General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Somebody (썸바디)

Somebody (썸바디) is a 2022 South Korean suspense thriller series released on Netflix, in which murders committed through a social connecting and dating app called Somebody entangle the app's developer, Kim Sum, and her friends with a mysterious man named Seong Yun-o.¹ All eight episodes were released worldwide on November 18, 2022.²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Netflix original Korean series, 8 episodes, average runtime about 55 minutes²
Release	November 18, 2022, all episodes at once; first three episodes screened at the Busan International Film Festival on October 6, 2022²^•¹
Creators	Directed by Jung Ji-woo; written by Jung Ji-woo and Han Ji-wan²
Main cast	Kim Young-kwang as Seong Yun-o, Kang Hae-lim as Kim Sum, Kim Yong-ji as Lim Mok-won, Kim Soo-yeon as Yeong Gi-eun³
Production	Produced by Beyond J; filmed from August 2021 to March 4, 2022; total runtime 424 minutes 33 seconds¹
Rating	Rated for adults only in Korea (청소년 관람불가, 19+)¹
Alternate titles	Bloody Finger (블러디 핑거), Finger (핑거)²

Spoilers

Premise

Kim Sum is a genius software developer who has difficulty communicating with other people. She built the social connecting app Somebody, which matches users by analyzing their conversations and behavior to read their minds, and the app becomes popular.⁴ When murders occur through the app, Sum and her friends become entangled with Seong Yun-o, an attractive architect who seems to be hiding something.⁵

Sum meets Yun-o through her own chat application and, for the first time in her life, feels she has connected with someone, and comes to know loneliness as an emotion. Knowing the sinister reality behind his gentle smile, she nonetheless falls deeper into the relationship.⁶ Netflix's own episode descriptions follow the same arc: Sum's friend and detective Yeong Gi-eun has a nightmarish date arranged through the app and asks Sum for help finding the man responsible, Sum and Yun-o take their relationship further, and in the final episode, with threats escalating, Yun-o begins receiving deeply disturbing video chat requests on Somebody.⁷

Characters and cast

The story runs on four axes: Kim Sum (Kang Hae-lim), the inventor of the app; Yeong Gi-eun (Kim Soo-yeon), a police officer in the cyber investigation unit; Lim Mok-won (Kim Yong-ji), a shaman; and the unknown man Yun-o (Kim Young-kwang).⁸ Gi-eun, Sum's only friend, was left paralyzed from the waist down in an accident, and meets someone she is drawn to through Somebody before being abandoned in a remote place with nothing.⁴

Casting. Director Jung Ji-woo, who had launched the actress Kim Go-eun with his debut film Eun-gyo, cast three new faces in the series and said that working with Netflix let him take risks with promising young actors.⁶ For Kang Hae-lim, the role of Kim Sum was her first leading role.⁹ Kim Soo-yeon made her acting debut in the role of Ki Eun.¹⁰ Kim Young-kwang, previously known for romantic comedy roles, played the serial killer Yun-o and said he lost 22 kg for the part, working out the character with Jung through long on-set discussions.¹¹

Production

The series is Jung Ji-woo's first series as director; his earlier films include Happy End (1999), Eun-gyo (2012), and Yu-yeol's Music Album (2019).⁶ He wrote the screenplay with Han Ji-wan, and the production company was Beyond J.¹ Filming ran from August 2021 to March 4, 2022.¹

At a production press conference in Seoul on November 15, 2022, Jung described the show as, on the surface, a thriller that at its bottom is a grotesque melodrama, and said he wanted to depict the human desire to communicate and the search for someone who understands one's mind. He placed characters who struggle with relationships at the center, including a developer with Asperger syndrome, a shaman, and a paralyzed police officer, so that these difficulties would show more plainly.⁶

Reception

The first three episodes premiered at the Busan International Film Festival in October 2022, where the show looked intriguing but narratively opaque to critics.¹² A South China Morning Post review gave it 3 of 5 stars, finding the story hard to decipher and criticizing a preference for sex and violence over logic, while noting its themes of alienation and marginalization.¹² On Rotten Tomatoes the season held a Tomatometer score of 47% from 4 reviews.¹³ Aggregated user ratings put it at 6.9 on TMDb¹⁴ and 6.2 on IMDb.¹⁵ A review in But Why Tho? took the opposite view, calling it one of the best series of the year and praising its blend of eroticism, violence, and mystery.¹⁶

The series carries adult ratings across markets: 19+ in Korea, TV-MA in the United States, 18 in the United Kingdom, R21 in Singapore, and MA 15+ in Australia.¹^•¹⁵ It remains available on Netflix, and a regional availability check in 2026 found it streaming in 60 of 60 checked countries.¹⁷

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 › Thriller, crime, and mystery series › Crime and mystery thrillers

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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