix’s global Top 10 for non English television and entered the Top 10 in markets including South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. Netflix subsequently renewed the show and began expanding the same guesthouse concept with another program built around veteran Korean television host Yu Jae seok.
That expansion comes as Korean programming has become much larger than a niche category on the streaming service. Netflix describes Korean content as its most watched non English content, while more than a third of all viewing on the platform now comes from non English titles. The company has also said more than 80 percent of its members have watched Korean content, a reach that increasingly extends beyond dramas into reality shows, competition programs and films.
Season 2 of Kian’s Bizarre B&B shows Netflix putting more resources behind a formula that began with an unusually simple premise.
Kian84 designs a guesthouse according to his own unconventional ideas, then lives there with celebrity employees and ordinary guests while the group cooks, cleans and tries to keep the operation running.
The first season placed the guesthouse over the water on Ulleungdo, a remote island off South Korea’s east coast. The second moves to Daegwallyeong, a mountainous region in eastern South Korea known for deep snow and harsh winter weather.
The change was deliberate. Producer Lee So min said the team wanted the second season to be the opposite of the first, shifting from a summer island to the middle of winter and creating an environment where cast members and guests would spend more time together indoors.
Kian84 also faced the problem of making a second guesthouse more unusual than the first.
He said he spent about a year working with the production team and proposed roughly 10 ideas. Among them were a house that could fly and another that could move across the ground. Producers rejected those plans because of practical and legal obstacles.
The answer was size.
The second guesthouse was built deep in the mountains around the idea of creating the largest property the program had attempted. Producer Kim Ji hyun said the building can look relatively ordinary from a distance but reveals increasingly unexpected features once visitors approach and enter it.
Netflix also changed the people living inside.
Kim Yeon Koung, the former captain of South Korea’s national volleyball team and one of the country’s best known athletes, joined the cast alongside Lee Junho, a member of the K pop group 2PM who has built a second career as an actor, and Kazuha of LE SSERAFIM.
The lineup replaces the first season combination that included BTS member Jin and actress Ji Ye eun. Jin’s presence gave the original season an obvious connection to a global fan base, while the second season spreads that role across sports, acting and two generations of K pop.
Producers said Kian84 himself suggested Kim Yeon Koung. His admission that he liked the idea but found her somewhat intimidating convinced the production team that putting the two together could create an unusual dynamic.
Lee Junho joined after Jin was unable to return. Kazuha was selected as the youngest member of the staff.
The group then spent nearly 10 days living and working together in the mountain property.
Kian84 said the arrangement was not immediately comfortable. The cast occasionally clashed, and he spent the first several days worrying about whether guests could get hurt, whether food prepared by the staff might make someone sick and whether the guesthouse would work as planned.
Kim Yeon Koung’s decades in professional team sports gave her a different role inside the group. Kian84 said she quickly became one of the strongest organizers of communal life.
Even the oversized building created its own problems.
Kim said she initially assumed that an exceptionally large guesthouse would be comfortable for her because of her height. Instead, she found parts of the property inconvenient even for someone who spent her career towering over most people around her.
Dex, a former member of South Korea’s naval special warfare unit who has since become a television personality, also appears as a temporary employee after traveling to the guesthouse following an overseas shoot.
The increasingly elaborate properties have created a problem of their own for Kian84.
He said a third season would require another idea capable of exceeding what the production team has already built. Some of his most ambitious concepts have already been eliminated by construction, transportation and legal restrictions.
That leaves Netflix with a second season built around a television personality who became famous almost entirely within Korea, but whose first guesthouse was watched far enough beyond Korea to earn him another one.
