“Do you believe the past can be changed?”
In 2016, Signal burst onto the scene — a Korean mystery-thriller that used an old walkie-talkie to bridge time and solve long-cold cases. Now, nearly a decade later, tvN has officially announced Season 2 will return in the first half of 2026, as a major flagship project celebrating the network’s 20th anniversary.
(Please, no more delays this time!)
In the teaser trailer, when that walkie-talkie crackles to life once again, whether you’ve seen the show before or not, it’s time to wake up your senses and get ready. This is the series that earned a 9.2 rating from over 350,000 viewers — and it’s back.
Unlike fictional thrillers, Signal is rooted in real-life unsolved cases, woven together by timeline to reflect over 30 years of unresolved crimes in South Korea.
Season 1 featured cases inspired by:
- The 1991 Lee Hyung-ho kidnapping case
- The Hwaseong serial murders (also the inspiration behind Memories of Murder)
- The Jo Se-hyung heist case
- The Seongsu Bridge collapse
- The Shinjeong-dong serial killings
- The Miryang group sexual assault case
For Season 2, rumors say new cases will draw from Korea’s most disturbing recent crimes, including:
- The Nth Room digital sex crime scandal
- The Busan villa corpse-burial case
With this, the show’s intensity and boundary-pushing content will reach all-new levels. Get ready to peel back the corners of these case files and take a glimpse into chilling truths.
Signal’s First Case:
The series opens with an adaptation of the 1991 Lee Hyung-ho kidnapping case, shining a harsh light on the failures of a justice system limited by a statute of limitations.
As a child, protagonist Park Hae-young witnesses a woman abducting his classmate Kim Yoon-jung. He reports it, but the police ignore his testimony and wrongfully profile the suspect as male. Even after the girl’s family pays a 50 million KRW ransom, all they receive is her lifeless body.
Misdirection in the investigation and the authorities’ failure to act turn this into a cold case. The girl’s mother stands in front of the police station every day, waiting for a truth that never came.
Haunted by guilt, Park Hae-young grows up to become a criminal profiler, never forgetting the woman in red heels who took his classmate from the school gate.
At the time, Korean law had a 15-year statute of limitations for murder, meaning even if the real killer was found later, they couldn’t be legally punished — a harsh reality that Signal confronts head-on.