Transmedia storytelling proposed by Henry Jenkins is emerging as a strategy to attract highly engaged users in the environment of oversupply of media content. However, various attempts of transmedia storytelling in Korea so far have been made only by adapting the original IP(Intellectual Property) or merely repeating similar stories through subsequent series. TVING original series Dongjae, the Good or the Bastard(2024), nonetheless, suggested the possibility of transmedia storytelling in Korea as a genuine spin-off drama with the popular male character from the tvN series Stranger(2017, 2020) as the main hero. This paper is intended to examine the accomplishment of Dongjae, the Good or the Bastard as a spin-off drama based on Mark Ruppel’s migratory cues by analyzing the intertextuality between the research subject and the preceding hypotext. According to this study, Dongjae, the Good or the Bastard reinforced the connection with Stranger series and expanded its storyworld by using the ‘franchise-level’ and ‘direct-external’ cues among ‘external cues’ as well as ‘story-level’ and ‘intersectional’ cues among ‘internal cues’. These migratory cues encouraged viewers to navigate intertexts intertexts and discover interconnected information, which are the essential conditions for successful transmedia storytelling. While the series does not yet fully meet Jenkins’ criteria for transmedia storytelling, the implications of this study on its achievement as a full-fledged spin-off drama will hopefully lead to the creation of more authentic transmedia properties in Korea in the future.

Hyunji Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea in October 2000. She earned her bachelor’s
degree in Business Administration from Chung-Ang University, Seoul, in 2023. Currently, she is pursuing a master’s course in OTT content planning/policy/business, GSAIM, Chung-Ang University in Seoul. Her research interests in media contents distribution, policy and cultural studies.