There she meets Ri Jeong-hyeok (Hyun Bin), who eventually gives her shelter and develops plans to help her return to South Korea secretly.

Back in South Korea, Yoon Se-ri's family suppresses the news of her disappearance, fearing it will depress the stock price of Queens Group.

Just before Se-ri went missing, her retiring father had told his family that he intended to make her his successor, based on her ability as a businesswoman, which she proved by building her own company, Seri's Choice.

In the second half of the story (episodes 10–16), Se-ri has returned to South Korea and resumes leadership of her company, surprising her family and others who had thought her dead.

Meanwhile, in North Korea, despite hostile initial encounters, Dan and Seung-jun fall in love and she shelters him when corrupt officers betray him to Se-hyung's gangsters.

The premise of Crash Landing on You was inspired by a real event involving South Korean actress Jung Yang.

[14][3][15] In September 2008, Yang and three others had to be rescued after bad fog had caused their leisure boat to drift "into the maritime boundary between North and South Korea".

[14][16] Park Ji-eun, the drama's screenwriter,[14] was introduced to North Korean defector turned film adviser and writer Kwak Moon-wan, who became part of the writing team.

[17][18] Kwak, who studied film directing in Pyongyang and had also been a member of an elite security force protecting the Kims, helped in crafting the plot and in conceptualizing the setting and scenes portraying North Korean life.

[20] Props manager Joo Dong-man said the crew did not have a "guidebook on multiple hurdles he had to hop over — skillfully and delicately — to accurately depict the country while dodging criticism" and, thus, had to be careful "not to misrepresent the state".

[42][43] While the Korean Wave is a historically prominent component of media within Japan, Crash Landing on You has been especially influential there, in part due to its portrayal of daily life in North Korea.

"[49] Adella Suliman and Stella Kim of NBC News also suggested that the drama "features all the ingredients a viewer could wish for" and has "drawn a global audience of millions, many no doubt searching for entertainment as they while away their time in coronavirus-related lockdowns".

At the same time, some details, such as the availability of food, relatively warm behavior of the army and the ease with which the characters cross the border have been criticized.

[54] He acknowledged some of the criticism, admitting that he has taken liberties with the depiction of North Korea (such as not mentioning food shortages), but rejected the claim that he was glamorizing the regime or drawing a false equivalence, saying that the show also depicted some of the darker aspect of life under the regime, such as the issue of kotjebi (child homelessness) and the frequent power cuts.

The portrayal of jangmadang, or local markets where all kinds of goods, including imports from South Korea, are sold is especially real, he told The Sunday Times.

He said North Korean men enter the military when they are 17 and serve for 10 to 13 years, and "during this time, they are...ruthless and harsh, robbing homes and raping women at night".

"[66] Yun Suk-jin, a professor at Chungnam National University concurs, noting that the series "changed the stereotypes on North Korea and candidly showed that it too is a place where people live".

Son, lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Sheffield also agrees, noting that Crash Landing on You responds to the "socio-cultural divide" between the North and the South, which academic scholarship cites as one of the biggest obstacles to future unification.

Son argues that "through the re-framing of stereotypes, albeit with some creative licence, Crash Landing on You arguably humanises the North for its audience in ways that inter-Korean dialogue has not in recent years.

Despite its soft-focus romanticisation of the political situation, Crash Landing on You brings the pain of the division to a personal level for a generation of Koreans who, unlike their grandparents, have no memory of what it was like to be a single nation.

[67] The series was a huge rating success in South Korea despite airing on tvN, a cable channel/pay TV, which normally has a relatively smaller audience compared to free-to-air TV/public broadcasters (KBS, SBS, MBC and EBS).