Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

The Package
(더 패키지 / Deo Paekiji)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

This drama has been on my list for a while -well, since they started promoting it in 2017- because I generally like dramas that focus on situations where a group of different people gather and get to know each other. Also, it seemed to have the amount of romance and of course nice scenery that I tend to appreciate in a drama. So here we are.
I have to say that I haven’t seen many dramas like this one. It was easy-going in pace, easy to follow in storyline, and still it incorporated a lot of human feelings and emotions.
I think the concept for this series was very nicely established.

The Package is about a group of Korean tourists taking a 10-day package tour of France. The main characters are these 7 tourists and their tour guide. Along their trip, we get to know all the characters and their background and -most importantly- why they came on this trip. Some of them had a situation at home that they were taking a break from, others had health- or relationship-related reasons.
One of the most important lessons to take from this drama in my opinion – and I will get back to this later – not to judge anyone from the outside. Being brought together as a group on this tour, there are a lot of first impressions that turn out to be not as they seemed.

I will briefly introduce the main characters first and then go a little deeper into their respective stories.
First of all, there’s the tour guide, Yoon So So (played by Lee Yeon Hee). She has been living in Paris ever since she came there with her husband to get married. However, some things happened and her husband abandoned her. She’s not in a good place with her family at home, so she chose to stay in France and now works as a tour guide for package tours directed at Korean tourists.
Then there’s San Ma Ru (played by Jung Yong Hwa), the only passenger in the group travelling by himself. He came on this trip that he planned with his girlfriend whom he also works with, but some trouble in the office created tension between them and his girlfriend doesn’t turn up at the airport to come on the trip, so he goes by himself.
The other tourists consist of 3 pairs: an elderly couple, a young couple, and a father and his daughter.
The elderly couple, Oh Gab Soo and Han Bok Ja (played by Jung Kyu Soo and Lee Ji Hyun) seemed to have a strained relationship. The husband is a very conservative Korean man, he complains about the service and the waiting times, he compares all the places they go to to places in Korea, and he prefers Korean food over everything else. His soft-spoken wife keeps telling him to not make a fuss and keeps apologizing in his place. However, it turns out that she is much more done with her husband’s behavior than she shows.
The young couple, Kim Kyung Jae and Han So Ran (played by Choi Woo Shik and Ha Si Eun), also seem to have their relationship troubles. The boyfriend has just invested in a business and is constantly on the phone with his investor to get updates. The girlfriend expresses the emptiness she feels in her own relationship by talking about other people a lot, she likes shopping a lot, and she has an unfortunate case of indigestion which causes her to run off to the bathroom a lot.
The father-daughter duo, Jung Yun Sung and Jung Na Hyun (played by Ryu Seung Soo and Park Yoo Na) give off a mysterious vibe in the beginning because they don’t explicitly clarify that they are father and daughter. The father seems quite jovial, he gives his daughter whatever she asks for. The daughter seems caught up in her own world mostly, taking a lot of photos and videos and posting them on social media.

As I mentioned earlier, a lot of this series was about first impressions. I thought it was really clever how the makers of the series used its mere 12 episodes to cover everyone’s story and point of view equally clearly. You could say that between the first and the last episode, the viewer makes a complete U-turn when it comes to knowing the characters. Almost all impressions we get from the first episode turn out to be wrong.
To start with So So – she gives off a kind of melancholic feeling from the start. A lot of the places she goes to on the tour remind her of times she visited them with her ex-husband, and it seems that since he went away she build a wall around herself and lost the self-esteem to go back home to her parents (the parents who had forbidden her to move to France for that guy in the first place). She’s scared that her family is still mad at her.
In the meantime what we also see is a guy who is released from prison and immediately goes out to find her. Our first impression therefore is: this guy in prison is So So’s ex-husband, he went to jail and that’s what went wrong with them. And now he’s back for some reason he’s really angry at her and wants to find her again.
It isn’t until he finally meets with her during the tour that we find out this guy is actually her little brother who wants to bring So So back home. Although he has a bit of a temper, he’s actually a good guy.

San Ma Ru makes a big impression on the group as soon as they arrive in France – he is held back by customs because he shares a name with a noted sex offender. It doesn’t really help that he still has female underwear belonging to his girlfriend in his suitcase. He causes more trouble during the tour, and people tend to think that he is a bit of a pervert for coming on the tour all by himself.
As it turns out, Ma Ru recently found out a big secret about his company, something to do with drug testing, and he leaked this secret, causing the company to turn on him. His girlfriend, who swore to be on his side, also took the side of the company and has been telling him to come back and settle things. As it is, Ma Ru is now on unaccepted absence of leave.

Han Bok Ja is a depressed woman. She recently found out she has cancer and she has been keeping it a secret from her husband. She has been seeing a psych and already accepted in her mind that she doesn’t have long to live. Realizing that she is envious of all the people living ‘pretty’ lives while she can’t, she wants to at least see pretty things before it’s time.
Oh Gab Soo is a very stubborn man. He has found out about his wife’s cancer and tries to make her as comfortable as possible, but because he is so bad at expressing his emotions he mostly just comes off as impatient and rude. He truly cares about his wife, he really loves her and thinks she’s pretty, but he can’t actually tell her that -I mean, of course “he wouldn’t be a real man if he did”. So the little things he does for her go pretty much unnoticed by her, creating a gap between them. He also booked this trip for the two of them because he remembered her saying she wanted to see France before she died. Still, he’s convincing himself and wants to convince his wife more than anything that she’s not going to die and in doing so, always forces her to take it easy and eat well.

Han So Ran is not happy. While she’s nearing her seven year anniversary with her boyfriend, he has been more distant with her every year. And now that he’s started his own business he’s almost constantly on the phone, even though they’re in France. They look like a typical young and superficial couple, So Ran is always gossiping about other people and acting a bit spoiled. As it turns out, her boss at work has been pursuing her and before she went to France, he told her that he will propose to her when she comes back. So this trip for her is also a kind of last chance check whether she can stay with her Kyung Jae or not.
Kyung Jae loves So Ran a lot, and he has been so busy with his new business because he wants to create a situation in which he has enough stability to propose to her. He was planning on proposing to her in Paris, but then the investment suddenly got shaky. In the meantime, a distance is created between the two because they, too, don’t communicate well enough with each other.

When they see Jung Yun Sung and Na Hyun for the first time, everyone seems to think something suspicious is going on. Because they don’t clarify their relation to each other, everyone kind of assumes that he is her sugar daddy or something – at any rate, that they’re having an affair. It’s only revealed later on in the series that they are simply father and daughter. The affair-impression is created by the fact that Yun Sung is occasionally on the phone with a woman whom he talks to very affectionately, as if she is his wife. To create an even bigger misunderstanding, we see the woman on the other side of the line with another man – as if she’s cheating on him as well.
However, it’s eventually cleared up: Yun Sung has been dating a new woman after his wife’s death and Na Hyun has trouble coming to terms with the idea of a new mother. That’s why she acts so cold towards her father when it comes to this woman he’s constantly calling.

Okay, so now I will talk a little more about the story in general.
First of all, it’s a tour of France, Paris mostly and some nearby places, which provide a lot of beautiful scenery shots. I’ve personally fallen in love with the image of Mon Saint-Michel, which I’d like to visit now as well. I think it was also a clever way for promotion – I wouldn’t be surprised if this drama increased the number of Korean tourists wanting to go to France. I also read something about the main actress Lee Yeon Hee becoming the PR Ambassador for the French Tourism Bureau in real-life. Besides the stories following every character, we learn a lot about France through So So’s guide tour. The tour also includes a lot of locations where famous movies were shot, and places with wonderful myths surrounding them.
Of course, So So’s own myth was that many fortune tellers told her that she would meet her destined love at ‘the foot of an angel’. Or that he would ‘lead her to the foot of an angel’. During the tour Ma Ru causes an accident and in exchange for his picture as a offender, the mayor of the town promised to open the passage that would lead all the way up to the statue of angel Michael on top of Mon Saint-Michel. It is at the literal feet of this angel that So So and Ma Ru come face to face. Because Ma Ru is the only passenger travelling by himself, he finds himself in So So’s company more than once and they start bonding without even noticing it.
When they get trapped on an island surrounded by water (the flood came in and they weren’t fast enough to get back in time), their feelings connect and they realize they have feelings for each other.
But because of So So’s wall, she still seems to want to keep it low-key during the tour, not wanting to let the others find out about it even though it’s so obvious everyone already knows.

I think a great aspect of the drama was that everyone’s character was clarified one-by-one, and in the end I was able to relate to pretty much everyone. Because first we see Bok Ja’s point of view we think ‘oh her husband is so unreasonable!’, but then in the end we get to see Gab Soo’s story and we’re like ‘oh but he means so well!’
This was the case with basically everyone in the story. It’s nice that, even though the drama only has 12 episodes, nothing felt rushed and everyone’s story was equally distributed and written. I feel like no one got left behind in the writing.

In the last episode we see how everyone deals with the situation back home. Although many relationships become shaky during the tour, they all work out in the end, the tour ultimately brings everyone closer to one another.
Gab Soo is finally able to open up to his wife about how he feels, how lost he would feel without her. So Ran accepts Kyung Jae even after his investment plan fails, saying they shouldn’t put locks on their relationship but just love each other freely no matter what.
Na Hyun accepts her father’s new girlfriend and even sends her a video of a bunch of edited clips she took of her dad during the tour with the message ‘thank you for accepting my dad’. She also sends everyone else who went on the tour videos of them, as she has been filming a lot during the tour -not just to put on social media but because she has an affinity for editing movies, even though one she made about her school almost got her expelled.
Ma Ru goes back to his work, but after finding out no one is on his side he quits – but only after leaving the last piece of evidence that he took with him on a USB stick to France. After that he leaves the company and goes on another vacation.
So So also decides to go on a vacation and calls her little brother to tell him she’s coming back to Korea for a bit. She also talks with her mother and all is well.
At the airport, So So and Ma Ru meet again, both being drawn to a picture of the angel Michael. Once again, they are brought together at ‘the feet of an angel’.

The funny thing is that, during flashbacks shown from before they went on the trip, a lot of the people on the tour have already met one another on the streets before. Not in a way that would remind them of each other, but just casually. Like they happened to be in the same room, or they accidentally bumped into each other.
These little things. I didn’t really see the value in adding that, because they still met as strangers on the tour, but it was fun, in a way.

I knew some of the actors beforehand, but most of them just from 1 or 2 other series I think.
I knew Lee Yeon Hee from Reunited Worlds – I have to say I have yet to see another side of her acting. I have difficulty distinguishing expressions from her face, even when she smiles it seems like there’s something behind it.
I knew Jung Yong Hwa (of course) from You’re Beautiful and from Heartstrings, but I feel like he’s always cast as the calm and kind type of guy, The Package being no exception. Even though they gave his character a bit more quirkiness, such as his urge to try out everything by himself even if that gets him into trouble (the chastity belt scene being one of the most hilariously awkward situations).
I’ve seen Choi Woo Shik before in Rooftop Prince (where he was adorable) and in Fated to Love You and Fight For My Way (in which he was a bit of a douche). It’s hard to see someone with a cute face like his to be a jerk, but I think it added a lot of character to Kyung Jae. It gaves him more depth, not just being a seemingly handsome boyfriend.
I found out Ha Si Eun was actually in Another Oh Hae Young, she played the best friend but I didn’t recognize her because in Another Oh Hae Young she was really dolled up and here she was a bit more casually-dressed and less make-up.
I remember Jung Kyu Soo’s face, but I think I’ve mostly seen him in historical dramas. I didn’t know Lee Ji Hyun, but I thought she was one of the most interesting characters in the series.
I’ve also seen Ryu Seung Soo’s face before, but I can’t remember from where. And I didn’t know Park Yoo Na, but looking at dramawiki she hasn’t done a lot yet.

Anyways, the cast wasn’t spectacularly famous or anything, but that had its own charm. Although I think that that’s one of the reasons why it hasn’t been hyped that much. When it was just out, I did see some promotional trailers and stuff but afterwards it went quiet. But maybe that’s just because I waited so long before watching it and by the time I did it was already a long time ago people talked about it.

Anyways, I really like these kind of stories with a relaxed pace, beautiful scenery shots and a thorough but not too much exploration of all the characters. The comments on the videos I watched were all very positive, as well. Stories like these don’t need more drama than just the relationships between the characters, because they already fill up the whole story. It was nice watching something short and light, yet still profound and entertaining and emotionally loaded. I think the message about the first impressions was very accurate (someone mentioned that in the comments as well), and it really makes you think about life. The characters, all the way in this foreign country with only one person they really know, are almost forced to think about their way of living and whether they have to change or not. Forced into the situation where they have to get along with each other, they have to face each other whether they like it or not.
It’s always a terrible feeling to fight while on vacation together, you just don’t want to do that, it’s supposed to be a nice time away from all the sorrows at home. So halfway through the series I was just really begging for everything to work out for everyone. Luckily, it did become a happy ending for all the characters, so that’s nice. It had enough emotional ups and downs in it already, it didn’t need a bad ending.

One thing, though, that I have to note: of all the main characters, I actually felt the least emotions coming from the main couple, So So and Ma Ru. Even though So So was occasionally crying, neither of them reached their emotional climax in the same way the other passengers did. The remaining six all went through an emotional rollercoaster and were pushed to their limits, while So So and Ma Ru overall remained very calm.
So in the beginning I found it a bit hard to acknowledge the chemistry between them, because even though the kissing scenes were really intense, the next moment they would be walking together again as if they were strangers.
Except from that I thought it was a very refreshing concept for a Korean drama series.
Especially because they went as far to show the liberty of the French in ways such as erotic shops and So So’s homosexual friends. Even Ma Ru was still too conservative to fully embrace that kind of liberty. It was clear that So So had become really used to living in France, and she was even referred to as ‘having become a French woman’.
As someone living in Europe where this kind of liberty is pretty much common sense, for me it was fun to see the Korean tourists with their Korean state of mind witness this kind of ‘liberal’ lifestyle. Even to the point of rolling my eyes when Ma Ru said ‘but… they’re both men?’ Come on man, get with the times.

I would like to stress again how much I liked seeing everyone’s point of view in the story. I was able to agree and disagree with everyone. I think it’s very important to have characters that are very relatable in both their positive and their negative behavior. One moment you think someone is overreacting, the next you get a new insight and you’re like ‘ahh so that’s why she’s behaving like that’. It just all made sense to me and in the end there really was no one that I really disliked (except of course Ma Ru’s betraying colleagues at work).

I would like to see more of these kind of dramas where the focus isn’t on the prettiness of the actress and the handsomeness of the actor. Stories about real people with their own deal or struggles and how they deal with them. That’s why I really loved Han Bok Ja in this series, I felt like they could’ve just picked her off the streets and told her: ‘just act like yourself’. Her acting was so natural and her character so relatable (even though of course I’m not age yet).

So yes, I liked this one. I’m going on to the next one quite fast, although I don’t want to rush anything. It’s just that I have a very long list and I’m very behind in my own opinion. Please keep following me!

Also, I haven’t mentioned this before but if you have anything to discuss about any of my reviews, please feel free to comment! I hope to be able to have nice talks about these series with fellow K-drama lovers 🙂

Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

She Was Pretty
(그녀는 예뻤다 / Geunyeoneun Yeppeottda)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

Okay, yes, I know, it’s been less than a week since my last update… I went through this quite fast, haha.
This drama was recommended to me by my Kdrama-buddy friend, I’d seen some scenes and she told me it was really fun so I put it on my list 🙂
As with the previous one I watched, this was an older drama (from 2015) and I could really feel the old-school Kdrama style. I wouldn’t be able to really pinpoint how the modern ones are different, but it just felt like the old days when I just started watching Kdramas.

Okay, so this drama is called She Was Pretty. The story is about a woman called Kim Hye Jin (played by Hwang Jung Eum), who sticks out because she is ‘not’ pretty. She was red freckled (or pimpled?) cheeks, big bushy curls and an old-fashioned style in clothing. However, when she was younger she was really pretty and popular. She explains that when she was younger she looked like her mother, and when she hit puberty she suddenly got flushed with her father’s genes and ended up looking like she does now.
Her best friend Min Ha Ri (played by Go Joon Hee) looks like a model, she’s really tall and skinny and gorgeous. The two have been the best of friends since elementary school and friends of popular Ha Ri are often surprised to see her with such an ‘ugly’ friend.
On the other hand, there’s Ji Sung Joon (played by Park Seo Joon), who used to be really chubby when he was little. He was often bullied, but Hye Jin was always there to save him. The two were close when they were kids, but Sung Joon had to immigrate to America and they were separated for 15 years.
After these 15 years, Hye Jin suddenly gets an email from Sung Joon that he’s coming back to Korea and he would like to meet her after all this time. Excited, they arrange to meet but when they arrive at their meeting spot Hye Jin sees that Sung Joon has turned into a really handsome looking guy. He mistakes a pretty lady for Hye Jin (naturally expecting her to still be pretty) and Hye Jin gets embarrassed to be seen like this and hides. Instead, she asks Ha Ri to pretend to be her and greet him.
To make matters worse, at her new job at a famous magazine editing company, Hye Jin finds that Sung Joon is her new Chief Editor.
The only person who seems to be on her side is Kim Shin Hyuk (played by Choi Si Won), an eccentric reporter/feature editor who quickly sees the real beauty in Hye Jin.

I have a couple of things to say about this drama, some things I appreciated, but some things I couldn’t help but criticize a little. I will start with giving a bit more content to what went on the story, and then I’ll start pointing out the things that stood out to me in one way or another.

So Hye Jin starts working at this magazine called ‘The Most’, she starts out in the managing department but because of a misunderstanding where she was mistaken for an intern at the editing department, she is transferred there because the editing department was impressed with her skills during that misunderstood situation. At first she really doesn’t want to work there because she feels too uncomfortable with Sung Joon being there. Their relationship starts off really bad because Hye Jin is very clumzy and keeps making mistakes while Sung Joon is really stressed about gaining results – he is being pressured from America to make the magazine Number 1 on the rankings or else the Korea branch will have to shut down.
While constantly trying to avoid him because she is too afraid he will find out and make fun of her for how much she’s changed (in a bad way), Hye Jin finds herself immersed in work and builds up relations with her colleagues and eventually really finds her place there.

In the meantime, the story that began when Ha Ri pretended to be Hye Jin didn’t end so quickly. Sung Joon is more than delighted to see her again, basically suggesting that now they should date, but Ha Ri tries to brush him off. She tells him she’s going to study abroad the next day so he will leave her alone.
However, they bump into each other again at the hotel Ha Ri works at and she has to make up an excuse why’s already returned from her study abroad. She finds it harder this time to brush him off and this eventually leads to a complicated relationship. The main complication is that Ha Ri doesn’t tell Hye Jin that she’s still meeting Sung Joon and she even ends up really falling for him.

One of the really nice things about this drama is that Ha Ri was not the typical second female lead ‘best-friend-turns-into-frenemy’. She started out a little superficial, dating and playing around with guys and partying and living off a job her rich daddy got her. But she proves herself to be the most loyal friend to Hye Jin, and I actually think she is one of the sweetest people in the whole series. After continually meeting Sung Joon, even though she feels bad about it and wants to tell him the truth, the timing is never right and it keeps getting delayed and delayed. When she starts having feelings for Sung Joon (the first ever real romantic feelings in her life), she feels terrible and guilty towards Hye Jin. She knows what he means to Hye Jin and that she likes him. When she is about to tell him for real and even writes him a letter to convey her feelings better, Sung Joon finds out before she can tell him. Of course he’s really angry and just leaves her standing there without giving her a chance to explain. Which is not what she deserved.
When Ha Ri was still pretending they shared some really sweet moments and he seemed to really like her when he thought she was Hye Jin. Even so, when he finds out he just gets angry and leaves. I found it weird that -even though of course he was angry- he could just immediately forget about all those moments. He could’ve just asked her to explain what was going on, because she was really planning on telling him.
Of course, maybe it made it easier for him because he already had some suspicions at that point.

At work, initially he doesn’t really bother with Hye Jin (unlike in Another Oh Hae Young, he is not effected at all by the fact that one of his employees has the same name as his girlfriend, he just thinks it’s a coincidence), but she keeps reminding him of his childhood crush through little habits that she still has. Some things she does for example: 1. yelling ‘It’s a go!’ when the traffic light jumps to green, and 2. disliking rain falling on her because it makes her hair even bigger. They also show the same amount of interest in a certain painting that they liked together when they were kids. He keeps getting confronted with these little things that make him more curious about her. In the end, he claims that he fell in love with Hye Jin before he even knew she was ‘his’ Hye Jin, but I still feel that there was something weird, also comparing it to how he reacted to Ha Ri when he found out she wasn’t Hye Jin. After he left her there, he immediately went to Hye Jin, saying ‘It’s been a while’, and from one moment onto the other he started treating her well. I don’t know, it felt a little weird and it seemed to me that he was just heading towards whoever his Kim Hye Jin was, no matter who she was.
When it turned out to be the ‘ugly’ Hye Jin from work, it didn’t matter anymore because she was his Hye Jin. Although when he met her in the beginning he seemed really annoyed by her.
I couldn’t really pinpoint his sincerity and sometimes it felt a little forced, like he was determined to end up with his childhood crush, no matter what. It would have been interesting if he’d fallen for Ha Ri and even after finding out she wasn’t Hye Jin, still would’ve liked her or something. It was just a bit cliche to me.
And he also wasn’t angry at Hye Jin at all for not telling him the truth even though she knew from the beginning. It really made Ha Ri look like the bad guy, which she wasn’t.

I have to admit, although I love Park Seo Joon, I usually like him in roles in which he plays the manly but slightly dumb roles. I loved him in Fight For My Way and Midnight Runners, but as soon as they cast him as a suave gentleman or even a flower guy (Hwarang, She Was Pretty, What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim?) I just feel a bit uncomfortable. I just don’t see him as a flower guy, I see him as the muscular manly guy. My friend pointed out to me that his acting wasn’t very good in this drama, but it didn’t really bother me.

I was actually more bothered by Hwang Jung Eum, especially in the second half.
Whereas in the first half I sometimes got a bit annoyed with Hye Jin because sometimes she was just TOO clumsy. Like, in a ‘are-you-kidding-me-can’t-you-even-pick-something-up-in-a-normal-way’ kind of way. But it added to the character she was portraying.
About halfway through the series however, Hye Jin gets herself a makeover. I wasn’t entirely sure why that was necessary because I thought the whole point of the story was that she wasn’t ‘pretty’, but apparently she needed a new start and suddenly turns up to work with her hair straightened out, her cheeks hidden under layers of foundation and an acceptable sense of fashion. And that’s when I started disliking her. Not only because I didn’t understand the necessity of doing this to her character, but I actually didn’t think it made her look pretty at all. I liked her way better before the makeover. I almost didn’t even recognize her with all the makeup, she didn’t look like herself anymore.
Also, for some reason I felt like her acting became really off after the makeover.
Maybe her initial looks helped her when she needed to act really clumsy in the beginning because whatever she did she looked ‘lame’ because of her looks. But after the makeover it felt like she had to act extra hard to still keep behaving in a clumsy way even though now she looked like every pretty girl in every K-drama ever. When she would do something clumsy it suddenly looked super exaggerated. There were a couple of scenes where she had to cry and she just would start bawling out loud (no real tears) like a baby and I just couldn’t take it seriously.
I was just very happy when in the last episode she felt like she couldn’t keep it up anymore and let her looks be as they used to be.

I read a lot of comments about this drama from people who suffered greatly from second male lead syndrome in this drama. As K-dramas go, usually the kind guy who is genuinely interested in the female lead from the beginning is pushed aside for the cocky jerk-off guy who only starts liking the female lead halfway through the series. That was pretty much the case here as well.
The love between the childhood friends conquered all in the end -for originality reasons I would’ve liked it if they played with that a bit more but oh well- but Shin Hyuk was a very good friend to Hye Jin until the end. Even when he started acting as a rival towards Sung Joon, he wouldn’t take it as far as becoming the evil ‘I-will-do-anything-to-obtain-hold-of-this-woman’ second male lead, which made him even more lovable. He just remained his funny but mysterious self.
His role reminded me of his role on Revolutionary Love (which is from 2017 but I watched it before this one). Because of the weird faces he would pull. Despite the fact of course that here he wasn’t naive or child-like at all, he knew exactly what was going on.
I’m always pretty much down for those kind of ‘I’m-always-goofing-around-but-I’m-actually-really-alert-about-everything’ type characters.

There were some mysteries going on at The Most. There were rumors about the Editor’s nephew who was secretly working in the editing department until he would be inaugurated as the new Vice-President of the company. And there was a writer with the pseudonym Ten who became a person of interest when it came to the 20th Anniversary edition of The Most.
I have to add though, but it was obvious for miles that Shin Hyuk had a secret identity. I just wasn’t sure if he would be the Editor’s nephew or Ten. But I was convinced he was one of them, there was just too much mystery about him. He was living on his own in a hotel where everything was done for him and he kept talking on the phone with someone in English. In the end, the older slouchy looking feature director turned out to be the nephew (no one ever saw that coming) and Shin Hyuk turned out to be Ten. Also, it wasn’t until the last episode that we find out that he was adopted in America and the people he had been talking to were his adoptive American parents.

A side story that I liked was one of the girls working at the editing department who had heard about the Editor’s nephew and was determined to seduce him. But she had three guys to choose from in the editing department and since she didn’t know which one it was, she went for the most likely option, because the other 2 didn’t dress or act the part. In the end, of course, she finds out she went for the wrong guy but she still fell in love with him so they became a couple in the end. I thought this little side character romance story was really funny and sweet. I’ve seen about five dramas with Shin Hye Sun who played this girl and the only part where she played a character like this was in Legend of the Blue Sea where she was the second female lead (sort of). In the other cases she was always this really sweet, caring girl. Anyways, I liked this on its own, even though it didn’t contribute that much to the main story.

On the other hand (I keep saying this), I found the Editor-in-chief super annoying. The woman who always dressed super over-the-top and kept talking in Italian. I guess they put her in for comic relief, but I didn’t find her funny and she kept barging in when it was least needed. I don’t want to bash too many characters, but I just didn’t really see the point in her as a boss if she didn’t act like one. She’s a good actress, I’ve seen her in several roles, but this was just a bit too much in my humble opinion.

For my last critical point, I have to admit that after Sung Joon finds out Hye Jin is ‘his’ Hye Jin and they start dating (as was to be expected, I guess), for me the story was pretty much wrapped up. And then there were about 5 more episodes to fill. Again, as I have pointed out in more reviews I think, sometimes in dramas when the story is finished they don’t know how to stop so they have a few more episodes to wrap up some other things or tell a bit more about some other characters or something like that.
In the last few episodes of this drama, it was mostly about the tension in obtaining that Number 1 position to save The Most and publish the best 20th Anniversary edition they could (of course with the events of interviews being cancelled and everyone snapping at one another).
But what puzzled me the most is that I was convinced that the reveal of Hye Jin being Sung Joon’s childhood crush that he’d been missing for 15 years would be the climax of the drama. Instead, it was more like the anticlimax. It felt like the whole story was leading up to the moment he would realize it was her… and then there was no explosion, but everyone just accepted it. On the one hand it saves the viewer a lot of unnecessary drama and emotions, but on the other hand I still felt like they were rattling it off a little bit.
So in the end, to save us from too much unnecessary drama, the second leads were both really nice people who were willing to give up on their own feelings in order for their friends to be happy, and the expected climax wasn’t deemed as an emotional climax at all. It was really very different from the series I watched before this.

Also, after the whole ordeal with her and Sung Joon and the truth coming out, Ha Ri became more of a supporting side character. They only showed some scenes of her being a sweet friend and looking for a new job, but that was it.
By the way, the way they told Ha Ri’s story (about her mother who’d abandoned her as a child and her terrible new stepmother) made the impression on me that Ha Ri really missed her mother as she had only good memories of her compared to her stepmother, but then her mother appeared on the worst timing ever, in the most random casual way ever. I think it was a moment where Ha Ri was really down because she just got busted by Sung Joon (or it was another moment where she felt really bad towards Hye Jin) and she was walking down the street and suddenly -without any warning- her mother is just standing there like ‘oh my god I missed you please forgive me’ and honestly I felt even worse for Ha Ri because she wasn’t even in the right state of mind to deal with her mother at that moment and she was just looking at her like ‘are you kidding me right now, of all times to appear?’ And so her relationship with her real mother as an adult was kind of thrown out the window so that was not very ideal.

Okay, I feel like I’ve only stated my points of criticism towards this drama, but honestly in it clicheness it was an enjoyable watch. Not too emotionally exhausting, but with funny and sweet moments and even though I was critical about the second half of the series, the ending was one of the best points.
Because it seemed to end like a very -they-lived-happily-ever-after- kind of happy ending in which the two childhood friends found one another again and realized they never stopped caring for one another. But I think everyone matured in the series, even the side characters. Ha Ri made sure she started living a better life and stopped dating random people and partying all the time, she went to look for her own purpose.
Even Han Seol (the girl who was after the Editor-in-chief’s nephew) realized that she shouldn’t keep following her greed and just be happy with this guy even though he wasn’t rich.
But the most important thing was that Hye Jin, even after ending up with Sung Joon and agreeing to even go back to America with him, still found her own passion. It had been her childhood dream to write children’s stories, and she finally found a place where she would be able to fulfill that dream. And Sung Joon remained the perfect boyfriend who realized very well how much she wanted to do that, and didn’t want to stand in the way of that.

One of the stories that was mentioned casually in the series but was actually very important was the story about the God of Opportunity. It said that the God of Opportunity only had one lock of hair on the front part of his head and was bald on the back of his head. This symbolized that the only chance to grasp another opportunity was to grab the lock of hair when it is right in front of you, because if it passes you, you won’t be able to grab a hold of it anymore.
And eventually this is what Hye Jin did, with some encouragement. She saw Ha Ri brimming with excitement when she decided to work hard to pass hotel management school and that inspired her. ‘When people do something they really like, they become really pretty’. I know from experience that this is true, that’s why I always loving listening to people when they’re talking about something they’re really passionate about; they just light up.
People are the most beautiful and the most impressive when they’re doing something they love and excel at it. And then suddenly the theme of ‘pretty’ also changed a bit, there was a bit more depth in there.
So Sung Joon went back to America for a year to make sure everything in the headquarters of The Most was stable, and Hye Jin went on working with a group of writers for children’s stories.
And after that one year they got married and had a beautiful red-cheeked girl who would yell ‘It’s a go!’ whenever the traffic light turned green. So the ending was really nice and sweet.

I liked it, it was light and humorous and enjoyable and did have some good messages to convey. It wasn’t exactly as I expected it to be -I expected something standard along the lines of ‘real beauty is on the inside’- but after the point of Hye Jin’s reversal of fortune was revealed the whole theme of outward beauty didn’t even appear as much as I’d thought. And after she had a makeover no one ever said anything about it again.

And now, I’m finally getting to the list of dramas from the 2017 season and I think the next one will be a bit more intense, but I’ll take my time to enjoy it as much as possible.
Please bear with me!

Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

Another Oh Hae Young
(또 오해영 / Ddo Oh Hae Yeong)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

It’s been a while! I took my time to watch this drama as well, haha. I have to say I liked watching this as it was from a few years back and it was like a typical Kdrama-drama, like the original style Kdrama that I came to like so much. So I enjoyed it and took my time to finish it. This drama is from 2016, by the way, so not that old but still in style a bit old-school Kdrama (not in a bad way).

This drama had been on my list for a while as well, since I heard many good things about it. It was one of these classic must-watch Kdramas (in my head, at least) and I heard many good thing about the main female lead so I was curious. It was funny since the drama I watched before this had the same female lead, but her portrayal of this character was really different – it was nice see her in another good role, I think she’s a very good actress. I knew several of the actors/actresses in this drama, and almost all of them showed me a side to their acting that I hadn’t seen before, so that was a nice surprise.

Let’s get on with the summary, I will try my best to explain it in words. You know how in Kdramas there are always a lot of complications and intertwined relationships which are always very well explained in the dramas themselves but when you want to explain them in words you always get a bit tangled up? That’s what I’m going through now.
But I succeeded in Duel which was way more complicated, so I’m going to approach it in a similar way; by summing up the characters and then tying their stories together.
Another Oh Hae Young revolves about two girls with the same name: Oh Hae Young. Knowing Kdramas, you can probably predict beforehand that this will cause a lot of misunderstandings. You are not wrong.
The main female lead in the drama is ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young (played by Seo Hyun Jin).
The second female lead in the drama is ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young (played by Jeon Hye Bin).
These two girls went to high school together. Being in the same year and class, they got mixed up a lot. Because ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young was very popular and ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young wasn’t, the mix-ups were always quite awkward, especially for ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young.
‘Just’ Oh Hae Young has always felt inferior to ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young. She had to get used to painful experiences such as receiving presents and love letters that weren’t meant for her. And when ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young rejected a love profession, the angry boy would come and throw stones through the windows of the wrong Oh Hae Young’s house. Stuff like that. So when she graduates ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young is quite happy that she doesn’t have to see ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young again. Years later, she is about to get married and finally feels like her life will settle down. However, on the day before her wedding she is suddenly dumped by her fiance for the mere reason (and quoting) that he ‘couldn’t stand the way she was eating anymore’.
The main male lead is Park Do Kyung (played by Eric Moon/Moon Jung Hyuk). He creates sound effects for movies and dramas, just like his father did. He lost his father at a young age and was adopted into the family his mother had with another man with two other kids. He now lives in one house with his two step-siblings (an older sister and a younger brother) and his lawyer friend who for some personal reasons can’t return to his own house. Park Do Kyung was in a relationship with ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young. They were very much in love and engaged to be married. However, for reasons he does not understand, she didn’t show up at the altar – rather, she disappeared completely without saying a word, leaving him confused and desperate. After some time, because of some misguided information from his lawyer friend and other people, he learns that Oh Hae Young has left him and is now getting married to another man. Out of spite, he ruins this man’s business, hoping to ruin Oh Hae Young’s life as well for betraying him.
As you might guess, this turns out to be the wrong Oh Hae Young.
The second male lead is Han Tae Jin (played by Lee Jae Yoon), ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young’s fiance. Without any warning, his investors suddenly take back their investments in his company, leaving him not only bankrupt but also arrested for fraud. Just about to get married, he makes up an excuse to dump Oh Hae Young before their wedding to not involve her in this mess, knowing that she might not forgive him.
So, in short: Park Do Kyung is angry because he heard that his ex-fiance called Oh Hae Young left him for another man and therefore tries to ruin their life together, accidentally ruining another Oh Hae Young’s life.
The series starts with Park Do Kyung finding out he ruined lives of a completely unrelated businessman his wife-to-be who just happens to have the same name as his own ex-fiance.

This is the main storyline of the drama. There are some other storylines, such as ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young returning and starting work at the same company as ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young, recreating their high school experiences of mix-ups and very much tension between the two.
The other one is a bit more complicated and it took me a while to fully understand it either (I still can’t really say I understand it a 100%). Park Do Kyung suffers from strange visions. First they seem to be predicting the future, but then he starts having visions about ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young before he has even met her. I will come back to this later.

First of all, I want to talk about ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young. I really liked her character, Seo Hyun Jin was really good. ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young is very honest and straightforward about her feelings. She can get very emotional, but in a pure and child-like kind of way. When she is feeling down, she has the habit of putting on dramatic music and dancing on her own in the living room (unless her mother joins her). Before her life settles, she is kind of a mess. Unfortunate things happen all the time, but instead of feeling extremely embarrassed she just accepts it and faces the stares. For example when she accidentally crashes her bike into the mud, she would just swing the bike over her shoulder and walk home in her dirty mud-stained state, not caring about all the people staring at her.
Her mother (played by the impeccable Kim Mi Kyung) is having a hard time dealing with the eccentricity of her daughter. At a certain point she is almost embarrassed with her and kicks her out of the house.
‘Just’ Oh Hae Young ends up living in a house right next to Park Do Kyung (of course, because Kdramas). Park Do Kyung, now having met the woman he keeps seeing in his visions, is kind of freaked out. By now he has already realized that she’s the one whose life he has ruined and he mostly just feels sorry for her. But continually being surprised by her actions, he also finds himself attracted to her. Of course, he doesn’t allow himself to be, but it’s getting harder to resist, even more so when she expresses her growing feelings for him in her usual direct way.
So an inevitable relationship between the two starts here as well. This relationship, however, is brought into jeopardy by 1. ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young returning who is determined to get her life with Park Do Kyung back and 2. Han Tae Jin being freed by prison and finding out what Park Do Kyung did to him and that he is now seeing his former fiance whom he still has feelings for.

One thing that I have to say that I found a shame was that they didn’t show us a lot of the relationship between ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young and Han Tae Jin when they were together. There was one flashback scene, I believe, where you see them planning a trip I think and cuddling, but that’s it. Whereas for ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young and Park Do Kyung, we get to see a bunch of flashback scenes from their lovey-dovey relationship. I don’t know, maybe that’s why I couldn’t really fathom the relationship between ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young and Han Tae Jin, I didn’t see any scenes that really showed what kind of couple they had been. And that must have been important, because they were getting married so they probably loved each other a lot.

And then besides all this there is an additional part of the cast that also needs to be mentioned: Park Do Kyung’s family.
His mother (played by Nam Ki Ae) is a very selfish flashy woman who has been getting married time after time to rich guys and is now the boss of the company that both her sons work for. She’s a bit of a nasty person and it also turns out that she is the reason for chasing ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young away from marrying Do Kyung.
His older sister Park Soo Kyung (played by Ye Ji Won) is ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young’s boss. While she dresses super fancy at work, she drowns herself in alcohol pretty much every single night and we find out she is a pretty crazy person, often dancing around babbling in incoherent French and having drunken frenzies. I had to get used to her character a lot. In the beginning I thought she was just some comic relief character, but I didn’t find her very funny, more like over-the-top trying to be funny. But she has actually really good character development, I will say more about that later as well.
His younger brother Park Hoon (played by Heo Jung Min) is a bit of a useless delinquent type of guy. He works with Do Kyung in the sound effects department of their mother’s company, but he has a temper. He also expresses himself very loudly and likes to make fun of people but gets sensitive when people call him a delinquent. He has a girlfriend named Anna who works at several stores throughout the series and they have their own little bubble they live in.
And then, there’s Park Do Kyung’s childhood friend, now lawyer Lee Jin Sang (played by Kim Ji Suk), a guy who is obsessed with women and partying. He starts off as a player, having pretty much a girlfriend for every day of the week, until he gets busted of course. He is the one who encourages Park Do Kyung to get revenge on Han Tae Jin when they think they find out he’s the one ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young left him for. Apart from his hormonal behavior, he is a good friend and tries to help Park Do Kyung with his situation, feeling partly responsible. His character really grows as well, funnily together with Soo Kyung’s.

Apart from the usual drama tropes, I found it an enjoyable series to watch. There were a lot of moments where I was laughing out loud – the actors sure went all the way with their craziness. There were a couple of scenes in which some people got so drunk it really escalated. And I laughed a lot about ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young’s eccentricity.
Some things were very exaggerated though. For example the scenes between the two Oh Hae Youngs at work. It was almost sickening to see how much ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young was being adored by all the male employees. At a certain point I was wondering whether she herself was aware of how much she was being objectified by pretty much every male co-worker, including her boss. Especially at the company karaoke parties, there was one time when they were playing a game after they all got their physical age (?) from a medical check and they all had to act accordingly to the age they got. ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young got 40 and ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young got like 21 or something. And all these men were doting on her so much I kind of felt it was inappropriate.

As the relationship between ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young and Park Do Kyung develops (including some very passionate REAL kisses, thank you very much), of course there is the point where she finds out what he has done. This comes in the form of Han Tae Jin, out of prison, who confronts her with the fact that he was arrested and he only dumped her to save her reputation, not because he didn’t love her anymore. He also tells her that Park Do Kyung is the one who made them break up. Conflicted as heck – because even despite this truth she finds herself drawn to Park Do Kyung – they have a temporary break.
And of course, she spirals on ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young for ruining her life once again, and big-time this time. The scene in which she stormed in and physically attacked ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young was very intense and you could see how shocked ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young was. Of course, it’s not until later that she hears what has happened as well. She even goes around to Do Kyung to thank him for doing that while thinking of her. After being rejected again by him, she finally backs off and leaves the two of them alone.
After their temporary break, they feel that they still can’t let go of each other and everything is forgiven and forgotten.
The only one who is still not satisfied is Han Tae Jin. I actually knew this actor from some other dramas, first of all Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo in which he was a clueless but really nice guy and then Revolutionary Love in which I think he was a bit more angsty. He became very angsty in this drama as well, getting himself drunk and getting violent a lot after getting out of prison. He beats up Park Do Kyung several times as well. I don’t know, I prefer him as a nice guy because his face becomes very scary when he’s a bad guy.

Okay, now I’m going to go into the visions part. After first having several future visions of ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young, Do Kyung has a strong vision of himself laying bleeding on the street after being hit by a car and looking up at the night sky with snow falling down on him. In this moment, his last thoughts before (presumably) dying are of ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young.
It is eventually deducted by his psychologist that when he is dying in that spot in the future, his regrets about not continuing his relationship with ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young are so deep that these visions cross time to his past self, causing him to see this visions beforehand and warning him to change the course of his failed relationship with ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young. It took me a while to figure this out, only after the last episode I kind of understood it. It’s like having a glimpse of a bad thing happening in the future and trying to change that by changing a couple of things that happened in that vision. For example, one thing he saw in his dying vision was a newsflash that a famous singer had died, so he made sure that this didn’t happen. He also sees that Han Tae Jin is the person driving the car that hits him. While aware of the fact that this will happen, he one time spots Han Tae Jin almost falling off a bridge in a drunken state and, after hesitating seconds, he saves his life. Han Tae Jin catches a glimpse of his shoes before he loses consciousness. At the moment that the vision is about to be realized, Han Tae Jin stops himself from hitting Do Kyung with his car because he recognizes his shoes and realizes Do Kyung was the one who saved his life. So like this, Do Kyung is able to avoid his vision from coming true.
All in all, I found it a little bit far-fetched to add this to the story, because there were already several very strong plots that were all completed. The fact that they had to add this to show that his feelings for her were so deep they even crossed space-time was (even for a Kdrama) a bit cheesy for me.

But here’s something else that puzzled me about the ending, even though it was a happy ending in which Do Kyung and ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young get married. But right before that we see Do Kyung getting hit by a car all the same, during daytime and white flowers falling down on him from a drama scene they’re filming somewhere on a roof. So it almost seemed like he was still destined to die like that. He is brought to the hospital for surgery and everyone is just praying he will be okay, even starting to prepare the wedding already to keep their hopes up for his recovery.
And then suddenly we switch to the wedding. Suddenly Park Do Kyung has recovered, it was all well, nothing to worry about, happy ending. At first I thought this was ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young imagining things, because in the previous scene she said something about joining the other in already picturing the wedding.
But this turned out to be real. So I couldn’t help but think ‘then why go through the whole accident thing?’ It seemed kind of useless to me, just for shock value or something. Was it that the vision of him being hit by a car had to come true one way or another to put an end to it all? I didn’t really get it.

So that was it for the main characters, but I will say a bit more about the relationship between Park Soo Kyung and Lee Jin Sang (the older sister and the lawyer friend).
Jin Sang has been Do Kyung’s friend ever since high school (or even earlier maybe), and Soo Kyung has always been the older ‘noona’ that he respected. However, as things go in their hectic lives, one time Soo Kyung and Jin Sang get so drunk they end up sleeping together. Soo Kyung wakes up sober and realizes this, but Jin Sang has no recollection of it at all.
And then, Soo Kyung hears from the doctor that she’s pregnant. Jin Sang is with her at that moment, rejoicing for her, but she knows it’s his and she can’t tell him because she’s too embarrassed. Imagine getting pregnant from a drunken one-night stand with your little brother’s best friend. I can’t say I disagree with her. And also because Jin Sang is such a dissolute person, she doesn’t want to burden him with the fact that he knocked up a 44-year old woman. However, because she has fallen in love with him she starts treating him with more kindness and respect and, funnily, because of this he figures it out on his own. Now this is the point where the two of them really grow in their characters. Jin Sang seems desperate and pitiful in the beginning but suddenly his feeling of responsibility arises and he mans up and matures in a matter of several episodes toward the end. Soo Kyung also stops acting crazy and drunk and tries to make the best of the situation as possible. In the end, even though they’re still awkward, they do decide to stay together as they both start seeing clearly their feelings for one another.
Like this, the two characters who seemed to be the most frivolous and exaggerated in the beginning end up being two of the more mature ones. That’s some good writing I think.
I knew both actors before from other dramas, and Ye Ji Won’s character reminded me a bit of her role in Producer, where she was hilarious. I have only seen Kim Ji Suk in very normal casual roles, so it was really fun to see him in such a wild role, it showed a side to his acting I hadn’t seen before. It’s always nice when actors get such chances and surprise you.

As I mentioned her before as ‘impeccable’, I want to give one more shoutout to Mrs. Kim Mi Kyung, because she is just genius. I have seen many dramas with her and she is such a great actress. Because she’s middle-aged she usually plays mothers or other kinds of ahjumma. I remember the first time I watched her was in Baby-faced Beauty in which she was a stern but good-hearted fashion designer. She was also amazing in The Heirs, where she had to talk using sign language. It’s such a joy to see her in every role she plays, she’s truly a great actress. Much praise to her!

To sum it all up, I enjoyed watching it and I’m glad I can now say I’ve seen one of the classics. As I’ve stated, there were some things that I didn’t really understand and the ‘seeing into the future’ thing seemed a bit far-fetched to me (and I watch a lot of time travel stuff, so not a lot is far-fetched to me). Also, in the last few episodes it seemed like they abandoned the  original plot of the story (the two Oh Hae Youngs) a little. All of a sudden ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young was not appearing anymore and it just wasn’t about that anymore. In the last few episodes it was all about the love between ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young and Park Do Kyung and while that’s okay, it felt like it dragged the end out a little bit. The real plot has finished, now we have to fill the rest of it up with some more romance, or something.
Despite that, I liked it.

The next drama on my list is (if I’m right) a golden oldie (from 2015, fair enough) as well, so please bare with me! After that I will finally start watching series belonging to last year’s batch. It’s going slowly when you’re watching one thing at a time, but otherwise I wouldn’t be able to write extensive reviews on each of them like this.