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.

Romance is a Bonus Book
(로맨스는 별책부록 / Romaenseuneun Byeolchaekburok)
MyDramaList rating: 9.5/10

Hey everyone! I’m back with another review! I know it hasn’t been that long since my last one, but honestly I couldn’t wait to start this one, it’s been on my list ever since I knew it existed and on the one hand I couldn’t wait to finish it but on the other hand I also didn’t want to rush through it because I wanted to enjoy every single moment of it.
I will start right away by saying that this is one of the best dramas I’ve seen in a long while. It’s definitely going on my favorites list. That’s why I want to dedicate this review to discussing all the feelings that went through me and not just stick to an elaborate summary, because you just have to watch it.

I’m also kind of shocked that this is actually my first review about a Lee Jong Suk drama. Lee Jong Suk is one of my favorite actors and by principle, I watch all of his dramas. I know that he picks his dramas out very carefully and I honestly found everything I’ve seen of him extremely good.
It has been a long time since I watched a drama with him, so I was really happy to see him again, as soon as he appeared on screen I went like ‘OMG I MISSED HIM SO MUCH!!’, haha. I believe While You Were Sleeping was the last one I saw with him and that was also way before I started writing reviews. A shame, maybe I will watch it again some day so I can still write a review about it, haha. Up until now I’ve watched 9 of his dramas and 2 where he appearead as a cameo, so I can’t say I saw all of his work, but he’s such a steady and consistently good actor, and all his dramas are also so consistently good that I’m never worried about not liking something he does.

Romance is a Bonus Book is a 16-episode drama (on Netflix) about 37-year old Kang Dan Yi (played by Lee Na Young). She’s a divorcée with a young daughter that studies abroad and she’s having a hard time finding work after taking a 7-year career break to raise her child. In the meantime, her husband left her for someone else and all the care for her daughter has fallen on her shoulders. She keeps being rejected because it’s so hard to get back into her old field of expertise after such a long break, no one wants to give her a chance. The only person on her side is Cha Eun Ho (played by Lee Jong Suk). These two have been together since they were kids. Dan Yi saved Eun Ho’s life when they were little and they’ve stuck together ever since.
However, since Dan Yi got married and things started going downhill in her marriage, she hasn’t been entrusting Eun Ho with her situation that much.
Eun Ho, now a famous writer turned chief editor at a well-known book publishing company, is also busy with work and isn’t aware of the fact that Dan Yi’s situation is so bad. She’s unemployed, and even becomes homeless.
She’s even pretending to be Eun Ho’s housekeeper when he isn’t home, claiming to him that it’s someone she recommended, but in secret she starts living at his house. When the truth is eventually revealed, they agree that she can stay for six months. In the meantime, Dan Yi finds that they’re looking for employees at Eun Ho’s company and applies there, since they mention they don’t require experience. Dan Yi, who used to work in advertising at a big advertising company, burns her former credentials to start anew and applies as a contract employee for Gyeoroo Book Publishing, claiming she’s a high school graduate.
She gets hired and in a short period of time manages to win everyone’s hearts with her humble enthusiasm and thorough work attitude. She becomes a person everyone can rely on.
In the meantime, Eun Ho’s real feelings towards her become stronger. He has liked her for a long time, but living with her and becoming more and more involved in her life only intensifies those feelings.
Dan Yi initially has a special encounter with a charming man that lives in the same neighborhood. They keep meeting by coincidence and it almost seems fate-like. This person turns out to be Ji Seo Joon (played by Ui Ha Joon), a famous book designer who eventually comes to work together with Gyeoroo as well. On Eun Ho’s side, there’s his colleague and junior Song Hae Rin (played by Jung Yoo Jin), who has had a major crush on him for 3 years.
The series depict the lives of several employees at Gyeoroo, it depicts a lot of (daily) life struggles that everyone goes through and most importantly, it depicts a lot of relationships between different people. All this in combination with the interesting back theme of books and working in the world of book publishing.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m always intrigued by dramas and stories that give a glimpse into the world of a specific industry or field that I’m not familiar with. I learned so much about book publishing through this drama, there were so many aspects of it I never knew anything about. I didn’t even know that book designers were a thing, like, people that specialize in designing book covers. And about what kind of things happen in editing and publishing a book and how books are chosen by publishing companies. It was great to watch a series that showed a group of people all sharing this passion for books, how enthusiastic everyone would get when they would get positive reviews and requests for more print orders. Just watching the atmosphere in this company made me want to work there, lol. I think it’s really nice when people end up working somewhere they can express their love or passion for something so well. I still need to find this place for myself, haha.

Honestly, where do I start? I don’t think I have any negative criticism about this drama. Let me try and phrase everything I felt while watching this, I will do my best.
I have to start with the cast. Because the cast is what made this series for me in the first place. To be honest, I liked everyone. There were some actors in it that I hadn’t seen in a long time that I really liked. I remember watching the scene where the founding members/executives of Gyeoroo were introduced one by one, where they came in for the meeting one by one, and I was like ‘OMG YES THIS GUY’ and ‘AAH YES I LOVE HER’. The way of introducing the characters was really addictive.
The Gyeoroo founding members consisted of:
1. CEO Kim Jae Min (played by Kim Tae Woo). I have seen one drama with him, God’s Gift -14 Days-, where he wasn’t a really sympathetic character (the main character’s husband), but I still kind of liked him, I think. I think he has a really nice face for some reason. Anyways, it was really nice to see him as such an extra character here, he showed a very approachable and funny side of his acting and I couldn’t help but love him from the start. CEO Kim was sometimes like a child, when he couldn’t get his way, but once it was revealed that he was also a single father (his wife passed away) and he was a really respectable president, his character just got this extra depth and credibility.
2. Director Ms. Go Yoo Seon (played by Kim Yoo Mi), the ‘ice queen’ or ‘evil witch’ that everyone feared/looked up to in the beginning. Kim Yoo Mi is one of the actresses in this drama that were new to me, I hadn’t seen any of her dramas before. But what I really liked about her is that her character was so well-written. Because in the beginning, she seems like this cold, mean person, also when it seems like she takes Dan Yi’s advertising proposal and presents it at the meeting as her own. But we find out about her life, how she ran away from her own wedding and how she’s actually quite lonely. I really love that they put so much thought and backstory in every character’s development. It really makes you grow to love every single one of them.
3. Editing Team’s Mr. Bong Ji Hong (played by Jo Han Chul). The ‘OMG YES THIS GUY’ I mentioned earlier was for him. I love this actor. I’ve seen some really hysterical roles of him, which were hilarious, but he showed such a serious and sincere style of acting in this drama, he showed emotion, he cried, he screamed, all the while still maintaining his humoristic side. I was really impressed with his acting in this drama.
His character really popped out when it was revealed that he was married to one of his co-workers (I’ll get to her after this) and they got divorced and they had to deal with all the awkward situations of still being colleagues. He had a really hard time getting used to this, more than she did, and he was also the person who couldn’t seem to move on as fast as she could. He also had his own little arc where he tried to get the company to publish poetry and he had to fight really hard for this. I really liked his character.
4. Marketing Team’s Ms. Seo Young Ah (played by Kim Sun Young). The ‘AAH YES I LOVE HER’ was for her. I haven’t even seen that many of her dramas (but she is in some that are still on my to-watch list), but even with the few roles I’ve seen of her, I love her. In this drama too, she was amazing. Showing both a humoristic side and a mature, tortured side, she was so human and so realistic. She was married to Mr. Bong but got divorced, and from her side, we only see how happy she is with this decision. She’s free, she feels so good, no regrets. So the contrast between the two of them was really powerful. I specifically liked the scenes where we got to see her vulnerability (the scene with the three women crying over their marriage stories after clubbing and the scene where she had to stay with her child at the hospital – I’ll elaborate on these later).

So yeah, the founding members, including Eun Ho, were all really interesting individual characters that all brought something different and indispensible to the story. Their different energies all added something and they made a really nice dynamic within the company.
When you get to know everyone better, you see more and more sides to everyone and for example, while Ms. Go may have been a less sympathetic character in the beginning, I really grew to love her in the end, because she also started opening herself up and giving herself new chances to enjoy life and help others.

And then there were some other interesting and important side characters.
First of all, Park Hoon and Oh Ji Yul. These two were hired by Gyeoroo at the same time as Dan Yi and they kind of stuck together even though they were all in different teams. Dan Yi was admitted to the Task Support Team, Park Hoon to the Marketing Team and Ji Yul to Editing.
Park Hoon (played by Kang Ki Doong) is an young and very passionate (and very extra) individual, who I believe has a very optimistic mindset. He isn’t considerate to be very handsome or impressive, but he keeps going for what he wants, he is very diligent in his work.
I haven’t seen this actor in so long!! Like, he was one of the actors where I went ‘OMG HIM!! Where has he been??’ I think Tomorrow With You is the last thing I remember him from… But I saw on DramaWiki that he has been quite active and he’s also in a few dramas that are on my to-watch list.
Anyway, I LOVED him in this drama. He was hilarious. But the great thing about the funny characters in this series is that they don’t become comic relief. I mean, okay, they are, but their characters aren’t limited to being the comic relief. He still had a story, he was still a person that had to find his way in the world, and that made it even more enjoyable to watch his performance. Especially when he gets involved in Ji Yul’s world. I really loved how seriously he took his role as Ji Yul’s boyfriend when her mom came to visit him to check who he was, lol, he got so intense.
Oh Ji Yul (played by Park Gyu Young) is a young girl who has never had to do anything by herself. Her mother is rich and has given her anything she ever wanted. Her mother is also still very VERY involved with how she lives her life and buys her stuff for every occasion. She hasn’t allowed her daughter to start living on her own, even giving the impression she doesn’t believe Ji Yul would be able to live on her own without her financial support. Her mother also always introduces people to her for blind dates and always gets involved with people Ji Yul hangs out with or dates, no one is ever good enough if she hasn’t picked them out herself. Ji Yul is a very naive and clueless girl, quite dependent on her mother, and she initially isn’t even that interested in books, it’s just the only company that wanted to hire her. But once she arrives at Gyeoroo under the strict supervision of Song Hae Rin, she is forced to get out of her comfy chair, out of her lazy attitude. And after making a crucial mistake and being forced to make up for it, she starts changing her attitude towards work, starts working very hard, reads up on new manuscripts.
Honestly, I loved the dynamic between Park Hoon and Oh Ji Yul so much. They were like the two people who always stuck together and who always had crazy things going on together, who cheered each other up. Park Hoon was the only one who came to help Ji Yul when she had to fix her mistake (paste stickers in 5,000 book copies because she messed up the author’s bio).
I really enjoyed watching their scenes together, they were so extra and always cheered me up. Their scenes were like pallet cleansers after other more serious or emotional scenes, fore example, and I think it was really necessary for them to be there. They added to the already interesting cast with interesting characters of their own. I didn’t know Ji Yul’s actress, but I really liked her acting, Ji Yul was this awkward and derpy person but she still maintained her confidence and really grew as a person throughout the story.

As I mentioned, I’ve seen a lot of Lee Jong Suk, and he always keeps surprising and inspiring me as an actor. In this drama too, his character wasn’t even that particularly extra or special or anything, but he always manages to give his characters a certain charm. Maybe I’m just a bit biased, but he can do very little wrong. I’ve never been disappointed by his acting before. Eun Ho seemed like a very simple person, he doesn’t have a lot of people around him and it’s clear that Dan Yi is the most important to him. Ever since she saved his life (she pushed him away from an approaching car and got hit in his place, breaking both arms and legs), he has been with her and he’s the closest thing to family that he has. He has a gift and he has managed to get a job where he can develop that gift even further.
Even though I did sometimes get some aloof vibes from him in the beginning, also when it was discussed that he kept breaking up with his girlfriends and showing so little interest in anyone else, he’s always the warmest person ever to Dan Yi.
Besides the acting and the substantive side, I also just wish to mention that he was serving some serious looks in this series. Apart from the suits and the fancy coats, his comfy house looks with the woolly sweaters and the fluffy hair… It just made me want to hug him, haha.
I didn’t know actress Lee Na Young, I don’t believe I’ve seen any of her dramas but she has a familiar face for some reason. When checking DramaWiki, I found out she’s been doing more movies than dramas.
(The last drama she did before this one was in 2010!)
Anyway, I think she was very well-casted for the role. Also appearance-wise, because you had to be able to tell she was older, but it still didn’t feel weird for her to be with Eun Ho. Their natural chemistry together just made up for it all. I really liked Dan Yi’s character. She was really rational, really realistic and down-to-earth. You could tell from her face that she was a mature adult woman who had been through a lot, but still managed to keep smiling and work hard. She cared a lot about her daughter and really wanted to be a good mother to her, even though that meant smiling through her tears. The scene where she had a video call with her daughter just after being rejected for a job again (I think?) was really touching. She had really warm expressions on her face towards the people she cared about. She was a very relatable character, I think, and was smart enough. It wasn’t weird that she managed to become such an indispensable person at Gyeoroo in such a short time.
I liked that, when she found out about Eun Ho’s true feelings for her, she was a little surprised at first, but she never made an issue about it. She never went like ‘omg no, we can’t, what will people think, and what about our age gap!’ or something like that. She just really followed her feelings and those brought her to Eun Ho quite naturally. She wasn’t awkward when he kissed her, she didn’t pull back or anything, she just hugged him a little tighter than before. They were so natural as a couple, it was really lovely.

I mentioned something about how this drama depicted a lot of human relationships. Let me just go over a few of them.
First of all, of course, Dan Yi and Eun Ho. What I thought was interesting (I actually wrote notes while watching for the first time), was that their relationship is kind of given away in the intro. If the intro wasn’t there, when the drama started, I had no idea what kind of relationship they had. But the intro already gives away that it’s about this younger boy and a slightly older girl who met when they were kids and went through a lot together and who would eventually ‘open up a new book about each other’. So when we enter the first scene, a flashback to when Dan Yi gets married, we already know at least that they are close. We don’t exactly know in what way, but we can assume that it’s like a close noona-dongsaeng relationship. Even in each other’s phones, they have saved each other respecitvely as ‘Noona’ and ‘Dongsaeng’. We also see that Dan Yi has hesitations to her marriage, she even initially runs away before Eun Ho gets her to go back. But we know that Eun Ho knows that her relationship with her husband has been going kind of on-and-off. Initally, Eun Ho is the kind of younger brother friend who threatens to ‘beat up’ his noona’s boyfriend because he doesn’t treat her right.
But then when we skip to the present and we see that their friendship, or at least, the trust connection between them, has diminshed a little bit. Dan Yi has kept from Eun Ho that she’s already been divorced for a year. Eun Ho still believes they’re living happily together as a family and that her husband has a respectable job.
They grow stronger again after starting to live together and once Dan Yi starts working at the same company. They start spending more time together again and realize how much they depend on each other’s presence. Their friendship was so nice to watch, it was so natural. It wasn’t even an issue that she was older than him, none of that mattered.
And then, when the time was right – actually, when Dan Yi started wavering about her potential relationship with Seo Joon – Eun Ho grabbed his chance to drop hints about his real feelings for her, something Dan Yi was never aware of. But once she found out, it didn’t take her a long time to get used to the idea. As she very nicely explained to Seo Joon at one point, Eun Ho was like ‘a very old book that she’d always carried with her, that she’d read hundreds of times, but lately it suddenly started to feel different and she started to pay more attention to different parts of it, starting underlining passages and it’d started to make her feel different’. I really liked this analogy. It perfectly summed up their relationship. They had been together for so long, thought they knew everything about each other, but then suddenly something changed. She changed her mind about the book she was so familiar with. And then he suddenly became more than a friend to her.

Honestly, I was kind of rooting for Seo Joon in the beginning. From the first time he and Dan Yi met, something felt special, and I just really liked his character. Ui Ha Joon has such a nice smile, it made me smile along with him every single time. And it was a nice storybook encounter they had, like Cinderella, where he found both shoes she lost on the street and just happened to come across the person they belonged to, haha.
Dan Yi chose not to follow this story because she was rational enough, she’d been through enough in life to still believe in fairytales. But they kept meeting by chance and they just had this really nice click in my opinion.
And at that point I still really liked the friendly relationship between her and Eun Ho, so I actually found myself not really minding whom she might end up with. But once they obviously started pushing Seo Joon and Hae Rin together, I already felt like Ahh, this is how it’s gonna go. That tiny bit of predictability is probably the only critical note I have about this series. And it still ended up not bothering me, because that last scene between Seo Joon and Hae Rin was ADORABLE. Anyways, I liked the connection between Dan Yi and Seo Joon and how it just naturally got a bit more awkward, but she made it clear to him the minute she stopped having an interest. And he backed away immeditately as well, because he didn’t want to force anything. FIND YOURSELF A PERSON LIKE THAT.

Quick in-between note, because it’s the tiny details that made this drama so great: the fact that Eun Ho’s girlfriend mentioned in the beginning dumped him for another woman!! I was so happy they normalized that!! They didn’t make a fuss about it or anything. I loved when Dan Yi looked at him like ‘Do you mean–??’ and Eun Ho just kind of shrugged like ‘hey, it’s not like I can help it’. Loved that little detail.
And also, how openly Dan Yi talked about things. She was so down-to-earth and natural. I literally laughed out loud when she got flustered by Eun Ho one time and she just went on mumbling to herself ‘…This is bad, I need to get laid. I’m even getting flustered by Eun Ho now… Ugh, it’s been too long since I had sex’. I mean, in what drama do people talk this openly about things like that to themselves? I haven’t seen a lot of Asian dramas in which this is just casually added in the monologue. I really appreciated it.

Back to the human relationships: as I said, I really like how smooth the connection took shape between Dan Yi and Seo Joon. Their thing in the beginning, where they just accepted each other as neighborhood friends and were even fine not knowing each other’s names, was so refreshing and nice. Even though fairytales aren’t real, and even though they didn’t end up together despite their special way of meeting, it was still nice. It was kind of sad that at the end of the series, they just completely grew apart and didn’t really interact anymore after their trial dating period was cut off. In the beginning Dan Yi was really excited about meeting him, but when Eun Ho officially took his rightful place by her side, she just legitly lost interest in him. This series really portrayed human emotions well, and also how fickle they are and how people can naturally change their minds about things.

Moving on, I really liked the build-up in Seo Joon and Hae Rin’s relationship. Even though it became very obvious that they were being pushed together at some point, it still didn’t happen in one go. There was still a period where Seo Joon really wasn’t comfortable with her and avoided her as much as possible.
Hae Rin’s character development was really nice as well. Because she was kind of introduced as the younger version of Ms. Go, the ‘other ice queen’. But she became so cute after that? When we saw her go through her crush and eventually heartbreak on Eun Ho, and how she became so fiercely active in pursuing Seo Joon to work with Gyeoroo. She started showing a lot of individuality as well and she became super interesting.
Also, can I mention her parents, please, because her parents ROCKED. I loved her parents, haha. I loved that when they found out Eun Ho rejected their daughter they were all like REVENGE MODE, but then they realized how much they actually liked Eun Ho and they just couldn’t bring themselves to hate him. But how they were deadglaring him throughout that book presentation… and then they took their revenge by just making him trip once and they were like ‘this is all we can do, we can’t actually harm him, he’s too nice’. I loved them.
But as I was saying (I told you, there was so much good stuff in this drama, I keep getting side-tracked), I loved how, even when Seo Joon avoided her, Hae Rin kept being her likeable self, she kept supporting him and standing by him from a distance. And that dialogue between them at the end, when they had a meal together and Seo Joon was just grinning from ear to ear trying to make her confess she cared about him. They were super adorbs.

By the way, it was nice to see Lee Jong Suk and Jung Yoo Jin act alongside each other again since W. Although their parts where kind of similar (In W, Yoo Jin’s character was also kind of the second female lead who had a crush on Jong Suk’s character), their friendly chemistry was really nice. I wonder if they’re close in real life, it must’ve been a nice reunion for them too. Otherwise they’re just really good at acting like they get along, haha.

My last comment regarding the human relationships: the relationships that the colleagues had with each other. Every Team had a Team Leader figure, and the employees all kind of fell under that person’s wing. It was always nice to see for example Mr. Bong stand up for Ji Yul because he was responsible for hiring her and he really wanted to give her a chance. While on the other hand, Hae Rin was super strict on Ji Yul. She went all Sparta on her in the beginning, especially when Ji Yul made that big mistake. But after Ji Yul started working more seriously, Hae Rin did see how much effort she started putting in and did come to appreciate her more, so it was nice to see her smile at Ji Yul at the end.

There were three more side side characters at Gyeoroo, one of them was Chae Song Yi (played by Lee Ha Eun). Her role kind of reminded me of the receptionist/junior assistent girl from Touch Your Heart, she was also young and outgoing and loved gossip, but she still was really sincere about her job.
The other two guys were both on the Marketing Team I think, and they had more supportive roles.

One thing I still have to mention, an important part and the only ‘secret to be revealed’ in the series was about this one famous author, Kang Byung Joon. They kept using this as a mystery case – whenever someone would mention Kang Byung Joon at Gyeoroo, everyone would just go quiet or avoid the subject.
The story about Kang Byung Joon was that he just suddenly disappeared. He supposedly wrote his last novel as a way of ending his career, then transferred all his copyrights and whatever to Gyeoroo and disappeared. So there were a lot of rumors, also dark ones, such as that the people from Gyeoroo had him locked up somewhere or even that he suddenly died.
It seems that only CEO Kim and Eun Ho know something about what actually happened to him and they don’t talk about it, only in private and even then they have their own kind of secret code. This is the only secret that Eun Ho is keeping from Dan Yi, as well.
It turns out in the end that Kang Byung Joon was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. His last work was Eun Ho’s first assignment as an editor, so Eun Ho took a personal interest in taking care of Writer Kang. When he started showing signs of Alzheimer’s, Eun Ho kept visiting him, taking walks with him. At some point, Kang Byung Joon started thinking of him as his son, as he had the vague memory of having a son but as his condition worsened and he started forgetting more, he just assumed Eun Ho was his son because he kept visiting him. Eun Ho then agreed to pretending to be a son to me.
However, in the end, it turns out that Seo Joon is actually Writer Kang’s son. There was a book that the writer had written with the title ‘April 23rd’, and the title was a mystery since it’s not even mentioned once in the book itself. We find out April 23rd is Seo Joon’s birthday and the writer wrote it down to keep remembering him. So in the end, he changed the title to his last book as secret message to Seo Joon that he hadn’t forgotten him.
On his side, Seo Joon knew about this, he knew he was Writer Kang’s son, but his mother had given birth to him after they’d already broken up. But he also kind of hoped to himself that the book title was his father’s way of telling him he remembered him. However, he was still frustrated because even if that were the case, his father never tried to find him. He only finds out at the end that it wasn’t that his father never wanted to find him – he couldn’t remember anything anymore because of his Alzheimer’s.
He gets to see his father on the latter’s deathbed.
The reason he finds out is because he anonymously (or under a pseudonym) sends the manuscript for Kang Byung Joon’s last unfinished book to Gyeoroo for publishing. Of course, since Eun Ho knows that the writer couldn’t have written that himself, they realize the April 23 connection and find out soon enough that Seo Joon is the son.

This storyline was build up very gradually and was only wrapped up in the last episode of the series. It’s clever how they planted the name and the mystery case of Kang Byung Joon quite early on and kept making references to it, so in-between everything else that was happening, hearing that name would always make me go, ‘Ah right, that hasn’t been solved yet either’. It was sad that Seo Joon didn’t get to meet his father earlier, but I think they gave his character good closure with it. He had been obsessed with Writer Kang’s disappearence for ten years or so, so he could finally understand what had happened to his father and make peace with Eun Ho as well.

Eun Ho and Seo Joon don’t get off on the right foot in the beginning. They meet even before Seo Joon is introduced to Eun Ho as Dan Yi’s new friend, they meet as chief editor and book designer and because of his suspicions about what happened to Writer Kang, Seo Joon isn’t very amiable towards working together with Gyeoroo (he also believes some of the rumors).
When Eun Ho then meets him as Dan Yi’s new friend and potential dating partner, he is extra turned off because – of course – he doesn’t want Dan Yi dating anyone, let alone him. So there is some tension between the two guys. But I’m glad they keep it professional throughout the series, despite some annoyances maybe, and in the end they make up like brothers, because in a way there were both Kang Byung Joon’s sons.

Let me talk a bit about some scenes that made a big impression on me.
First of all, the scene where Yoo Seon (Ms. Go), Young Ah (Ms. Seo) and Dan Yi go out clubbing together and end up at Yoo Seon’s messy house, all drunk and emotional and they start talking about their experiences with their marriages and how they ended and they cry their eyes out. This scene was such a wonderful, wonderful mess. I enjoyed every moment of it. It was SO good. Not only to give Ms. Go and Ms. Seo more background, but also just to solidy the foundation in the relationship between them all as colleagues and friends. Sometimes you need nights like that to bond.
At the same moment, while the women are drunk, CEO Kim and Eun Ho go to give Mr. Bong some support, who is out in the cold (literally) by himself, getting emotional about his divorce as well. The parallel that was drawn between the women and the men was really well thought of.
So in this scene we come to learn more about how Mr. Bong and Ms. Seo’s marriage was, and what event eventually made Ms. Seo want to get a divorce. It shows how important it is to communicate. Everyone needs someone to be on their side. Young Ah lost that feeling with Ji Hong.
And then, all that has to happen is a shop employee snapping at her and her husband not standing up to her. Worse, taking the shop employee’s side.
It may have seemed like an exaggerated reaction from Young Ah to base her divorce on that, but as she mentioned later to him, ‘Do you really think I divorced you because of that one time in the mall?’. It was just the final drop to make the bucket spill over. And it’s really mature of them that they still get together to meet their child, it’s not like only one of them gets to see him at the time. They make time to have a meal with their son together, they still need to face each other daily and they don’t try to avoid that, even though it will take some time for the wounds to heal.
And then Mr. Bong finds out the new guy Young Ah is dating is one of the writers that he’s working with and he gets all emotional again, saying ‘women are scary’. You can think about that whatever you want. Young Ah is a strong independent woman, she gets a divorce and she moves on. Ji Hong seems a little more unstable in that aspect, at some points it still seems like he expects them to get back together.
During the scene where their son is in hospital and Young Ah doesn’t even notify him and he gets there later and they really need to be there together as his parents… It was such a vulnerable scene, but it really showed that their child was a strong enough reason for them to still get along, not just because they had to see each other at the office everyday. It just showed a really real and interesting relationship between them.
This drunk scene is the first time Dan Yi openly confesses her own story to people she doesn’t really know yet. How her husband left her, how hard it’s been on her after devoting her life for her child. And then we also learn Ms. Go’s story, we see Yoo Seon getting emotional, telling them about how she ran away from her wedding.
What I also found interesting was when we meet the guy Yoo Seon was supposed to marry, as he delivers food to their office one night. Coincidentally, only Young Ah and Dan Yi are there at the moment (they ordered the food) and they recognize him from the picture Yoo Seon showed them that night. So in a way, it may have been kind of comforting for Yoo Seon, because she didn’t have to explain anything to them, they immediately got the picture, they immediately understood how awkward this must be for her and that they should show her support if she needed it. What was remarkable, though, was that Yoo Seon lied to her former fiancé about being married and having kids. She broke off the engagement and worked herself all the way up to a respectable position at a respectable company, she became a director, she went all-in for her career… but she was still embarrassed to let him know she didn’t get married yet.
I’m not sure if I can explain it right, but there was so much raw emotion and so much human depth in this scene where they cried their eyes out together, three single women in their late 30ies (edit: according to DramaWiki, Yoo Seon is 40 – I wouldn’t have guessed). It was so nice to get such an emotional insight in these women’s lives, it just reminds you that everyone is struggling in their own way and you can never know what they hide. The next day, while Young Ah is all friendly with Dan Yi, Yoo Seon just reverts back to how she always is at work, and only shows a kind side in the way you wink at someone without anyone noticing.
I also really liked Yoo Seon’s dynamic with the CEO, it was like he was the only person in the company that she really looked up to and who could make her smile. Honestly, the thing with the buttons was hilarious. She kept dropping buttons from her shirt in his office and he would just immediately spot them and get completely distracted. The scene where he had to sew her button back to her shirt while she was just sitting there was hilarious.
And I’m really glad they ended up together, that was the cutest thing. I loved it when he told her she was the balance between all the executives and she had that tiny smile when he left. <3
Oh, and one last part: the little arc Mr. Bong had with the poetry. Gyeoroo principally didn’t publish poetry because it usually didn’t sell very well, but Mr. Bong was a big poetry lover and he fought so hard for it. There was this one scene where he and CEO Kim had a falling out and they were screaming at each other, and it was just pindrop silent in the office and it gave me so many goosebumps. The hierarchy was quite strange, because Mr. Bong was actually older than the CEO but he still had to listen to him. The CEO even called Mr. Bong ‘hyung’, I believe. And then Mr. Bong went to visit this poet he had been fighting so hard for, only to find him dead in his department, just when the CEO reflected on his behavior and called him to tell him they would publish the poetry. That was such an emotional period for Mr. Bong, also just after his divorce, and I got so much sympathy for his character through that bit. He was just so alone in his views at that moment. In the end, they do agree to publish this poetry collection because everyone (except the CEO) really likes it and this made my day because Mr. Bong was so happy and the CEO just felt really betrayed, lol. He thought everyone would vote against it and now he was the only one.

On to the romance part! When Eun Ho and Dan Yi start dating, they are the loveliest. The simplest type of happiness, reading books and taking naps together, with the cutest kisses (and cheek-bites?!) in-between to spice it up a little. I loved how, despite all these cute gestures, the relationship between them was still so natural. Dan Yi was never embarrassed of showing anything of herself, there was no hesitation. It showed how mature she was and it was so nice to have a main character like that, someone who doesn’t flinch or starts blushing when a guy holds her hand for the first time, but someone who is just comfortable with hugs and skinship and understands people and has the kind of natural intellect to find her place.
The worst thing that happens in the entire series is when the board finds out Dan Yi lied about her job application. One of the mean ladies at a company Dan Yi applied for in the beginning of the series turns out to be a friend of Yoo Seon and she tells her about Dan Yi’s resume (which was none of her business? She was quite spiteful). And then, according to the company rules, they had to terminate her contract.
And then suddenly the whole mood in the office changes, everyone becomes awkward towards her. Young Ah was just about to ask if she could upgrade Dan Yi to the Marketing Team because of her skills and consistently excellent ideas, especially for someone who was just in the Task Support Team. But we see how much Dan Yi loves the company and the people and it’s heart-breaking to see her become aware of everyone giving her the cold shoulder. Even Young Ah, who was supposed to be her friend, even Park Hoon and Ji Yul, everyone just becomes awkward around her and she’s smart enough to get the message and quit out of her own volition.
Yoo Seon helps her get into a small publishing company, but they are so unprofessional and even illegal there (fraud, plagiarism, tax evations and debts they never paid off).
It was interesting to see the do’s and don’ts of publishing companies. I started off as a complete noob, but I learned so much that when she started at that other company, even I could understand that that company was really bad.
Dan Yi is eventually re-hired by Gyeoroo because she wins an Idea Contest she participated in when she still worked there. The founding members are then able to turn to a special recruitment rule to re-hire here and all is well.

Right, the last thing I want to mention: THE TRENCHCOATS. Oh my lord, did I almost fall off my chair laughing. Apparently, when the board has to decide on a very important proposal or book or thing, they all come to work wearing a beige trenchcoat which they dramatically flip into the air as they walk. They all come in wearing sunglasses and these trenchcoats like the bosses they all are. And whenever they’re near, there would be this gust of wind to announce their arrival, it was hilarious. And then CEO Kim did it as well when he came to see Dan Yi to re-hire her. There was this gust of wind and I was like YESS THE TRENCHCOATS ARE BACK, haha.
Loved how Dan Yi even tried to do the same on her first day back, but she stopped herself because she thought it might come off too soon.

I went through so many different emotions while watching this drama.
One moment I would be crying with laughter, the next time I would be crying along with the characters, one moment I would be on the edge of my seat with goosebumps, the next moment I would be laughing about random in-between scenes again. There was so much variety, so much diversity, so much humanity. It never felt like it was too much and I believe every single moment, every single scene, every single dialogue was important. Nothing felt unnecessary. I love series that depict humans, people, emotions as raw and real as possible. In this drama, we are introduced to the reality of a struggling single mother trying to find a job. No matter how much life experience you’ve built up, when it comes to what you can put on your application form, the world is a harsh place. You really need to be lucky to get into a place that will give you a chance, even if you don’t have experience.

On a more personal note, I was also able to relate to several parts of the story. I’ve also been searching for work where I can express myself best, and even though I am currently in a quite stable position with a full-time job, it’s still not my passion and I’m still thinking about how I can incorporate what I love doing most into my life. Before I got this job (which I luckily got because of some skills I’ve worked on), I have also been in a position where my lack of experience really worked against me. The vicious cycle: how can you build up experience when all companies want is people who already have experience? Where do you start?
Actually, last week I got some pretty confrontational feedback that really made me think about this, I was already on the verge of just giving up since the feedback I got was about some points that I’ve been struggling with all my life and that I can’t change that easily because they’re part of my personality. And at that time, I watched the episode where Ji Yul made the mistake and where she became extremely aware of the fact that she actually wasn’t passionate enough about the job. There was this scene where she was looking around the office, seeing all the people work so enthusiastically together on books, and this gave her the motivation to try harder. She could’ve also just decided to drop it, right there and then. But she pushed herself to read up on stuff and force herself into taking an interest and this worked for her. And it also kind of inspired me to keep going, even though I still haven’t found the passion for the work I currently do – I need the job, and maybe along the way I’ll become more interested in it as well.

I would recommend this drama 100%. I loved the dynamic and the pace of the series. Interestingly enough, even though so much happened and you get to know so many different characters, the pace was always nice, nothing was rushed, everything was balanced. The transitions between the scenes and flashbacks, between the different emotions of every scene, nothing felt unnatural. It was a real pleasure and joy to watch it, all the way.
The relationships between all the characters were very well-written and the character development was really nice. The story was good and solid and insteresting, and I loved how they incorporated the book theme within the stories and the dialogues, including quotes and references to existing books that I can imagine will have been promoted a lot because of this drama.

It’s been a while since I just sat back and enjoyed every single moment of an episode. A drama that made me want to watch it again as soon as I finished it. Or made me wish I took even more time to enjoy it. It has really brought back my love for contemporary drama, where romance isn’t the only thing that makes the story anymore but you also actually learn something.
Very, very good.

After watching this on Netflix (which is new to me, K-Dramas on Netflix), I became really interested in watching more on this platform. I have three more dramas planned on my list for after this, and once I finish those I think I will start on the more recent ones that I’ve been so curious for and not specifically follow my list anymore (think Itaewon Class, It’s Okay To Not Be Okay etc.). I just can’t wait to watch all the good content.
Series like these are what makes my love for K-Dramas so real. I hope this was an enjoyable review to read and I hope that I was able to convey my genuine love for this series. Please let me know in the comments if you have any additional thoughts! 😀

See you next time!

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.

Big
(빅 / Bik)
MyDramaList rating: 4.0/10

Hi everyone! Back with a new review~ I have a couple of days off from work and this allowed me to finish this series in a relaxed way and to write a review without feeling rushed.

I’m excited to fill another blog post with content because I do have a lot to say about this drama. It’s been on my list out of curiosity, I knew it was old but I remember seeing the advertisement way back in the day when I just started watching K-Dramas and I still thought it’d be one of those golden oldie classics that you had to see once.
I’ll start with some basic summary and character information before I go on with my personal comments.

Summary: Big is a 16-episode drama about teacher Gil Da Ran (played by Lee Min Jung) who has had a miraculous love story encounter. At a friend’s wedding, she bumped into a guy and fell down a flight of stairs while trying to catch the bridal bouquet and this left her with a fractured spine and some other injuries. However, the guy she bumped into, Seo Yoon Jae (played by Gong Yoo), happens to be a doctor who commits to Da Ran completely, and not just to tending to her injuries. He claims he feels responsible and will need to take care of her the rest of his life – they get engaged. A romance book love story, don’t you think? Da Ran certainly is very giddy about it, because Yoon Jae seems like Prince Charming reincarnated. However, as their wedding day approaches, she starts feeling more and more anxious because he keeps calling off their dates due to busy work.
In the meantime, a transfer student from America arrives in Da Ran’s class, the 18-year old Kang Kyung Joon (played by Shin Won Ho). He and Da Ran meet first on the bus on the way to school, and then turn out to be student and teacher. Kyung Joon is a bit cheeky, being used to doing what he wants in The States, but he and Da Ran keep bumping into each other a couple of times and he seems a bit interested in her.
One day, Da Ran has a phone call with Yoon Jae and she asks him whether he really loves her or not. Upset as she is, Kyung Joon takes her on his motor bike to a place near the river. Yoon Jae calls back to say that he’ll answer her question in person and Da Ran waits for him.
As Yoon Jae is on his way to her and Kyung Joon is on the way back, they are both involved in the same car accident and both crash through the guard rail and into the river. Yoon Jae attempts to save Kyung Joon.
Hearing about the accident, Da Ran hurries to the hospital only to hear that Yoon Jae didn’t make it. However, something miraculous has happened.
Yoon Jae’s body, already in the morgue, suddenly wakes up. But it’s not Yoon Jae. As it turns out: Yoon Jae and Kyung Joon have swapped souls. Kyung Joon is trapped in Yoon Jae’s 30-year old body while Yoon Jae is in Kyung Joon’s, who is in a coma. Da Ran is the only person who believes him (after he repeats some things they talked about at the riverside that only Kyung Joon would know).

So, that’s how the first episode starts. I have to say that, despite the initial cringe-worthy editing (that tumble off the stairs lmao) and typical oldschool acting, I did find it quite amusing to watch. It was so bizarre that it was hilarious and Gong Yoo acting like a teenager really cracked me up.
The rest of the drama mainly focusses on the dilemma at hand: how can they switch back, the practical impracticalities of Kyung Joon staying in Yoon Jae’s body… and of course the complications of Da Ran slowly getting attached to Kyung Joon’s personality rather than Yoon Jae’s, even though it’s still her fiancé’s body and face. Quite confusing.

Okay, so, what do we have to deal with? Because it’s not just about Da Ran and Kyung Joon/Yoon Jae. We are led to believe that Yoon Jae was wavering about the wedding and that he even may have had an affair with his doctor colleague Lee Se Young (played by Jang Hee Jin). He had a key to her house which he hadn’t given back yet.
On the other hand, there is Jang Ma Ri (played by Suzy), Kyung Joon’s friend and self-proclaimed girlfriend from The States who comes to Korea to find him. She eventually also finds out the truth and keeps butting in with what’s happening.
Then there’s Da Ran’s and Yoon Jae’s respective families. Da Ran’s family owns a dumpling restaurant and her younger brother Chung Sik (played by Baek Sung Hyun) goes to the school she teaches at – he also falls in love with Ma Ri. Yoon Jae is from a family that’s quite well off, his father is a doctor. His parents both live in America as well, but eventually come to Korea.
Kyung Joon was raised in L.A. by his single mom who had her own famous restaurant, but she was shot in front of him by gangsters one night and this traumatized him for blood. The only relatives he has left are his uncle from his mom’s side and his wife, who help him accomodate when he comes to Korea but are actually more concerned with his inheritance and how much money they can make by selling the house he lives in. They own a restaurant in Seoul in the image of the restaurant Kyung Joon’s mother used to own.

And now the underlying secrets that are only revealed at the end of the series. It is shown that, even before the accident, Yoon Jae and Kyung Joon both own a version of the same drawing or painting. It shows two angels reaching out for each other and the word ‘Miracle’. It takes a long time before this is explained, but it’s clear quite early on that them swapping souls has something to do with the connection of them both having this picture.
I remember thinking halfway, ‘what if they’re actually brothers, lol’. But then that actually turned out to be the case. We hear multiple people say different confusing things, when Yoon Jae’s mother finds out about Kyung Joon in the hospital and that they were both in the same accident, she reacts really suspiciously, making phone calls saying ‘I found him’ and stuff.
And it becomes clear that Yoon Jae’s father has been looking for this ‘missing kid’.
In short: Kyung Joon is Yoon Jae’s younger brother – but he was born through a surrogate (Kyung Joon’s mom) because Yoon Jae’s mom couldn’t have another child. Yoon Jae was very sick as a child and they decided to have another child purely for the purpose of becoming a donor for Yoon Jae should he relapse. (I remember a situation like this from Grey’s Anatomy, where there were two girls, sisters, and one was always getting hurt or sick and the other basically existed as a donor for her.)
So… that was a little messed up.
Kyung Joon, whilst in Yoon Jae’s body, basically discovers all the truths there are too learn about his own life and Yoon Jae’s.

I read a couple of reviews from mydramalist and such, and I have to agree with most of them in that this drama definitely dragged on. And dragged on. And dragged on. And dragged on.
In the budding love between Da Ran and Kyung Joon, in the development of the situation with Kyung Joon’s body, in resolving what to do in general.
I mean, I can imagine how confusing it must be for Da Ran when she falls for someone who is not her fiancé… but who is in her fiancé’s body. Even so, she dragged on how she really felt for a long time and this became quite annoying at some point. Also with Kyung Joon’s body not waking up… I remember getting impatient and thinking, come on guys, just get on with it.
Let me get into a little more detail about a few things that annoyed me.

First of all, Gil Da Ran herself. I know Lee Min Jung from a couple of other dramas (of course I loved her in Boys Before Flowers where she kicked butt), but honestly, I think Da Ran’s character was wasted on her. She’s a great actress, but Da Ran is not a very well-written character. I personally thought she lacked personality and she was way too submissive. She literally couldn’t take decisions by herself or stand up for herself and mostly just followed ill advices given to her by people that wanted her to separate from Kyung Joon. Instead of listening to her own heart, she kept taking detours and she kept avoiding having to come clean about how she was really feeling. And this caused her to also become very whimsical. Like, I think she changed her mind a dozen of times, but as unpredictable as possible. One minute she would be like ‘nah I can’t do this, this is wrong, I need to wait for Yoon Jae’ and then she would be reminded of something through something and she’d suddenly be like ‘but no! I feel more for Kyung Joon now!’ and then on repeat.
When she ultimately publicly announced her love for ‘KKJ’ (whom everyone at that point thought was someone she was having an affair with), she seemed so happy with herself while literally no one besides Kyung Joon knew what she was talking about. So in that sense she was living in her own little world. She never spoke about anything with anyone, she didn’t confide in anyone, she just kind of made of lame excuses or reasons when a suspicious situation occurred.
On the other hand, I can only imagine how her seemingly going on-and-off with Yoon Jae was super confusing to her parents. One day she was happy with him, the next day they were broken up, oh no wait they’re still together, oh no what they’re split up? Oh but now she loves him again? What’s going on???
Da Ran didn’t get her act together, and this for me showed how instable her character was. It seemed like the writers hadn’t thought about her character/personality in terms of how she would deal with this situation. She was fluctuating and wavering and couldn’t make up her mind about what she wanted to do. And this made it hard for me to keep up with her, along with the fact that I couldn’t find a single aspect of her character that resonated with me because of her lack of individuality.
Honestly, when she decided to go full on Kyung Joon at the end and started acting all crazy, she did just seem like a crazy person to me, because it was like suddenly she was given personality traits and they came out of nowhere.
Also, with all the fuss made about her being a teacher and Kyung Joon’s nickname for her being ‘Gil Teacher’, we literally see her stand in front of a class ONCE. There’s a few scenes of her sitting with her friend in the teacher’s office, but there’s actually not a lot of footage where we’re shown what kind of a teacher she is. As timid and indecisive as she is in the rest of the series, I was actually quite curious as to how she would handle a class of teenagers. Seeing as the only scene where we see her teach, is also a scene in which the kids make fun of her and she isn’t able to shut them up. Although this was a very rude situation – I mean, the kids were actually bullying her and making fun of her for breaking her spine? – it also showed that Da Ran wasn’t able to stand up for herself, even in her job. So that made the whole ‘she’s a teacher’ idea a bit incredible to me.
By the way, the whole thing where she broke her spine falling down the stairs also felt a bit extreme. Like, we don’t actually get to see her when she’s injured, it just skips to after she’s already completely healed, so what exactly was the point of mentioning she was so badly injured if it actually didn’t have any further repercussions in the story? Was it really just to create a bridge for the development of her relationship with Yoon Jae? Because if so, they could’ve decided on way less extreme things. I mean, they could have still had the encounter if he had just romantically caught her, or he would’ve helped with some minor injuries. But making this whole thing up about her fracturing her spine and him deciding he would forever take care of her… It all felt a little forced and unreal to begin with.

Second of all, Ma Ri. I was initially surprised by the fact that Suzy was advertised so much all over this drama, there’s even a poster with just her and Gong Yoo, while she was just a side character. And honestly, I didn’t think it was about Ma Ri at all. But the promotion stuff was probably because it was Suzy, and not because the character she played was actually all that important. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Suzy and I think her acting has progressed amazingly in the last couple of years, but this was still in the time of Dream High and she just got away with playing this cocky but endearing self-proclaimed second female lead. I didn’t find Ma Ri that endearing though, she was stubborn and a little arrogant and self-absorbed and she showed 0 respect, even to older people. She only cared about Kyung Joon and herself. Even when Da Ran’s brother Chung Sik basically threw himself at her feet, she just stepped on him.
And then she had the audacity to tell Da Ran and Kyung Joon how they had been disregarding everyone’s feelings (most of all hers). While she had done the exact same thing to Chung Sik and never apologized for it, just took it for granted. I get that a lot of people would let her get away with it because she was just a little irrational girl and she was actually a good kid, but I think she lacked basic manners. And when she started butting in and basically manipulated Da Ran into telling Kyung Joon to go back to his own body so she could be with Yoon Jae again when he woke up. Here, too, I blamed Da Ran for not standing up for herself, but tbh Ma Ri had no right to start blaming others just because she was jealous Kyung Joon fell in love with someone else. As one review mentioned, and I agree with this as well, it was a pity that there were two potential female love rival characters created, and nothing was done with them. Se Young’s character had way more potential than just being brushed off as the seductive ‘other’ woman. In the end, we never even find out what the real extent of her relationship with Yoon Jae was. She first tells Da Ran they slept together a few times, but then afterwards she’s like ‘I lied, he never actually came to my house after I gave him my house key’. So I don’t even know if there even was an affair at all. And the second one being Ma Ri, who, as I quote from this review ‘is mostly just an annoying fly on the wall with weak purpose’. I agree that it would have been different if there was actual romantic history between her and Kyung Joon, but now everything from her was just one-sided and Kyung Joon didn’t even want her to be there.

And then the most unfair thing: how literally everyone is talking about Yoon Jae and Kyung Joon as if they’re not there and as if they don’t have a say in their own lives. Kyung Joon literally has to watch from someone else’s body how his uncle betrays him and how Yoon Jae’s parents talk about him as a ‘tool to save their real son’. Yoon Jae is literally in a coma from 15 episodes and doesn’t get anything.
Which brings me to the most frustrating and confusing ending that I’ve seen in a while: nothing is solved. We get a ‘1 year later’, Ma Ri sends Da Ran an email saying that they both switched back and they both have no memory from before the accident. Yet, 5 minutes later, someone gets off the bus behind Da Ran, calls her name, and we get a reenactment of the scene from when she and Kyung Joon first met. We hear the voice (which is Gong Yoo’s, without a doubt), but for some reason they don’t show his face. I don’t know if this was to keep the viewer guessing, but for me it was so obvious it was still Kyung Joon in Yoon Jae’s body and I’m just confused. So, they never switched back? The whole point of the series, the one thing that the drama should have been leading to… doesn’t happen? What the actual fudge?

It feels like I watched a whole bunch of episodes that didn’t actually resolve anything. And even when the main story was already so flimsy, they still added other irrelevant minor side stories to characters that really didn’t need one? Like, the love story between Da Ran’s colleagues? And the fact that Da Ran’s school’s principal and Kyung Joon’s uncle all had connections to Da Ran’s parents in the past? Honestly, these were really irrelevant and didn’t add anything to the story. I wished they’d spent that screentime on actually fixing the main story’s foundation.
One more critical comment about Da Ran’s teacher colleagues. So there’s this teacher who has a crush on Da Ran but is too scared to face her and Da Ran’s friend helps him but falls for him herself in the process.
But, seriously, this whole side story was unstable as heck as well. Because the first thing the male teacher does in his quest to pursue Da Ran is introduce himself to her parents. Like, without her consent, without her even knowing he is romantically interested in her… He just introduces himself to her family, who then assume there’s something between them and practically immediately accept him as their new son-in-law?
I mean… what?

Just a quick comment in between, this male teacher character was portrayed by Moon Ji Yoon, who passed away in March this year at the age of 36. I’ve seen him in several dramas, and I was surprised to see him so young in this one. I kept this in mind while I watched this series, just to remember him. Rest in peace, dear sir.

Anyhow, to sum it up, this drama had potential from the beginning. I’ve read several reviews that shared the opinion that it started out very good and interesting, but for a lot of people it started to drag from about episode 8~10 on. I was really curious as to how the series was going to play out and how they would deal with the soul switching and stuff, but in the end I’m kind of let down.
The only thing that saved this series for me was Gong Yoo. Because honestly, his character was the only character that saw things as messy as they were. Kyung Joon was the biggest victim in the entire series, being trapped in a body of a stranger, who then turned out to be his brother, and to be in love with a woman who was actually meant to be with the person whose body he’s just temporarily inhibiting. And yet, everyone found a way to make their own feelings bigger than his. He was the guy who couldn’t do anything about his situation. He was the center of the mess and he couldn’t do anything to change it and he just had to watch his dear ones circle around him, trying to figure out something to do.
And even though Da Ran kept continuously telling him that he was just a kid and that he shouldn’t act so childishly, he was honestly the most mature character in the entire series. At least he acted appropriately for someone who was put in that bizarre situation. And I felt like he had all the right in the world to lash out and act crazy because, come on, the whole situation was so messed up! I can imagine losing your mind a little and just wanting to run off and whatnot. Instead he had to watch other people decide what to do with his body.

I had really hoped that they would’ve played out the ending a little more. At least solve the thing! Show Kyung Joon in his original body again. Because now the whole ‘Da Ran coming to terms with falling in love with a high schooler’ came down to nothing. It was still Yoon Jae’s body in the end. We’ll never see her actually hold hands with Kyung Joon and deal with society’s criticism regarding age gaps in relationships. I mean, they made such a big deal about their feelings, they dragged it out for so freaking long, and still they gave us nothing in the end. So that was a shame.

I really liked seeing Shin Won Ho in this drama. I’ve seen him in some dramas from 2016/2017 and he looked exactly the same as in 2012? (lol)
It was a shame that he didn’t get to act more in this series, that he just had to lay in a hospital bed forever. I really liked his character and his acting in the first episode and I was actually wondering how it would look when he and Da Ran would end up together.

Lastly, there were two actual kisses in this drama, of which the latter was a tiny bit more satisfying to watch because at least they were on the same page for a moment, but it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I would’ve liked. Even after that second kiss, where you finally thought Da Ran would give in to her feelings for Kyung Joon and forsake Yoon Jae, she still changed her mind after that. In the end, we all have to wait for indecisive and timid little Da Ran to come to terms with something that we’ve all been ready for since the first 5 episodes. It wasn’t fair to keep Kyung Joon in doubt for so long, the boy has it tough.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this drama. It starts out interesting, but then halfway it suddenly seemed like the writers didn’t know what they were doing anymore and how to fix the thing they’d started, and the ending is just one big question mark. The series literally doesn’t have a conclusion. The crisis isn’t solved. The answer isn’t given. It’s really not satisfying.

Gong Yoo was the reason I could keep going, because he just brought the sense that everyone and everything else lacked. His intentions and his feelings were clear from the start and he was, in a way, like us: he was just waiting for the rest to catch up and come to a solution. Which didn’t come.
And Da Ran and him just kept going back and forth about what they wanted and how they felt and they kept lying to spite each other but Da Ran always went too far in and just couldn’t see that it was a facade and he actually cared for her and was just hurt by her own indecisiveness. It got very tiring.

So for now I’m done for a while with golden oldies. Watching this really made me appreciate how far K-Dramas have come in their originality in theme and plots. This was just a bit too overly dramatic and indecisive story writing for me. I’d expected more from Lee Min Jung as an actress, because I know she can bring much more to the table.
A lot of the side characters were either too irrelevant, or could’ve been made so much more relevant. What’s most important is that the main story wasn’t solid and the main crisis in the series wasn’t solved. And that should’ve been the most basic thing, solving the issue that needs to be solved. It just leaves you with a lot of questions and unresolved stuff.

So now I’m finally starting a drama that I’ve been looking forward to for so incredibly long. I’m probably going to watch it on Netflix.
Until my next review! ^^

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.

Touch Your Heart
(진심이 닿다 / Jinsimi Dahda)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hello everyone!! It’s been a couple of weeks, I took my time to finish this drama and write a nice review for you again ^^
I could’ve finished it earlier but I didn’t want to rush and I also took plenty of time to make myself comfortable and really follow my mood (and not just watch it because I wanted to finish it quickly but because I really wanted to enjoy every single moment of it. This drama moved up a little on my list as well since I’m getting impatient of waiting for series that I’ve been postponing, so I’ll switch between golden oldies and more recent stuff that I’ve been dying to watch more often.
I hope my way of thinking makes sense haha, I tend to change moods and ideas about how to go about my list very regularly.

This series originally wasn’t on my list, but a friend recommended it to me and I thought it’d be cute since I saw comments about it that referred to it as a kind of spin-off of this couple, since they also acted as a couple in Goblin. People liked to think of it as a story in which their Goblin characters were reincarnated and able to meet again as their TYH characters, which I thought was a cute concept. Not sure if that was the actual idea behind it, but I suppose they were casted again together also because they showed good chemistry before.

I’ll say right off the bat that I found this a very sweet, refreshing, enjoyable drama to watch. It had me laugh out loud multiple times and I also really liked all the side characters. Watching another office-type drama after What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim? was nice and I’m starting to like this type of drama more now.

Touch Your Heart is a 16-episode drama (around 1 hour 7 minutes per episode, so be prepared for that) about famous model and actress Oh Yoon Seo (played by Yoo In Na), who has been facing a very difficult time due to her involvement in a scandal with a chaebol. She has been waiting anxiously for a chance to make her big comeback, and when a new script accidentally falls into her hands for an upcoming drama, she falls completely in love with it and claims that she wants to play the main characters. Although the writers are initially quite hesitant because of her reputation (and because part of her fame comes from bad acting), Yoon Seo wants to do it no matter what. Eventually, she and her managing team manage to persuade the writers. Since the part is for a female attorney, she agrees to a 3-month field training at an actual law firm so that she’ll be able to portray the role as realistically and professionally as possible. As a former law major, she thinks she can do it and she’s willing to do anything for this drama.
She starts her training at Always Law Firm, because the CEO there is related to Yoon Seo’s agency’s CEO and she is assigned to work as a secretary for Always’s ace attorney, Kwon Jung Rok (played by Lee Dong Wook). Initially, the two couldn’t be more different. Kwon Jung Rok is a very stiff and logical person, who is also the only one in the law firm who refuses to go easy on Yoon Seo just because she’s famous. He also decidedly keeps calling her Oh Jin Sim, which is her real name (Yoon Seo is her stage name). While most of the law firm’s employees fawn over Yoon Seo, Jung Rok is very strict with her and doesn’t really expect anything from her as everything about her just screams naive actress who has no idea what she’s doing at a law firm and doesn’t take it seriously. As time goes by, though, he is surprised by how much effort she’s willing to put in and he realizes she is actually quite capable of being a good secretary because of her natural skill of memorizing things, and not just scripts.
The drama follows them as their relationship develops and they eventually fall for each other (of course), but it also continues after Yoon Seo’s training period ends and she goes back to acting. Will they be separated or will they still be able to be together, even though their worlds are so different?
Also, how will Yoon Seo/Jin Sim deal with the repercussions of her past?

So what I liked about the storyline is that, although of course it would a romance story, it did actually cover a lot of serious situations that law firms deal with. I liked that it gave the law-related issues enough screentime and made the romance between Jung Rok and Yoon Seo something that supported that. Their bond became closer while working on various cases together, I liked that they showed a couple of example cases, because I have never really had a lot of interest in law or anything like that, but this drama made it interesting to me. As I’ve mentioned before in my review of Radio Romance, I always appreciate it when a drama provides insight in a certain business or industry that I don’t know a lot about or wouldn’t personally get into myself due to lack of interest.
On that note, I have to say that the build-up of the story was quite surprising to me, as was the ending. Because, as K-Dramas usually go, I thought it would take ages for the main couple to get together and that there would just be one main thing that would become a dramatic issue in-between. However, it took only 7 episodes for Jung Rok and Yoon Seo to open up about their true feelings about each other and this was quite a speedy process – they were really frank and direct so as to not leave any misconceptions to the other. When they both found out they liked each other, they just straight out told each other. That was really refreshing.
When the truth about Yoon Seo’s scandal came out and she suddenly became a client to Jung Rok, that was also an interesting thing because in this way she really got to experience both sides of a trial. Truthfully, when the chaebol returned I really expected this to be the dramatic thing. The Return of the Chaebol, who would dig up all sorts of wounds from Yoon Seo and start harrassing her again. He did, but it only lasted like two episodes or something before they already managed to arrest him. So for me, that was like ‘oh, they got him already? this part’s over already?’ I don’t know, I figured they would use this as a more dramatic comeback of the ghost from Yoon Seo’s past.
But instead they decided to fill that last few episodes with a temporary break-up and a follow-up of a case that they had been working on together before. I’m not sure why, but I found this an interesting choice, and also refreshing, because it wasn’t very predictable. If they had gone with the Return of the Chaebol as the main dramatic issue, it would’ve been more standard? Following the trope? So I don’t mind, but in that way it kept surprising me in a positive way.

Let me just quickly go over the main and side characters, the people who made this drama for me. This time, I’ll discuss the characters and the actors simultaneously, because I have so much love for everyone.
First of all, Yoo In Na. I saw her first in Secret Garden (which seems like centuries ago) where she played the female lead’s best friends, and other than that I’ve only seen her in My Love From Another Star (in which she also played a famous actress) and Goblin. I doubt she’ll ever be able to portray a character that doesn’t stand out for her ‘beauty’ because everything about her just screams model. But I would like to see what more she has to offer in acting. This was a very interesting role which fit her very well, I think.
I know Lee Dong Wook of course from Goblin, but the first drama I saw with him was Wild Romance, which I loved. I’m thinking of rewatching that sometime, it’s not very well-known I think. Anyways, I realize I haven’t actually seen that much of him, but because of his popularity I still know him. I think his character in Touch Your Heart was quite mellow, it was a character who internalized his emotions a lot, but he still managed to show different sides. Once he fell for Yoon Seo he started smiling a lot more and at the end, when they got back after their short break more heads over heels than ever, he became a complete fanboy, haha.
Even though he was so sceptical about her in the beginning, he slowly but surely started understanding her and her world better and he even started watching parts of the dramas she appeared in.

I was so happy to see both Oh Jung Se and Oh Ui Shik in this drama, because I love these guys. I’ve seen them as side characters in multiple dramas now and I just love them. They’re such versatile actors, they can be so endearing and hilarious at the same time and I was just really happy to see them in their respective roles in this series.
Oh Jung Se played Always Law Firm’s CEO Yeon Joon Gyu, who was related to Yoon Seo’s CEO (although I’m still not sure how exactly? Brothers? Cousins? They share the same last name, in any case). I loved his character, he was such a weird pervert sometimes but you just had to feel for him. He was a big fan of Yoon Seo, so he was beyond excited to have her at his firm and also shamelessly just pined for her love, even though he could be her uncle. At the same time, despite all the childish mannerisms, he was a really good guy and he really cared for his team, although they sometimes went past him. When Jung Rok took a major case without asking him for permission, Joon Gyu treated him really badly for like a day before already making up with him over drinks.
Furthermore, there were Lawyer Dan Moon Hee (played by Park Kyung Hye) and Lawyer Choi Yoon Hyuk (Shim Hyung Tak). First of all, I’ve seen Park Kyung Hye in several dramas before as a minor side character, but I think she really showed herself as an actress in this series, even though her character mainly fulfilled a comical purpose. I think she deserves more credit as an actress, because she’s probably one of those female actresses who wouldn’t be considered to be ‘pretty’ enough to become a female lead in a drama, but I love seeing these underdogs break down that standard by getting a proper chance to show what they’ve got to offer as actors. Dan Moon Hee is a bit timid as a lawyer, but she is also the woman who would fall in love with a guy at one glance (be it a shop employee, a delivery guy, etc) and this has made her quite the clown within the firm because in silence, no one really takes it seriously anymore when she claims she’s found a new love – and in sad truth, her crushes have never been mutual, so she always gets let down by love.
I didn’t know Shim Hyung Tak, I haven’t seen any of his dramas, but he also played a really funny character. From one side, Yoon Hyuk can be seen as quite the pervert, since he’s a bit narcissistic and he’s also the biggest mama-boy ever, always reporting everything that happens in his life to his mother. He is a divorce lawyer and gets a lot of female clients who want to sue their husbands for cheating on them and stuff like that.
In the end, against all odds and expectations, these two become a couple. I definitely wouldn’t have predicted that from the start since they are initially enemies in the firm when it comes to getting cases, but several incidents lead them to become drawn to each other in their mutual hopelessness when it comes to love, which was kind of cute.
Then there were Mrs. Yang Eun Ji (played by Jang So Yeon) and Mr. Lee Doo Seob (played by Park Ji Hwan). I didn’t know these two actors from before. Mrs. Yang is the CEO’s legal secretary, and she’s this nice and calm motherly figure. She’s very rational but caring, and has a teenage daughter she raises by herself. After getting divorced she’s never really looked for new love.
Lee Doo Seob is the firm’s paralegal. The running gag about him as that he has a bit of a scary face (?) but he’s actually the most sweet and poetic guy ever. He has a unrequited crush on Mrs. Yang but never acts on it because he is too considerate of her living situation, so he is content with just watching and supporting her from afar. For example, he sees how tired she is everyday and even though he lives on the other side of town, he rides the same bus home as her because she always falls asleep on the bus and he’s always the one to wake her up in time for her stop. Things like this. This guy was so damn precious!! Looks can truly fool a person, although I actually didn’t find him that scary-looking myself. I had actually hoped Mrs. Yang would’ve given him a chance when she found out how considerate he was, but unfortunately she told him not to like her 🙁 and again, even after finally being able to confess his feelings, Doo Seob respected her boundaries. He didn’t go after her or try to change her mind – he respected her answer. TAKE NOTES, PEOPLE. This is how you should deal with a ‘NO’.
And lastly, there was Kim Hae Young (played by Kim Hee Jung), the youngest of the firm. I knew this actress from Who Are You – School 2015, where she was Kim Soo Hyun’s bestie who wanted to become an idol. She also played a minor role in Reunited Worlds.
I only understood Hae Young’s position in the company after reading somewhere what everyone’s job title was (I don’t even remember where lol), but apparently she was Mrs. Yang’s assistant. She also sat at the reception a lot in the beginning and she was kind of the breeze of youth who was up to date with social media and who always seemed to be on top of all the rumors going around the office. She penetrated every single lie or personal thing that was going on, but she never really got a personal backstory. I would’ve liked to know a bit more about her, although too much might have thrown off the balance of all the information in the series. Since she was just a side character, I think in this case it was a good decision to not give everyone a lot of backstory.

Then, there was Oh Ui Shik, who played Yoon Seo’s manager. I was a bit confused as to what his actual relation to her was, because it was mentioned a couple of times that he was her cousin (?), but I don’t know if that was to hide that he was her manager to Jung Rok. She always calls him ‘oppa’, so that doesn’t really clear anything up. Anyways, he’s the person closest to her and he cares a lot for her without any romantic feelings attached. I really like Oh Ui Shik, he has such a nice friendly face, haha. He portrayed the caring brother-like manager who just wanted Yoon Seo to be safe and healthy and happy very endearingly, including many suspicious looks towards Jung Rok when he eventually would spot the two of them together after they started dating. I really enjoyed his performance.

And lastly, there were Jung Rok’s two childhood friends. Since his college days he has been close with Kim Se Won (played by Lee Sang Woo) and Yoo Yeo Reum (Son Sung Yoon), and he even had a crush on Yeo Reum before she started dating Se Won. So Jung Rok was kind of the odd one out in the friend group and he was also the only one who became an attorney – the other two both became prosecutors.
Honestly, I’ve seen Lee Sang Woo in two other dramas (20th Century Boy and Girl and High Society), but never have I enjoyed his performance as much as in this drama. In the previous dramas he always seemed to stiff and dry to me, but here he had this comical and cheeky streak to him that really made me laugh out loud multiple times. I actually really enjoyed his performance in this drama.
Apparently, Son Sung Yoon has appeared in about 3 other series I’ve watched, but I don’t remember her in any of them… Even in Secretary Kim… Is my memory really this bad? Because she looks really familiar.
Anyways, I was a bit worried that she might become a love rival since she was Jung Rok’s first love and all, but she only provided Yoon Seo with a tiny bit of anxiety – she didn’t have any romantic interest in Jung Rok. On the contrary, it was clear that she still had unresolved feelings for Se Won when he started working at the same company as her, and he definitely had feelings for her. I’m glad they got back together.
But in this case, I wonder how important they really were. Because Yoo Reum got more backstory than other people who could have done with a little more. We also saw scenes of her and Se Won in their respective offices, with their own employees, although these scenes became less frequent toward the end. Occasinally they would help Jung Rok out with a case, and Se Won even moved in with Jung Rok, against the latter’s wishes.
Although I liked Se Won and Yoo Reum as a couple, if this were for real I wouldn’t have been 100% okay with Se Won’s proposal at the end of the series. He basically just announced to her that they were getting married and just put the ring on her finger while she didn’t get to say anything. It was okay because it was them and they were okay with it, but a part of me was like…
If it were me, I would’ve been like, ‘This is how you’re proposing to me?!’ lol.

I would like to give one last major shoutout to Kim Dae Gon who played the mentally handicapped Park Soo Myeong who got involved in a trial. He was so incredibly endearing and his case was so heartbreaking. He was actually used by a woman who manipulated him into believing that he’d killed her husband and she even vowed against him in court and all… I really felt for him, he acted so brilliantly! His performance truly made my heart ache.

Okay, so I think with that I’ve discussed all the most important characters.
I’ll continue with some comments about my general impressions of the drama. Because in its unpredictability, it also changed a lot of first impressions for me. Most of all, Yoon Seo. From her first appearance on, I thought she was this little doll who had to be careful and who seemed really naive to the outside world. Her first day at the law firm also proved this, when she literally tried to extend the phone cord to Jung Rok’s office because she didn’t know how to transfer a call, turning up on her first day in the shortest dress and on the highest heels ever, all that hilarious stuff. But I was as surprised as Jung Rok with her ability to adapt and show this side of her where she wasn’t just a beautiful face but an actually intelligent woman. She was able to use her adapting and memorizing skills as an actress in order to put in effort to reach her goal, and when she started acting again she was able to use all that she learned to her advantage.
She fulfilled what she set out to do, made her big comeback, and won back the hearts of her fans. She completely managed to put the scandal behind her.

Also, to go into a little more depth regarding the ‘scandal’, it turns out that Yoon Seo was 100% a victim. This creepy chaebol (played by Jay Kim) started stalking her and put something in her drink – she never did anything involving drugs out of her own volition. But it just proves again how much the media can blow up stuff like this and how hard it is to prove your innocence when the whole world is set against you.
The truth about these things is that you never know what truly happened. As a fan, as a regular person who was not personally involved in the case, you will never know. And still everyone needs to have an opinion. So in the end, it can turn out to be that you condemned a person who was actually innocent all along. But this is how the media works.
They waited a bit to explain what really happened until the actual Return of the Chaebol, but until then Yoon Seo’s ambiguous response to it made it kind of hard to read. She also never explicitly denied anything in the beginning, so I wasn’t sure if there was any truth to it until she turned it into an actual case at the law firm and we were shown the flashback of the incident.

Including this example, I think this drama did a good job in playing with and changing impressions. A lot of things that seemed one way or were vague in the beginning were cleared up and revealed at the end. In that way it added to the unpredictability and refreshingness of the drama, and I liked that. It started out quite stereotypical, but it went its own way and still ended nicely.
I found it interesting how they decided to finish the series with Yoon Seo taking Jung Rok to her red carpet to officially present him as her boyfriend, because ironically, it ends without showing how the audience responds to this. After successfully making her comeback with this drama, Yoon Seo announces to her CEO that from now on, she will do whatever she wants, and the first thing she does is stop hiding. The first thing she does is appear in public with her boyfriend. A very interesting and refreshing way to end, since I think it really symbolizes Yoon Seo turning her life around for the better. After the scandal she has lived in seclusion and hiding, she was always paranoid of paparazzi and could never eat in public places, she was always aware of other people seeing her and targeting her. And she managed to get over that fear and become strong enough to think, screw it, I don’t want to hide who I am or who I’m seeing anymore.
Powerful stuff.

Lastly, before concluding my review, I would like to express some positive comments on the word play of the series’ title. The English title is Touch Your Heart, but the Korean title literally means something like ‘Be Sincere’ or ‘Reached by Sincerity’, or something with the word ‘jinshim’ which means ‘sincerity’. Of course, the word play here is that ‘Jin Shim’ is Yoon Seo’s real name, so the title can also be read as something like ‘Touched/Reached by Jin Shim’. And the whole purpose Yoon Seo is trying to achieve in her life is to reach her fans again by proving her ability to make a comeback, and then to Jung Rok and the law firm, to prove that she was able to work diligently and not just be the nation’s goddess of beauty. A lot of people in the story were eventually ‘touched or reached’ by her.
So I really like the title for this series, it just makes so much sense.
And then, I just wanted to express my appreciation for the blatant Descendants of the Sun references. The drama that Yoon Seo is pining for is basically derived from that series and it made me laugh out loud when she started reading the script in episode 1 and pictured the scenes and they were just remakes of DotS scenes. Also, the example scenes to show her acting and they were so cringy, it really added to the humor of the whole thing.

All in all, I enjoyed watching this very much. It was cute, simple, humorous and refreshing in its own way. It still provided new content and didn’t stick to all of the tropes. I’m glad my friend recommended it to me and that I decided to watch it now.
Next up on my list is another golden oldie, and after that I’ll be returning to more recent stuff that I’ve been impatiently waiting to get to!