It’s an easy pick for me. It has to be the Taiwanese show Yong-Jiu Grocery Store

I’ll Find You on a Beautiful Day for the Winter and Racket Boys for the Summer.

It’s Racket Boys for me. Still a drama very close to my heart. I remember all the kids fondly everytime I listen to BTS’ ‘Go Go’.

I loved everything about When the Weather Is Fine until the last couple of episodes, so I think I'm going to choose Hometown Cha Cha Cha.

But if we include Cdramas, then Meet Yourself wins over all of them.

Top Star Yoo Baek.

The show is sweet and hilarious, and I actually liked the people from the village. It's just a cute and funny story with lovely characters. Totally my style.

Honorable mentions:
Racket Boys
To My Star 2
Once Upon a Small Town

If countryside includes a remote island that can only be accessed by boat, I would chose DOLMEN (2005) French drama. A female police officer comes back to the island where she was born to get married. When there is murder, she decides to investigate but uncovers more than she bargained for.

Without you knowing this or not, @ndlessjoie, you’re up against one of the DB overloads, missvictrix, whenever you say Chocolate is bad. 😇🙄😇

There are quite some shows that I really love that are set mostly in the countryside (ie HomeCha, Weather, Chocolate), but if I have to pick one, it’ll be Weather aka When the Weather is Fine simply because it is the first show that popped up in my head when I read the prompt. I guess the countryside setting is one main character in itself in that one. Everything happens there.

Does Crash Landing On You count? It's at least half in a countryside setting, even if that countryside is north of the DMZ.

The northern village where Ri Jeong-hyeok lived in the beginning really did have its own sort of personality. It was the setting of Se-ri's initial horror at finding herself still in the north and the place where she warmed up to the soldier ducklings. It was a place of nothing but waiting for Dan, who couldn't let go of the idea she had for her life. It formed such a great contrast with Seoul, and made Se-ri's fish out of water situation even more exaggerated. And of course, the ahjummas absolutely ran that place which wouldn't have been complete without them.

For me I will choose When weather is fine. It's an absolute must but it has some heavy themes. If you are not up for it, I will suggest Meet Yourself.

It's Our Blues's Jeju setting for me. There's something about the ordinary lives in the countryside that's moving. There's no need for every single one to dress to the nines. You can go on about your life sporting your most comfortable.

And then, there's My Liberation Notes' Sanpo. I'll willingly sit in another Sanpo journey as long as it's centered around the Yeom family and Mr. Gu. I'm sure Gu appreciated the silence that being in the countryside gave him.

I hate the coldness of winter but the yearly home town gathering, the book club regulars of all ages and stages and the town pitching in to look for someone when they go missing means it has to be When the weather is fine for the win.

Runner up is the Racket boys gathering at the ajumma’s hideout for the grandchild who never came, the two teams living together at the coach’s house and the healing that came with that move from the big city to the small run down school.

Meet Yourself

I guess I'd have to go with the part of My Liberation Notes set in the countryside, where even the sound of crickets and the blasting heat was at times oppressive, as the family labored sweating, picking produce, the Dad and son fought at the dinner table, and the Mom died, overworked and underappreciated.

Outside of kdramas, I'll nominate the great Bong Joon-ho film, Memories of Murder, which placed serial murders in waving fields of grain.

Do my choices indicate I'm an urban dweller in need of the soul restoring community among a simple and loving rural folk? NO. Having family in the rural U.S., and also having recently spent a couple of weeks driving U.S. backroads, I'm very cynical about any pop culture that sentimentalizes the countryside. Problems of poverty, crime, dysfunctional families, environmental issues etc. occur just as often there as in the city--probably more frequently than the city, per capita.

So I really start grumbling at Kdramas which have sophisticated big city residents going back to a rural environment and finding healing and peace there, as if there isn't a reason that rural areas either are abandoned or move the other way-- industrialized by agribusiness, urbanized by sprawl, or transformed by tourism, whenever there's an opportunity.

Rural bookstore? Sure, if its a tourist destination. Otherwise, its an empty storefront. Head to a Seoul coffee shop if you want healing, I say!

I'll Find You In A Beautiful Day hand down! My favourite kdrama so far in this decade, and I don’t think anything came close to how much I love it yet. @Dramaddictally thank you for writing such a lovely explanation of why this drama is so beautiful and heartfelt.

I'LL FIND YOU ON A BEAUTIFULL DAY for two reasons: the countryside is itself a character in the story and it was captured so well in the cinematography and sound effects.

Hometown Cha Cha Cha!

The first drama I always remember when thinking of Korean countryside is WHAT STAR DID YOU COME FROM (2006). One of my old favorites.

Does Beyond Evil count, or does it need to be a "countryside" you'd actually want to hang out in? If it's the latter, I'd vote for Fermentation Family, which also had the advantage of making me want to eat all the traditional Korean foods ever.

I'm going to bend the rules/blatantly cheat and also nominate a K movie - Little Forest, it's honestly what first came to mind when I saw the prompt!

Once Upon a small town was super cute

My Liberation Notes is my ultimate choice for they shot many scenes when harvesting. Seeing those fruits and vegetables being harvested feel like I was back home.

Though I wonder if there is a drama set in countryside that doesn't have someone comes from big city to heal or to hide. 🤔

Liberation Notes and then I'll find you on a beautiful day. Liberation notes just spoke to my soul for the most part.

Since I watch mostly sageuks, I'll go with MY COUNTRY.

The place where SUMMER STRIKE took place but without the inhabitants. The whole lot (except Siwan) would be committed to HOSPITAL SHIP (2017) and delivered to some very remote and uninhabited island. There they could try to begin anew as decent people.

I was going to pick Thank You, but the residents of that island are rather unlikeable, then I thought of My Husband Mr. Oh because the three ahjummas are a hoot, but I didn't actually finish that show. So I'll rewind back to the beginning, I think the first countryside kdrama I saw was The Vineyard Man.

100 days my prince.... him at the countryside setting was the best part of the series

Racket Boys was so wholesome, and The Good Bad Mother if it keeps up.

Hometown Cha Cha Cha without any doubt

Our Blues is already mentioned. Love the setting of Jeju island.

But will go with When the Camellia Blooms. Yong-sik can be annoying but I'd be friends with him. He'll have my back. I would like to have some of Dong-baek's stir-fried pork and have my kids play with Pil-gu. Heck, I'd be joining the ladies in gossiping but professionally, the lawyer is more my milieu, even with the insecure landlord husband.

Racket Boys. "The bears don't bite, they rip you to shreds"!

Countryside dramas, the sageuk edition: Tamra The Island.

I will go with our blues. Runner up Hometown Cha Cha Cha, Crash Landing on You if it counts

It has to be Thank You 2007. It was a heartwarming little drama, just an old gem.

I also liked Top Star Yoo Baek. KJS was hilarious as the lead. Its not perfecr but it was entertaining.

I'm with dramaddictally, I finished IFYOABDay yesterday after binge watching. So Good. I only watched it after a beanie mentioned it on another post and I'm so glad I did, it's up there in my top 10 favourites for sure.
The countryside setting and winter season are such an integral character of this show.  There are so many layers to pick apart with the setting and season that run parallel to the characters.  The quietness of the country setting, silence was used excellently in the setting and with the characters. So much was left unsaid, that for the viewer it was deafening. There were no filler scenes just to make noise or fill space so you could feel the emptiness and see it visually with the bleak winter landscape, barren trees, ice, snow and lack of nature-bird noise etc.
They also showed the coldness through the characters' interactions with others. For example Hae Won's relationship with her mother and Aunty, it was like they were freezing her out of their lives. There can be no bigger metaphor than the house itself freezing, drowning in icicles and the pipes broken.  The eating scenes when Hae won first arrived at Hodu house, her Aunty was so cold, unwelcoming, sparse terse dialogue, the total lack of any warmth in the house- it was dark with hardly any natural light, no heater in sight like the bookshop. Hae won not realising she was cold (not in the literal sense) until she got to know Eun Seob. 
Then there's Eun Seob and the countryside, especially the local mountains and what it really represents to him, so much more than a mountain. Heartbreaking, seriously why are there no psychiatrists or therapists in sight for these traumatised people in k drama land. Anyway there is so much more you could discuss, it was great that there was so much depth and nuance. Loved it and it was my first time seeing Seo Kang Joon in anything.....sigh,  how good was he as Eun Seob, I just want to give him a hug.

Jirisan anyone? Just kidding! Please don’t pick this one ever.

Not a drama, but Little Forest, both Japanese & Korean version. I prefer the j-version because it felt more aesthetically pleasing & soothing.

Like a lot of other beanies, I thought first of Beyond Evil, My Liberation Notes, and I’ll Find You on a Beautiful Day, in all of which the small-town/countryside setting is a pervasive and sometimes oppressive or threatening presence. That thundercloud that always seems to hover over them is a big part of what makes those dramas so good. I'm a city girl now but grew up in some small-town settings and share @hacja's experience of the rural US as having at least as many problems and drawbacks as urban areas. I’m also impatient with the idea that rural life and country dwellers are somehow more ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ - people are people. I also hated HomeCha, not least because I found the locals (except the grannies) insufferable, so that probably jaded me for a lot of other kdramas with rural settings because now I expect small-town characters to be annoying by default. I do love some pretty scenery, though.

There are not enough dramas set in the countryside, so I'm basically using this thread to find dramas that I've missed. Thanks everyone!

If I had to pick one drama, it would be CHUNO. The countryside was part of the epic-ness of the drama: the menacing tall grass, the scorching desert, the ragged cliffs, the slippery beaches, the late nights around a bonfire, the dusty villages, the wintry forests. I could go on and on.

Now, if I had to pick a film, it's LITTLE FOREST, hands down.

Does Doldam count?
Those mountain shots are beautiful. 😁😁
(*diving back to the binging of the Second Season *)

Criteria with a twist:
The countryside became a character in the drama.

Fantasy Sageuk - Goo Family Book
(Bonus: Choi Jin Hyuk in his most heart-fluttering role.)

Contemporary - Modern Farmer
(Bonus: The OTP seemed horribly mismatched, but I have never laughed so hard...)

Life is Beautiful - family drama written by Kim Soo-Hyun, starring my fave parents Kim Hae-Sook & Kim Yeong-Cheol, plus Jeju Island!

The only K-drama I can think of that I've seen with a country setting is Hometown Cha Cha Cha. There may be another that I've forgotten about, but if I've forgotten about it, then it's probably not a drama I would recommend, lol. I really enjoyed Cha Cha Cha though, so I'll recommend it. It's definitely one of those fish-out-of-water, city slicker meets country folk, sort of stories that's very heartwarming (and healing, as the kids say, lol).

If I can pick a non-Korean drama, then I'll go with the Taiwanese A Thousand Good Nights. The drama doesn't take place solely in the country, but the characters spend a lot of time in countryside settings, and every episode opens and ends with quotes from a famous Taiwanese poet (I think he was a poet?) talking about the value and beauty of nature. It's very gently paced and thoughtful.

And the first half or so of the C-drama, A Little Thing Called First Love, utilizes a more country setting beautifully. (Even if it's not even slightly an accurate picture (or any C-drama, to be honest) of what living in China is like with the insane levels of pollution they experience there. They definitely don't have clear skies like you see in C-dramas.)

Is it bad that when I saw the Instagram post with the results came out with a drama I couldn’t get past the first episode on top, that I immediately came back to this page to check if I had missed some late comments because the results didn’t fit with my memory of the votes on this post?😬. Then I remembered the Instagram votes may have been posted by people with very different preferences. Also our tendency on every single one of these to blatantly ignore the only pick ‘one’ part means lots of honourable mentions that don’t count.

I am so gutted when the weather is fine didn’t win. I think, maybe this is an indication that I am taking this vote way too seriously🤣🤣🤣

It's a hard one; I seldom watch dramas with a countryside setting. The only one I can recall is 100 Days My Prince, which is good but I cannot say it's my particular favourite.

If there are any dramas with such setting that touches me, it's the first few episodes of Save the Last Dance for Me, where the leads resided and ran a small vacation cottage. The village setting, the friendly neighbours were parts of the charm.

Not a kdrama, but excellent..
Meet Yourself

Once Upon a Small Town.