Promotional material of Chinese TV series Word of Honor Photo: Sina Weibo

Hit Chinese TV series Word of Honor will debut on South Korean TV on May 26 with Korean subtitles, Chinese media reported on Tuesday.

An adaptation of Chinese boy's love (BL) novel Tianyake, Word of Honor is an wuxia drama that originally debuted on Chinese streaming platform Youku in 2021. Over its 36 episodes, the show tells the story of two men in the martial arts works, played by actors Zhang Zhehan and Gong Jun, who do all they can to help and save each other. 

The drama has earned 8.6/10 high score on Chinese review website Douban, and has captured a lot of Chinese fans for the BL theme following the previous hit drama The Untamed.

The hashtag "Word of Honor set for release in South Korea" earned 120 million views on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo on Wednesday. While many netizens said that the show is a good example of Chinese cultural heading overseas, but a South Korean poster of two protagonists dressed in black and white costumes caused some dissatisfaction among Chinese fans.

"The previous Chinese poster showed the two protagonists' dressed in blue and red, which is the typical color for couples in a drama. But the South Korean poster changed the color, which weakens the sense of 'CP', one Chinese fan surnamed Wu, told the Global Times on Tuesday, adding that when she watched the show she did not see the two protagonists wear black and white clothing. Despite the change to the poster, she said she doesn't anticipate that the show's plots will be changed for the South Korean release. 

In addition to South Korea, companies in Thailand and other Asian countries have also purchased the broadcast rights to Word of Honor as has Amazon.