General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Glitch (글리치)

Glitch (글리치) is a 2022 South Korean science-fiction mystery comedy series released on Netflix, in which a woman who intermittently sees aliens joins a UFO enthusiast to investigate the sudden disappearance of her boyfriend and uncovers a religious cult connected to the phenomenon.¹^•² All ten episodes were released on October 7, 2022.¹

Key fact	Detail
Format	10-episode limited series, Korean language, TV-MA rating¹^•³
Release	All episodes on Netflix, October 7, 2022¹
Director / writer	Roh Deok (director); Jin Han-sae (screenwriter)³
Lead cast	Jeon Yeo-bin as Hong Ji-hyo, Nana as Heo Bo-ra, Lee Dong-hwi as Lee Si-guk⁴
Genres	Comedy, drama, mystery and thriller, science fiction⁴
Reception	IMDb 6.5/10; Rotten Tomatoes 67% from critics, 81% audience score⁴
Festival screening	Four of the ten episodes shown at the 27th Busan International Film Festival (2022)⁵

Spoilers

Premise

Hong Ji-hyo (Jeon Yeo-bin) has seen unidentifiable creatures since childhood and works hard to ignore them and keep up an ordinary life. When her boyfriend Lee Si-guk (Lee Dong-hwi) vanishes without a trace, she follows anomalies in electronic devices and traces suggesting aliens, and turns to a UFO internet community for help. There she reconnects with Heo Bo-ra (Nana), a mystery-chasing streamer who had been pursuing aliens for years, and the two investigate together, drawing close to the reality of a cult.⁶^•⁷

The two women were close in middle school, exploring mysteries around aliens and UFOs together, before an incident drove them apart; Ji-hyo has since forgotten that period. The cult they uncover is called 하늘빛들림교회 (roughly, the Sky-Light Church), and the writer described the cult leader Joap (Kim Myung-gon) and Ji-hyo as two sides of a mirror.⁸

Creation and production

Netflix confirmed director Roh Deok and actress Jeon Yeo-been for the series in a March 2021 announcement, describing a story told within the frameworks of mystery, comedy, and thriller. Roh had won the Best Feature Award in the Asian New Talent category at the 16th Shanghai International Film Festival for Very Ordinary Couple.⁹ The screenplay is by Jin Han-sae, who wrote the Netflix series Extracurricular (인간수업), and the production company was Studio 329.³^•⁵

Jin said the relationship between the two women came before any other theme: he was struck by the loneliness of people who played together as children and then drifted apart, and by a scene in a Japanese manga in which two schoolgirl outsiders meet on a rooftop. Casting the leads as two women was deliberate; he said changing them to men lost the feeling he wanted. He also framed the series as a story about belief, saying that a distorted conviction becomes a cult, which is why the cult material followed necessarily from the theme.⁸

Genre mixing and themes

The Busan International Film Festival catalog called the series a bundle of genre appeal: an adventure story, a science-fiction work, a mystery, and a comedy at once.⁵ Yonhap's review described it as a science-fiction-based mystery chase with comedy added, one that lists no scientific evidence for aliens and does not dwell on eerie revelations or deep symbolism, and noted that the show rarely shows the aliens themselves.⁶

The title refers to a small fault or sudden malfunction, and a Korean review argued that the glitches in the series extend beyond electronic devices to Ji-hyo's stable life of job and marriage, and to the social criteria that separate sense from nonsense; the aliens she sees can be read as a visualization of these cracks.¹⁰ An academic review of the series described it as illustrating issues of infertility and spirituality in modern society.¹¹

Reception

Critical responses divided over the genre mixture. Yonhap reported that some viewers found the blending of genres scattered and the ten-episode length slow compared with six- or eight-episode Netflix series, while others found the leads' energy pleasure enough on its own; the same review called the series a meaningful attempt to step outside tense genre fare and B-grade comedy, praising the chemistry between Jeon Yeo-bin and Nana.⁶ NME's review found the first two episodes plodding, with the story igniting from the third episode onward.¹² Common Sense Media described the series as a sci-fi mystery about a young woman investigating possible aliens, noting strong Asian representation given its Korean setting, but judged that it had the ingredients for an engrossing mystery except momentum.¹³

Aggregated scores reflect the split: 67% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from six reviews and 81% from audiences, against an IMDb average of 6.5.⁴ A later Korean retrospective argued that calling the series a global failure was not supported by any confirmed viewing figures, and characterized it instead as a drama that chose divergence of taste over popular consensus.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › Korean contemporary drama › Fantasy, supernatural, and science fiction series › Premiered 2010 to 2022

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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