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.

Kill Me, Heal Me
(킬미, 힐미 / Kil Mi, Hil Mi)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Hello everyone, I’m back with a new review! I took my time watching this and also reviewing this, because there’s a lot to see and say about this drama.
First of all, it was on my list as a ‘golden oldie’ (even dramas from 2015 fall under this category now) and also a must-see classic, like for example Another Oh Hae Young. I knew from beforehand that it was about D.I.D. because when I was watching Jekyll, Hyde, Me (also about D.I.D.), this drama was recommended in the comments a lot as well.
I knew that namely Ji Sung was very famous for his role in Kill Me Heal Me and the only thing I’ve watched of him is Wife I Know (find my review here), so I was curious as to his performance here, which was of course 4 years earlier.

Okay, let’s start with a summary. The 20-episode drama Kill Me Heal Me is about Cha Do Hyun (played by Ji Sung), a chaebol heir to his family’s company who suffers from D.I.D. (Dissociative Identity Disorder). After experiencing a traumatic fire in his childhood he has developed no less than 7 different personalities he can barely control. The only people aware of his disorder are the psychiatrist who treated him in America and his secretary. Until he meets Oh Ri Jin (played by Hwang Jung Eum), a rookie psychiatrist who is under the guidance of Do Hyun’s psychiatrist. Right after they meet Ri Jin is confronted with one of Do Hyun’s personalities and, taken by her curiosity, she starts getting involved and seeks information by her superior who has treated him. Oh Ri Jin also has a twin brother, Oh Ri On (played by Park Seo Joon), who is a mystery novelist using the name ‘Omega’ and who is secretly researching Cha Do Hyun’s family history.
Oh Ri Jin eventually becomes Cha Do Hyun’s personal caretaker and their bond gradually deepens, but there is a whole history between them that neither of them remember as both their memories of their childhood are very fragmented. Do Hyun is missing the memory of one year of his childhood, when he was 7 years old. Ri Jin doesn’t have any memories of her childhood preceding age 7.

I want to say one thing before I go on. I really don’t know why, but I have a problem with Hwang Jung Eum as an actress. Of course I watched She Was Pretty not too long ago (see my review here) and her hysterical acting seemed fitting for her character there, but in this drama it became a bit too much for me. For me it seemed like she was screaming and acting out randomly and being loud for no reason a lot. I don’t know, I think I just can’t handle her acting very well.
I will try to remain as objective as possible in this review, but I just wanted to comment on that fact.
I will also say one thing about the acting in general: I felt it was very over the top. I lack knowledge about D.I.D. and what it does to a person, but I felt like they exaggerated a lot in this drama. For example, whenever Cha Do Hyun had an attack and would change personalities, he would first get an intense fit, gasping and grabbing his head and collapsing on the floor – and when he changed personalities they made it look like his eyes changed colour for a moment. When he changes into Shin Se Gi, a tattoo appears on his neck. I’m not sure if this is completely accurate to true D.I.D. symptoms (I can’t imagine tattoos appearing and disappearing and eye colours changing to be realistic), but they mostly seemed a bit dramatized to me.
In Jekyll, Hyde, Me, I felt like the changes were a lot less intense. Then again, I’m not sure how the real deal works. I wonder if it truly is that painful in real life or if the personality change happens more calmly or if it changes per person. Anyways, there was a lot of screaming and seemingly painful inner transformations.

As I mentioned before, and I also mentioned this in my review of She Was Pretty – which is from the same year as this one – this drama really gave me the oldschool Korean romantic drama vibes. I feel like the dramas these days have developed in quality a lot, so when watching an older one now, everything seems extra corny and dramatic. Again, I can’t really pinpoint how and what, but it just felt like it was another oldschool 20-episode K-drama.
The very first thing the drama shows is a short summary of what happened in Do Hyun’s family. When he was 7 years old, there was a terrible fire and Do Hyun was saved by his father. Consequently, his father has fallen into a coma and hasn’t woken up yet (21 years in now). After that we see Do Hyun’s grandfather, the head of Seungjin Group, and his daughter-in-law (Do Hyun’s family register mother) passing away in a car accident.
What connects all these things only becomes clear when nearing the end of the series. And then we realize that the series isn’t solely about Cha Do Hyun and his ‘illness’ – it’s just as much about Oh Ri Jin and her origin (yes, I did that).

Cha Do Hyun is a rather docile male character. He seems to be quite introvert, and he prefers not to be around other people when he gets an attack. When he is himself, he is kind and meek. He seems to fear his personalities, especially because he can’t control them when they come out. There are gaps in his memory, so he doesn’t even remember all the details about how his personalities came into existence.
I found him to be quite fragile. It seemed like after every serious conversation he had there would be some sort of trigger causing him to have a fit and be taken over by another personality.

Oh Ri Jin is a rookie psychiatrist. In the first few episodes of the drama, we see her walk around a hospital, mostly concerned with one patient who keeps escaping (gotta love Kim Seul Gi for her glorious cameos). However, after she decides to become Do Hyun’s personal caretaker, she leaves the hospital. So we actually don’t see her in action as an actual doctor. Except for when she’s ‘taking care’ of Do Hyun, but this caretaking consists more of running after him when he changes and gets away and being by his side rather than prescribing him pills or anything like that.
Another thing I found peculiar was that, although as psychiatrist I’d imagine you’d stay calm in situations when a person is showing strange symptoms and character changes, Oh Ri Jin seemed very hysterical to me. Whenever Do Hyun would shows changes in his behavior, her first reaction included yelling a lot and shaking him by the shoulders, asking ‘what’s wrong??’ about 50 times before calming down an realizing he wasn’t Cha Do Hyun anymore. Furthermore, whenever she assumed she was being attacked or she witnessed for example Yo Na ambushing, she would first pull some weird facial expressions and -again- yell a lot.
Again, I’m not sure what the conditions of being a psychiatrist are in real life, but her personality seemed a little too hysterical and intense for me to completely take her seriously as a psych in the making. I also had some trouble accepting her personal behavior, because I thought she acted quite childishly sometimes. Anyway, this might have to do with me having trouble with the actress as I mentioned before.

It took me a while to place all the members of Do Hyun’s family – because Korean dramas love family complications, especially when it comes to rich families with all their dirty secrets. To explain, I will write it down as simple as possible:
First there is Cha Gun Ho, the grandfather and head of Seungjin Group. He is married to Seo Tae Im, the grandmother. The two of them had two sons, Cha Joon Pyo (Do Hyun’s father) and Cha Young Pyo (Do Hyun’s uncle).
Cha Young Pyo is the father of Cha Ki Joon, Do Hyun’s cousin and sort of rival for inheriting Seungjin Group.
Cha Joon Pyo was married to Min Seo Yeon (the daughter-in-law). Min Seo Yeon quickly became grandfather’s favorite and she climbed up in the company more than her husband. Their marriage was not a good one.
Cha Joon Pyo had Do Hyun with Shin Hwa Ran (Do Hyun’s birth mother), who wasn’t welcomed into the family even after he fell into a coma.
Min Seo Yeon had an extra-marital child with her first love. The secret of this child was hushed throughout the family, and Min Seo Yeon lied to grandmother that the little girl was Joon Pyo’s child. But Joon Pyo never acknowledged her, on the contrary: he threw her in the basement and started abusing her. He tried to warn his son to stay away from her and make no mistakes – eventually even when Do Hyun would make a mistake in his piano lesson or maths problem, his father would hurt the girl as a punishment to Do Hyun as well.
In other words, Do Hyun and the secret child/little girl (who turns out to be Ri Jin) knew each other as children. The girl was abused for being an illegitimate child and Do Hyun took on her memories of being abused as his own. Through this experience his first personality Shin Se Gi was born. In fact, this personality is the one who instigated the fire. This solves one mystery, the disentanglement of Cha Do Hyun’s memories of being locked up in a basement and shrinking back for his father’s raised hand; his memory of being scared of basements itself turns out to be a manufactured one that actually belongs to the little girl. As it happens, Ri Jin has been scared of basements since she was a child.

In the end, it turns out that uncle Cha Young Pyo is the one responsible for the ‘car accident’ in which grandpa and Min Seo Yeon died.
In short, Cha Joon Pyo and Min Seo Yeon were married but they broke up and both had an illegitimate child with someone else. Min Seo Yeon is Ri Jin’s birth mother. Ri Jin’s adoptive mother was Min Seo Yeon’s good friend who saved Ri Jin from the basement during the fire and raised her alongside Ri On as her own child.
You still following? Haha.
Oh, and most importantly, it turns out that Cha Do Hyun was actually Ri Jin’s name. Cha Do Hyun’s real name is Cha Joon Young, but after the fire he started claiming it as his own name to keep the little girl’s existence alive in the family register, feeling guilty that he couldn’t save her.

I think the build-up in explanation of what happened in Do Hyun’s family was very well done. First you would get bits and parts of it, and there’s even a time where you’re steered the wrong way before everything falls into place. In the beginning I didn’t even think the whole Cha family history would be that relevant or that I would have to remember it in detail, but it turned out to be the center of the plot of the drama itself.
Also, I think it was very clever that we’re first led to believe that Min Seo Yeon’s secret child is Ri On, because every time a dialogue about it occurred the shot would very subtly change to Ri On. He also dropped hints about one of them being adopted. At least I first thought it was Ri On. If they indeed did that on purpose, it worked. It’s only until Do Hyun remembers the reason why he’s afraid of basements, we see that it’s a little girl with him, not a boy. Also his personality Nana turned out to be the name of her teddy bear, not herself.

I think it’s time to describe all Do Hyun’s personalities and how they came to be. I’ll list them in order of appearance.
First of all, there’s Shin Se Gi. Shin Se Gi is the first personality that appeared in Do Hyun. He’s the one who started the fire. Shin Se Gi is recognized by his wild look, including a tattoo in his neck and earrings. He is the most agressive of the personalities. Shin Se Gi was created when Do Hyun couldn’t handle the pain of not being able to protect child Ri Jin anymore from his father’s abuse. When he changes the first time, he sees a toy laying on the ground with something written on it, something with ‘new generation’ (‘shin segi’ in Korean), and that’s how he got his name. Shin Se Gi carries all the memories Do Hyun lost, the memories about his past with Ri Jin and he also recognizes her immediately when they first meet as adults. Shin Se Gi is in love with Ri Jin from the get-go, so when he appears he is always trying to make advances on her.
Secondly, Perry Park. Perry Park is an older guy who lives carefree and likes fishing and booze. He distinguishes himself by wearing Hawaii shirts and has a satoori dialect. His name comes from a promise young Cha Do Hyun (still Cha Joon Young then) made with his dad when he was still a nice father. Because at that time Joon Pyo was hiding from his family, everyone called him ‘Mr. Park’. He also liked fishing a lot. Do Hyun promised his dad that he would buy him a boat some day and after asking him what he’d like it to be called, his father says ‘Perry Park’ (actually meant as the Korean pronunciation for ‘Ferry Park’).
Thirdly, Ahn Yo Seob. In high school, Do Hyun tried to commit suicide once. From that event, Ahn Yo Seob -the suicidal personality- was born. Ahn Yo Seob is a 17-year old boy who values art and classical music.
Almost simultaneously, as a counter against Yo Seob, Do Hyun’s will to live created Yo Seob’s twin sister Ahn Yo Na. Ahn Yo Na is a typical teenage girl who loves make-up and accesories and fangirling about handsome boys. She is one of the most troublesome personalities as she likes to run away. Eventually, Ri On becomes the focus of her infatuation, much to his dislike.
And then there’s Nana, who only appears in the last episode of the series. Nana is basically little Oh Ri Jin when she was hiding in the basement. She has a huge teddy bear whose name is Nana, but in the end she reveals to Ri Jin that her name is Cha Do Hyun.
The last personality that comes out is Mr. X. Mr. X only appears in the last episode, after Perry Park has already disappeared. He turns out to be a manifestation of Nana’s father – Ri Jin’s biological dad whom she never knew. He shows himself in a magician’s costume, claiming that this is probably what a little girl would imagine her father to look like, and expressing his relief for not looking like Superman. In the end his only action is to accompany Nana to disappear from Do Hyun’s mind, because she couldn’t leave by herself.

All in all, Ji Sung does a very good job in portraying the 7 different personalities. Of course their changes in costumes and hairstyles help, but each personality has a completely different vibe. Personally I liked Perry Park and Yo Na because they were so different from Do Hyun’s own character that they jumped out the most. Also the change in nuance in his way of talking and the way he carried himself as every one of them: my compliments.
One thing I found a little unnatural though was the build-up in the relationship between Do Hyun and Ri Jin. I first felt like Ri Jin was warming up to Shin Se Gi because he was always making advances at her and even kissed her before. When he would change back, Do Hyun would always hastily get away from her again. In any case, the first time they kissed as Do Hyun and Ri Jin felt a bit soon to me. Of course we know that they’re going to end up together, but as I saw it they were still in the middle of working the whole ‘you can trust me, I’m on your side’ phase. Ri Jin was only telling him to try and not be too hard on the other personalities and then suddenly he kissed her and I was like ‘oh wow, that escalated quickly’. And then suddenly they were mutually in love. I don’t know, it was a bit quick in my opinion.

I honestly thought Oh Ri On would have more to do with the whole plot of the story. He’s Ri Jin’s protective older brother who secretly harbors more than brotherly feelings for her. However, it never once occurs to him to try and make those feelings a reality. He’s come to terms with the fact that he’ll always be her brother and he has decided he will always try to protect her. Initially this includes keeping her away from her past. From childhood on, whenever she would have nightmares about her past, he would ‘interpret’ her dreams as funny stories. He keeps his research of Do Hyun’s family a secret from her as well.
Her adoptive parents tried to help her overcome her fear of basements by sending her on errands and fetching stuff from the cellar and Ri On would always go with her, allthewhile claiming that he was scared of basements too to keep her company.
However, when he notices he can’t keep her from Cha Do Hyun and her involvement grows bigger, he starts accepting that as well. In the end Oh Ri On reluctantly helps them get together and ultimately even records their story in a new novel whilst still being chased by memories of Ahn Yo Na (haha).
I read a lot of comments saying they disliked his character because he tried to keep the truth from Ri Jin, but I just couldn’t seem to dislike him. Then again, Park Seo Joon would need to try really hard to do anything I don’t like (I can’t deny I’m a bit actor-biased, I’m sorry). But it was so obvious that he did everything out of love and care for her, and she also forgave him because she knew that. And kudos to their awesome parents who raised her like their own child. Their parents deserve an award, honestly. The fact that Ri Jin found out by herself that she was adopted and never held a grudge at all shows how close their family is.

Now that we’re on the topic of family, I think this is a fairly important theme in this drama. Apart from the Cha family drama, there’s some interesting things to note about this theme that I wish to share.
I found it interesting to see how two children who used to play in the same basement ended up in two entirely different environments.
Cha Do Hyun grew up without family who had his back – he is only on the family register because of his father, but he is still also an illegitimate child, his birth mother is still ousted from the family and his grandmother, uncle and cousin all treat him coldly. When they obtain information about his condition, they’re all more concerned with the future of the company than with Do Hyun. Carrying the burden of his disorder all by himself, Do Hyun doesn’t have any friends – rather, he’s scared to make friends because he fears he will only hurt them when he changes personalities. His secretary Ahn Gook (played by Choi Won Young) is the only person close to him, but even he doesn’t fully know how to take care of him when he changes.
The only person who might be able to help is Dr. Seok Ho Pil (nicknamed Dr. Scofield) (played by Go Chang Seok). He knows about all the personalities but doesn’t know how to treat him well.
On the other side we have Oh Ri Jin who, despite her background, grew up in the most warm family environment ever. Two loving parents who raised her without hesitation as their own child and a loving big brother whom she gets along with great. They have a golden retriever (gotta mention the dog) ; basically, the ideal happy family. Because of her upbringing Ri Jin grew into a very happy and energetic woman. Even when she remembers her past, it’s painful at first, but her attitude towards her adoptive family doesn’t change at all. Overall she remains quite calm even after remembering everything. She keeps expressing her love and gratitude for her family.
So in the end it turns out that the person surrounded by his real family is much less happier than the person surrounded by her adoptive family. It changes the perspective of family; in the end it’s the people you choose it to be. Cha Do Hyun has a lot of blood-related family but he doesn’t feel like they are his family at all since all they’re after is his heritage to Seungjin Group. On the other hand, Ri Jin doesn’t have any blood-related family but feels so at home with her foster family that she doesn’t even get angry at them for not telling her the truth about her background.
Sometimes you choose your own family.

Of course, you would think, according to the Cha family register Do Hyun and Ri Jin would be family. However, Ri Jin was never registered and Do Hyun took her name and they are not blood-related so no problem there.
But in a sense they found a family in each other, even when they were kids. They played together, made each other promises, held hands, even played house together (ohoho) before they even fully understood who the other was and what their relation was to each other.
Both of them came from messed up family situations and ended up right where they belonged – together.
At first, Ri Jin encourages Do Hyun that all his different personalities are a part of him and that all those different parts make that one great person called Cha Do Hyun. But in the end, all the personalities still disappear. Cha Do Hyun gets better and doesn’t need them anymore because now he is finally able to carry his own pain and loses his desperation. These disappearances have a big emotional impact on Ri Jin because she did get along with all of them. So maybe to her that also felt like losing a kind of family.

I’m realizing I’m forgetting one character that I think was supposed to be ‘the second female lead’ but the fact that I almost forgot about her I think is enough to show what little impression her character made on me.
In the beginning, Cha Do Hyun’s first love appears as the fiancee of his cousin. In this stadium it still seemed to me like his cousin and this girl were going to be really important in the story but in the end they barely appeared anymore. So, Han Chae Yeon (played by Kim Yoo Ri) is Do Hyun’s first love and she is engaged to his cousin Cha Ki Joon (played by Oh Min Seok). But clearly their relationship isn’t heartfelt, and some intentional swaying from Shin Se Gi drive Chae Yeon away from Ki Joon and break up the engagement. She wants to get back with Do Hyun, but by then he’s already fallen for Ri Jin.
He even admits to Ri Jin that he probably was never really in love with Chae Yeon but simply yearned for the idea that he, even with his disorder, was still able to love someone. But even Chae Yeon didn’t know about his past. She is now merely a pawn in Ki Joon’s side of the family’s plan to gain leadership of Seungjin Group.
All in all, except for some vainly executed talks with Do Hyun (even randomly butting in while he was having a blind date, that was a big ‘none of your business much?’ moment for me), her character didn’t really add anything to the story for me.
I feel like Ri On and Chae Yeon were weak attempts to creating a sort of potential second male and second female lead, but they never even entered the love square.
Same for the cousin, he was kind of the intended ‘rival’ for Do Hyun but in the end he got completely stuck behind his father and couldn’t do anything to really stop Do Hyun from inheriting the company after finally getting grandma’s permission. So as a back story that felt a bit irrelevant for me. Do Hyun’s family situation was already complicated as it was. The only thing that needed to become clear was that Ki Joon’s father planned the ‘car incident’ in order to inherit the company instead of Min Seo Yeon.

One last thing: the final confrontation with Do Hyun’s father. At the very end of the series, Cha Joon Pyo finally wakes up from his coma, only to be confronted by his now adult son asking him to confess who planned the car accident. After that, that same son (as Shin Se Gi) tries to strangle him.
Now I have to say that I actually felt a little bad for the father. Of course, he did terrible things and was anything but the perfect son-in-law (even though his mother would never acknowledge that). He did lock a little girl up in a basement and abused her. But when he woke up and met with adult Ri Jin, the first thing he did was get on his knees to apologize. It was so obvious that he felt incredibly guilty about his actions, but they completely made him into the bad guy, saying this like ‘don’t force your apologies on me’ and stuff and I was just like, ‘he is not forcing anything on you? let the man apologize? he’s been unconscious for about 20 years? isn’t this kind of harsh?’ Before the whole thing started he was shown as a really nice dad, he just snapped at some point but the fact that he showed regret was good, right? I don’t know, it felt like that the two of them needed to confront him with what he’d done for their own peace of mind before they took off and lived happily ever after, not caring about whether he’d show repentence or not. But I guess that was another step in order to ‘leave the past behind them’.

There was one comment that I saw that I thought was really nice and that kind of answered my thoughts about Ri Jin’s way of ‘treating’ Do Hyun.
The comment said that the person appreciated the fact that Do Hyun’s disorder wasn’t treated like an ‘illness’ as in that he was kept in a hospital or received prescriptions for pills (he did have pills but he was never able to take them as he always managed to knock them over while Se Gi was trying to get out lol). His ‘treatment’ consisted of actual caring. It suggested that the best way to ‘treat’ D.I.D. was to stand by the person and give them love and care and warmth to make them as comfortable as possible. In the end it was Ri Jin’s unfailing determination and love that made Do Hyun come to terms with all of his personalities and himself in the end. All he needed was someone to truly care for him and I think that’s really nice.

To sum it up, I’m glad I saw this drama, although it was a bit more fictional than I’d hoped. I’d expected a more realistic depiction of D.I.D. and I felt like some of the personalities such as Yo Na were there more for comic relief – but in contrast that made it more bearable to watch in-between all the angstiness. A lot of tears were spilt in making this drama, evidently.
After this I’m craving for some happy stories, so I’m going to continue with another one that’s been on my list for a while that I’ve been really looking forward to.
I hope my reviews remain interesting to read!