SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

Thirty But Seventeen
( 서른이지만 열일곱입니다 / Seoreunijiman Yeorilgobimnida )
MyDramaList rating: 8.5/10

Hello! It’s time for another drama review! I took my time with this one, since it’s been the first regular-length drama for me since a while. I will say right off the bat that I really enjoyed it.
It’s been on my list mostly because I knew the two main actors, but the story also seemed interesting and I wondered how they would perform.

First of all, I will start with a summary.
Thirty But Seventeen is about the fates of two people, Gong Woo Jin (played by Yang Se Jong) and Woo Seo Ri (played by Shin Hye Sun).
We first meet them as students, age 17. Woo Jin is very talented in drawing, striving to study at an art school in Germany. He always carries a drawing case with him, decorated by Pororo stickers from his young nephew. One evening he catches sight of a girl his age standing in the middle of a crossbridge, reaching her hand up to the sky (Seo Ri). He sees her a couple of times after this and starts getting fascinated by her, even to the point where he draws her. He doesn’t know her name until one time he sees her wearing gym clothes that say ‘No Su Mi’. Unaware that this is actually the name of her friend she always borrowed her gym bag from, Woo Jin accepts her name is Su Mi. When they meet in a bus one day, he is determined to talk to her and give her his drawing. However, when she asks him for directions, he only manages to tell her to get out one stop further and flees when her friend gets on the bus and interrupts them. Still determined, he runs after the bus, only to see it get into a terrible accident. In the news that night, ‘No Su Mi’ is mentioned as one of the casualties and Woo Jin breaks down, blaming himself for telling her to stay in the bus for one more stop.
In the meantime, while her friend Su Mi tragically didn’t make it, Seo Ri has fallen into a coma.
Then the story skips to 13 years later. Woo Jin has turned into a succesful stage designing architect but is nevertheless a loner, someone who doesn’t communicate with others and keeps out of people’s business as much as possible, even if that sometimes causes him to look like a pervert.
Seo Ri wakes up, the memories of the accident from when she was 17 still fresh in her brain, but her body is now 30 years old. Her whole world as she knew it is different, nothing is where it’s supposed to be (both houses and buildings and people) and no one knows what happened to her friends and relatives. During her rehabilitation training, she escapes from the hospital and runs back to the only place she knows: her old house.
However, the person living there now is Woo Jin – with his younger nephew Chan (played by Ahn Hyo Seop) and housekeeper Jennifer (played by Ye Ji Won).
Since Seo Ri has no place to go, Woo Jin initially agrees for her to stay with them for some time, but as things keep happening and progressing, she becomes part of the family. Of course, eventually Woo Jin and Seo Ri fall in love as adults – and this is before they even figure out the truth about their history together.

I would firstly like to comment on how well this drama was structured.
The build-up was good, nothing was rushed in the development of both the characters and the plotline, all plotlines were wrapped up nicely. It was a very enjoyable and wholesome drama to watch and it’s been a while for me since I truly watched a series with a constant smile on my face without any major criticism. Very well done to the writers and the cast.
Even though of course, as always with K-Dramas, everything and everyone turned out to be connected in some way, it didn’t bother me at all. It still somehow felt natural and it was also nice that there were no genuine bad people in the story. The characters all reacted really naturally and realistically to the situations around them and nothing felt weird. My compliments.

I would like to say something about the cast and characters and their relations to one another before I go on to elaborate more on an important theme and message I picked up on.

I’ve written several reviews about dramas with Yang Se Jong and I have to say, he’s beginning to grow on me as an actor. I think he portrayed Woo Jin very well, a traumatized young man who hides his wounds and fear of ever interfering in people’s lives again with a distant exterior.
Woo Jin has lived 13 years of his life haunted by what he’s done (or thinks he has done) to Seo Ri. He gets panic attacks whenever he has flashbacks or sees scenes that remind him of the event (especially when adult Seo Ri appears and reminds him a lot of the girl from his past).
These panic attacks were filmed quite intensely; Woo Jin would start sweating, he’d have to grab a hold of something in order to keep himself standing and would completely lose focus in his flashbacks. Even though he’s shut himself off, the bus accident still pains him deeply, his trauma is apparent. We can really see the pain in his eyes during these attacks.
The only thing that struck me as a bit off was that when it came to the bus accident, he only seemed to care about Seo Ri’s fate even when it turned out that other people had died as well. It seemed like he only blamed himself for what happened to her and he only cared about whether Seo Ri lived or died. When he finds out Seo Ri is the girl from his past, he hugs her, and thanks her for being alive while she’s literally mourning her dead friend at that moment. That was the only thing that seemed a bit tactless to me. But Yang Se Jong performed really admirably.
I’ve also seen several dramas with Shin Hye Sun, but this was the first one I saw where she was the female lead and boy did she deliver. I am so glad to have seen this side of her acting, she’s played so many different roles, both the shallow second female lead roles as the sweet angel-like side character roles, but this was really good. She showed so many emotions, so many expressions, and found a great balance between Seo Ri’s 17-year old mind and newly found 30-year old adult self. Her acting was just really natural and adorable and it was a pleasure to watch.
I saw Ahn Hyo Seop in Queen of the Ring, but I honestly didn’t even recognize him from there. But that is probably mostly because his role there didn’t have the depth and emotional development as his role as Yoo Chan. As the ever so cheerful nephew of Woo Jin, his closeness with his uncle is endearing. We first see them together in the flashbacks before the accident, where Chan is only 6 years old. Chan is the only child of Woo Jin’s older sister and he’s been taking care of him a lot since she has to go abroad for work a lot. They are really close. Chan is probably the only person Woo Jin acts warmly towards after the trauma. Chan really cares about his uncle and their scenes together are always warm and positive. Ahn Hyo Seop did a great job as the energetic and athletic puppy.
The only thing I can’t help but note is that Yang Se Jong and Ahn Hyo Seop are only 2 years apart in real life. Woo Jin and Chan are supposed to be 11 years apart. In the flashbacks we see 17-year old Woo Jin doting on his 6-year old nephew. In the rest of the series we see bromance between two guys who are clearly around the same age. I don’t know, it just didn’t feel like they were 11 years apart, unless Chan had to look older than this age. Either Chan didn’t look like 19 or Woo Jin didn’t look like 30… I’m not sure. I guess this is a bit dangerous when actors are supposed to play characters from another age. Yang Se Jong is 26 in real life and Ahn Hyo Seop 24, so they both had to portray different ages. In any case, that’s why I didn’t realize Chan was the little boy in the beginning because I was expecting a much younger looking kid. They both performed really great, but age-wise I kept thinking that one of the two might’ve been better off cast by either a younger or older person.
*However – and I will return to this point later – I wouldn’t be surprised if the casting did this on purpose because the theme of ‘acting/looking your age’ came back in more than one way in both the characters and the series.*
Besides this, Yoo Chan becomes the second male lead because he starts falling for Seo Ri even despite their 11-year age gap and he’s eager to become an adult, but he finds that he can’t force nature and some things are not meant to be. When he discovers his uncle and Seo Ri are dating, he is hurt but he never gets angry at them and backs away smiling through his tears. I really liked how he still confessed to Seo Ri to get closure, he showed real maturity and strength in that scene. He did really mature throughout the period of the series, even though maybe not in age.
Lastly for the main characters, there’s Jennifer (officially named Hwang Mi Jung). Another greatly layered role by Ye Ji Won, who I know mostly because of her extra-ness. She always gets the role of a lady who is kind of crazy in one way or another, so it was really nice to see her back story as Jennifer. Jennifer is the mysterious, almost robotic housekeeper in Woo Jin’s house. Despite her usual cold and emotionless demeanor, she takes care of everyone with her badass (though poker-faced) moves and exceptional cooking skills. However, we find out that she’s had a tragic past as well. It turns out that her husband was one of the casualties of the same bus accident Seo Ri and her friend were in. I think it was even established that No Su Mi and Kim Tae Jin (her husband) were the two deadly victims of the accident. Losing him when she’d just gotten pregnant, Jennifer/Mi Jung started neglecting her own health, causing her unborn child to become malnourished as well. So she basically lost both her husband and her child (indirectly) because of the accident.

It’s interesting to see that in the end, when we learn about Jennifer’s past, it becomes clear how similar Woo Jin and Jennifer are. Caused by the same accident they shut themselves and their emotional feelings towards others off in their own ways. Woo Jin simply stops caring about other people or even invading their privacy and also develops an occupational disease in which he randomly starts measuring objects in the streets, even benches while people are still sitting on it and such. This is also related to his profession as an architect who mainly focusses on designing stages for events and performances.
Jennifer even made an English name for herself, started reading a lot and quotes that wisdom whenever she gets a chance to. Her robotic and emotionless way of speaking and her straight strut give her an almost non-human vibe in the beginning. It was nice to see that, after everything was settled and she came back to visit, she’d gone back to her old self, not strapped into a tight uniform but in a dress, her hair loose, and she was talking more freely, smiling and making jokes. Both she and Woo Jin are cured from their trauma in the end, after both getting closure.
As I said before, it was so nice to see that everyone and everything got closure. Usually there’s always at least one thing that doesn’t get solved in a drama, but they wrapped everything up really neatly, I keep repeating myself because I’m just so satisfied after finishing the series.

Some other side characters that played roles in the development of every main character: Woo Jin’s two colleagues at his studio, his college friend Kang Hee Soo (played by Jung Yoo Jin) and Jin Hyun (played by Ahn Seung Gyun). These two were mainly busy trying to get Woo Jin out of his shell to act normal. Woo Jin would sometimes randomly change his mind and turn on their customers if there was something he didn’t agree with, and his colleagues were there to attempt to keep him on a leash. Of course, as Seo Ri starts working with them temporarily, they become a closer team as well.
Then there’s Chan’s two best friends, Han Duk Soo (played by Jo Hyun Sik) and Dong Hae Bum (played by Lee Do Hyun). These two were mainly comic relief characters pulling mischief with Chan and invading his house, but also standing by him when he’s feeling down.
One person from Seo Ri’s past who’s still around is Kim Tae Rin/Rin Kim (played by Wang Ji Won), who used to be in Seo Ri’s classical music orchestra and was always jealous of Seo Ri. Her mother pressured her a lot to be a better violinist and Seo Ri disappearing actually worked out for her as she finally got her chance and she is now a professional violinist. When she meets Seo Ri again, in the beginning she’s a bit guarded and bitter, but in the end she comes around and tries helping Seo Ri out with the possibilities that she has.
Seo Ri has one friend remaining when she wakes up, Kim Hyung Tae (played by Yoon Sun Woo), her classmate who had a crush on her since high school and has always remained by her side while she was in a coma. Although displaying ambitions to become a hiphop singer when he was young, he becomes a doctor and he keeps frantically searching for Seo Ri after she escapes from the hospital. When they eventually meet again, he feels like a stranger to Seo Ri no matter how he claims that they used to be friends. This connects to another theme I would like to discuss further on.

I would also like to compliment the two young actors that portrayed Woo Jin and Seo Ri as kids, respectively Yoon Chan Young and Park Shi Eun.
They were both such cinnamon rolls and they did such a good job.

I want to talk a bit more about the relations between the main characters.
First of all, Woo Jin and Seo Ri. When they first meet as adults, Woo Jin as an oddball who doesn’t want anything to do with anyone and Seo Ri as someone who is lost in a strange new world and just looking for some familiarity, they don’t start off great. But Seo Ri’s innocence and positive attitude gradually reels him in. She literally opens newfound windows for him (I loved how they pointed this out in the final epilogue) and made everything brighter for him. She literally lets the sun in, not only in the house, but also in his heart. The writers wrote them as a really well-fitted couple. Although Woo Jin sometimes has trouble expressing his feelings, and when he’s worried about Seo Ri he tends to lash out at her or just forbid her from doing something without explaining that he’s trying to prevent her from getting hurt, which results in him looking like a jerk. But then either he himself or Seo Ri would come running back to talk about it and clearing things up. It’s great that everyone talked to each other, because one thing that always annoys me in series is when people are fighting over a misunderstanding and don’t talk or listen to each other.
Because initially we only see Woo Jin’s point of view, we get the impression that the whole thing -him falling for this girl and she getting into the accident ‘because of him’- all falls on his plate. We initially believe him when we see that he tells her to stay on the bus and we understand why he feels guilty. Even though he went on with his life, he has never let go of that guilt and pain. When he and Seo Ri finally have the confrontation in which he tells her everything, and we are suddenly shown Seo Ri’s point of view, it really put things into perspective. The harsh thing about guilt is that you never think about the other person, the only thing you can focus on is ‘it’s because of me, because of me, because of me’, which was exactly what happened to Woo Jin. But then Seo Ri starts telling him about the fact that she knew him from way before he noticed her, and that she actually had a crush on him too. She only asked him directions on the bus because she wanted an excuse to talk to him; she was going to get off on that stop anyway, so he really wasn’t to blame for anything at all. There was one thing she said to him that really resonated within me as a viewer, which was something like: ‘I was in a coma for 13 years, but it seems like your time stood still all this time as well.’ They were both victims of the accident, in a way. They were both caught in it for at least 10 years, unable to escape from what it had caused them. The way they came clean to each other like that, in an honest confrontation in which no one blamed anyone, was really strong and really mature. They found a common ground within each other which solidified their relationship.
Let’s move on to the relationship between Woo Jin and Chan. As mentioned before, they have been close since childhood. Chan is someone who keeps Woo Jin human, if he didn’t have Chan it would’ve probably taken him much longer to learn how to lean on other people. Chan always reminds him of the good in him and is always there to support him. He is the little ray of sunshine in Woo Jin’s life until he meets Seo Ri. Chan is an irreplaceable pillar that keeps Woo Jin standing and vice versa.
The relationship between Seo Ri and Chan is a bit more symbolic than just the second male lead who doesn’t get the girl. I think they get along well in the beginning because Seo Ri’s mind is about as old as Chan. They level well as if they were the same age. This is also probably why Chan doesn’t see their relationship as a problem and occasionally forgets that she’s already 30. But on the other hand, it’s important to note that Chan is literally at a place in his life that Seo Ri has skipped. His youth, his energy and how he enjoys life without worrying too much about the future – he is a symbol for the time that Seo Ri has lost. And although Seo Ri seemingly isn’t bothered by his age and never stops to think things like ‘oh I wish I was his age again’, it still occurred to me that it might me a plausible insight.
Lastly, I would like to say something about the relationship between Woo Jin, Seo Ri and Jennifer. As mentioned before, it turns out that Jennifer has been an indirect victim of the bus accident as well. It is shown that she is one of the people outside of the hospital that young Woo Jin bumps into on his way to check what happened to Su Mi/Seo Ri. I think Jennifer both has ties to Woo Jin and Seo Ri. Her time has stopped as well since her husband died. She has been shutting herself off from human emotions and contact the same way as Woo Jin. No one knows where she came from or how she became this mysterious robot person. She suffered, like Seo Ri suffered, but while still being alive and conscious. Seo Ri lost her best friend, Jennifer lost her husband and eventually her child. She suffered a trauma, just like Woo Jin. There are a lot of similarities between different characters in this drama.

I would now like to discuss the ‘age’ theme that I’ve mentioned before.
Of course, the main storyline revolves around Seo Ri, who wakes up as a seventeen year old in a thirty year old’s body. At first I thought it would be something like that romantic comedy movie ‘Thirteen to Thirty’ in which a little girl suddenly finds herself as an adult through a magic spell or something. But I was relieved when they kept a realistic view in the series. When Seo Ri wakes up, she is seriously distressed. She suddenly finds herself in a body she doesn’t recognize and with 13 years of her life just gone. She can never get her time back. And there’s nothing comical about this realization.
The story shows the harsh reality of someone young and promising (I forgot to mention this before, but Seo Ri was a gifted violinist with prospects of studying in Germany and becoming a professional musician) losing everything in one go. Everything she knew, including playing the violin; her greatest love and talent, is snatched away from her. When she enthusiastically picks up the violin as a grown-up, the lack of practice for 13 years forms a serious obstacle. Everyone she knew is gone, all the buildings she knew have been renovated or completely disappeared – she finds herself in a strange body and a strange city, completely lost with who she is.
It was heartbreaking seeing her go through all that by herself, just thinking, ‘what about my 18th birthday? What about my twenties? What about my studies in Germany, my violinist career? What about my first kiss? What about my youth?’; the mercilessness of time. A lot has happened in 13 years.
The way Seo Ri responded to what had happened to her was really realistic. This is not just a bizarre event – she literally missed out on half her life. Who wouldn’t go into an existential crisis after something like that. All she remembers is how to be a seventeen year old, which is now not deemed right because she should be an adult.
However, I think a big message the series carries with it was that age doesn’t really matter. Besides what I said earlier about Chan looking older than he should, one of his friends, Duk Soo, is often mistaken as their rowing team’s coach because he looks a lot older than 19. There’s several examples of characters in the story that show deviation from their actual age. Even the old lady at the hospital who keeps giving Seo Ri candy seems to be still a child at mind.
I really loved Seo Ri’s resolve in the last episode. A situation arises in which Woo Jin suggests she pursues a career as a musical therapist. As it’s something that seems to fit her perfectly, Seo Ri has been thinking the same thing, but starts hesitating when she finds out it will take about 7/8 years of studying to achieve a degree. Seo Ri initially worries that she’ll be too old when she’ll finish those studies and instead debates on going to Berlin to fulfill her childhood’s dream of becoming a violinist, suggested to her by Rin Kim.
In the end, she still chooses to go to college for the musical therapy career, and this to me was a sign of her truly letting go of her 17-year old self and focussing on her adult life. And the whole ‘you’re never too old to start learning / you’re never too old to pursue new dreams’ was really great in my opinion. I identified with her a lot in this moment, because I also often worry about my age standing in the way of all the things I still want to do. I think it was a really great message to end the series with.
Both Seo Ri and Chan are faced with two good options for their futures, and they both choose to study more before they plunge into professional careers.

Before I finish, I wish to point out some strong moments/scenes that really impressed me. Firstly, the bus accident itself. In the drama called Just Between Lovers (one of my all time favorites), there was an accident involving a collapsing department store. Actually, I think the same girl who played young Seo Ri also played the young version of the female lead in that. Anyways, it was filmed so realistically I actually got goosebumps while watching. This bus accident had the same effect on me. The build-up of it, we see how the weather worsens and some tires on a truck in front of the bus get loose, how all of a sudden everything is upside down – I found myself literally gasping when the bus flew into the air and fell, even when you saw some people inside hit their heads against bars. I just want to say how incredibly realistic it was filmed and how much it impressed me.
And I found the ending in which it turns out that the original driver that had caused the accident had been paying Seo Ri’s hospital bills for 11 years (ever since her uncle and aunt stopped supplying) and came to her and Jennifer to apologize on his knees for what he’d done one of the strongest plots/scenes in the series. While Seo Ri and Jennifer were screaming at him for what he’d done, I actually felt sorry for the guy. I mean, it’s not like he did it on purpose, yes, he shouldn’t have drunk, of course, he should’ve paid closer attention. And then for one ‘mistake’ to take away the lives of a young student and a soon-to-be father, two people with both so much left to live for – this guy has been feeling guilt almost the same way as Woo Jin for 13 years. In the end he turns himself in to the police, and his confession, although very emotional, really does help Seo Ri and Jennifer get closure. After this, they are able to move on with much more ease.
Also, the whole situation in which Woo Jin finds out Seo Ri is the girl he’d held for ‘Su Mi’ and Su Mi is actually her dead friend and he is first happy that the girl he liked is still alive but then starts feeling guilty again for taking away her youth and Seo Ri finds out on her own what’s bothering him, was really well structured. I was just so happy that everyone figured stuff out by themselves and forgave each other. And then the moment came where Woo Jin had poured his heart out and Seo Ri is like ‘And what if you didn’t know the whole story?’ and reveals that she actually liked him too way before he did and he was in no way to blame for her staying on the bus because her asking for directions was just an excuse to talk to him and she always got off on that same stop anyways — that was just such an emotional relieving scene and it didn’t only take away the tension between them, but it also took away Woo Jin’s feelings of guilt, the guilt he’d been feeling for 13 years and the way he looked at her while she told him all this and everything was just amazing. Very well written, very well acted out.
One very last thing that I can’t help but find a little worrying: I really hope Korean hospitals are this lax with monitoring their patients. It should’t have been possible for Seo Ri to sneak out; a patient who just got out of a coma of 13 years – I was surprised they didn’t guard her any better. So that was one thing that I found a bit unrealistic. But hey, that was about it.

I can’t emphasize enough how happy I was with how everything was tied up in the end. The relationship between Woo Jin and Seo Ri, the relationship between Chan and Seo Ri, Woo Jin and Seo Ri finding out the truth about each other, Seo Ri relieving Woo Jin of his guilt, the search for what happened to Seo Ri’s aunt and uncle who’d seemingly abandoned her after she got into the coma, the driver who caused the accident coming clean and turning himself in… Every detail, from the past relations to they keychains, everything was really well written and very well-paced, all the plotholes were filled, and there was closure for all.
It’s really been a while since I was this satisfied with the ending of a K-Drama. It was also really nice to see that, no matter how extreme the event happening to Seo Ri was, it still worked out for her and the series still ended with a positive message: never let yourself be limited or defined by your age. You and you alone decide what you want to do. Of course there are age limitations for some things, but you’re never too old to learn new things and take on new challenges. All in all a very recommendable watch!

I’ll be back with a new review soon! Bye!