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.

Lovestruck in the City
(도시남녀의 사랑법 / Dosinamnyeoui Sarangbeop / City Couple’s Way of Love)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Hi everyone! I’m finally back! 😀
This drama marks the end of another batch; I finished 10 dramas within 6 months! I’m definitely not on the top of my drama-watching game at the moment, but I really want to get on with all the series on my list I’ve been looking forward to watching, so I’m gradually getting back to it. After finishing a very time-consuming project and getting sick from exhaustion after that, I finally managed to finish this one.
After watching a couple of really slow-paced, dragging and emotionally heavy series, I really appreciated the lightness of this one! It was a very easy and quick watch, so let’s get on with the review! 🙂
So the main reason why I wanted to watch this in the first place was, suprise surprise, because of the two main actors. I like them both a lot and wondered how their chemistry would be! I was not disappointed.

Lovestruck in the City is a 17-episode Netflix K-Drama (each episode is only 30 minute!) and it tells a couple of different stories from a group of young people living in Seoul, and how they think about love and relationships.
The group consists of six people who all know each other in real life as well, and they are all more or less divided up in couples. First of all, there’s Park Jae Won (played by Ji Chang Wook) and Lee Eun Oh (played by Kim Ji Won). They have shared a passionate summer romance in Yangyang. While Jae Won only planned to stay there for one month, this girl he meets on the beach makes him extend his stay for another month as he is completely smitten with her. Besides his love for old cameras and taking pictures, he also really loves surfing, so he took a break from his job to go to Yangyang and help out at a surfboard workshop. On his first day, he is picked up by a beautiful and energetic girl who immediately leaves a strong impression on him. He finds out her name is “Yoon Seon Ah” – but we later find out this is actually Eun Oh. Anyways, he spends a wonderful summer with her, their chemistry is on point and they even get married, although it becomes more and more obvious that Jae Won is way more serious about it than Eun Oh/”Seon Ah”. As he falls for “Seon Ah”, Eun Oh really comes to see it as just a summer fling, since she knows she is not really Seon Ah. We find out later that Eun Oh escaped to Yangyang after going through a hard time in Seoul in which her boyfriend cheated on her and she didn’t get the job she was pining for – a free-spirited girl called Yoon Seon Ah did and that’s why she chose that as her fake name while she was in Yangyang where no one knew her and she could be a totally different person from the ‘ordinary’ Eun Oh. Of course she didn’t know things with Jae Won would turn out so dramatically. When Jae Won is called back to Seoul because of a business emergency, he leaves his beloved vintage cameras with “Seon Ah”, because they have promised to meet in Seoul later. However, “Seon Ah” eventually calls him from a pay phone to tell him they shouldn’t meet anymore and that she’s keeping his cameras.
Heartbroken while completely oblivious as to what went wrong, Jae Won goes back to his architecture company, while Eun Oh prepares to go back to her own life in Seoul as well, running her own small marketing business called O3.
Then we have Choi Kyung Joon (played by Kim Min Seok) and Seo Rin Yi (played by So Joo Yeon). Kyung Joon is Jae Won’s cousin who also works at his architecture company as a Director. He and Rin Yi have been in a relationship for 5 years at the beginning of the series. Rin Yi is best friends with Eun Oh, and Kyung Joon also knows her. Naturally they both also know Jae Won, but they never make the connection that the ‘camera thief that broke Jae Won’s heart’ and Eun Oh are the same person.
Then we have Kang Geon (played by Ryu Kyung Soo) and Oh Sun Young (played by Han Ji Eun). Kang Geon is childhood friends with Eun Oh and Rin Yi and he lives in the same house as Eun Oh, as he took care of her place while she disappeared to Yangyang (no-one knew where she went by the way, she just went off the grid for a couple of months). Kang Geon once was in a relationship with Sun Young, but they’re both more loners, despite the strong connection they still have towards each other.

So this drama gives us glimpes of all the relationships, past or present, between all these main characters. I think it was a pretty unique concept for a drama, it didn’t have the typical build-up in storyline as you kept finding out news things about everyone. I also think there was a lot of wisdom in it, as all these different personalities all have very different views and opinions on dating in a big city. I think the only ‘typical’ drama storyline was the one between Jae Won and Eun Oh and how they found each other again in Seoul. Jae Won finds out that “Seon Ah” wasn’t real and we get to see Eun Oh’s story of what happened and how she became this other person.

I have to say the part I enjoyed the most was the flashback episode of how Jae Won and Eun Oh met in Yangyang. Their whole life there together, that Jae Won taught her how to surf, them sleeping in the caravan and dancing in the rain, plainly just the love of two people portrayed so passionately. Their first kissing scene, where they both just got out of surfing and were still in their surfing suits and the build-up to that kiss was absolutely S I Z Z L I N G. They really had amazing chemistry!! And it really gave a good basis for the bleak aftermath, how Jae Won was so distraught after finally thinking he met the love of this life and suddenly she disappeared. We are let to wonder a bit more about Eun Oh, since she doesn’t reveal her story until later, but then when she does it also makes perfect sense for her to just want to run away for a bit to someplace no-one knows her.
What I mean is that everyone had a fair perspective and everyone’s feelings were valid. And that’s what made the show really real and accessible.
I also liked that the relationship between Jae Won and Eun Oh remained interesting even after they’d met in Seoul and Jae Won found out who she really was. It was a kind of involuntary push-and-pull, like they were both saying they moved on and didn’t want anything to do with each anymore even if they’d meet again, but then they did and they still held on to those beach memories; Eun Oh got all the pictures they took together developed from the cameras, she even kept their wedding rings, so it was clearly she wasn’t completely letting it go. This one time the tensions between them went up so high it bursted out into another passionate kiss (this build-up was so predictable but I was still very much waiting for it to happen), and then after that they still weren’t okay with just getting back together as if nothing happened. Eun Oh set her boundaries with Jae Won, saying that she needed time to ‘figure herself out’ first, and even though he didn’t completely understand, he took that distance. Which, in turn, confused the heck out of Eun Oh and made her even more interested in him again. Like, the reality of their relationship, how it was all confusing and all-over-the-place, rather than romantic and destined-to-be, was pretty nice to watch. In the end Eun Oh was the one who asked Jae Won if he’d want to get back together in her own time, and that went pretty well.

What I also liked was that it has an open ending and it doesn’t necessarily have happy endings for everyone. It actually ends with Kyung Joon and Rin Yi breaking up whilst Jae Won and Eun Oh are finally getting back together.
To talk a bit about Kyung Joon and Rin Yi – they come from very different worlds, social class-wise, but they still seem to be a very good match and they love each other a lot.
Rin Yi is a very easygoing girl, she works four parttime jobs because she likes to work, even though it doesn’t pay spectacularly, and still have enough free time. As a director of his uncle’s (Jae Won’s father) group, Kyung Joon cares a bit more about what kind of lifestyle he’d want for Rin Yi and towards the end he gets a little bit more fussy about that. He clearly has a judgement about how Rin Yi is living, and although it’s valid because he cares about her and wants the best for her, Rin Yi makes it perfectly clear that this is how she likes it. She is completely comfortable with her way of living. She breaks off their 5-year relationship after she finds out Kyung Joon has actually been lying to his family about what she does for a living, telling them she’s prepping for grad school, because he cares too much about what other people might think when they learn Rin Yi works four parttime jobs. This hurts Rin Yi’s feelings so much, also because her mother used to lie about her to other people as well (which Kyung Joon didn’t know, otherwise he probably would’ve taken that into consideration), and she breaks things off. The series ends with them breaking up and especially Kyung Joon having a hard time with it. In a typical K-Drama, they would’ve probably made them get back together in the end, to wrap everything up, but I find it kind of interesting that they left it like this. It definitely wasn’t very satisfying, but now that I think about it, I do feel that it contributes to the main theme of the drama – that relationships are fluctuous, especially in a big city in modern society where everyone has different opinions. So in a way I get that they may have made this choice to show that even a 5-year relationship isn’t a guarantee. Anything can happen, and that’s what makes love and dating in modern society so turbulent.
Geon and Sun Young also don’t get back together, Sun Young actually breaks up with him twice. We don’t actually get to see a lot of them together. We just see the first scene where they meet for the first time (which ended in a one-night stand). After that we’re only TOLD about their relationship, but we don’t actually see them kiss or anything, not even in flashbacks. However, even through words and glances they make it clear how they feel about each other.
I found it a pity though, I would’ve liked to see a bit more of their relationship! And also because Sun Young’s reason for breaking up with Geon in the first place was a misunderstanding (she thought he had feelings for Eun Oh), they never made it clear to one another. Sun Young reveals that she actually wanted him to come after her, to pursuade her to try again, but when he didn’t, she also gave up. Geon is pretty passive throughout the series, like he doesn’t really seem like the type who would put in a lot of effort to get back with someone, even though he is definitely a good guy. But he’s more of a ‘I’ll put myself aside for my friends’ kind of guy, he’ll put away his own needs. This becomes very clear when he’s pretty down in the dumps after Sun Young dumps him for the second time, but then when he sees Eun Oh is having an even harder time, he lets her have the spotlight for her story, and when they ask him afterwards what his deal was, he casually just mentions it, brushing it off as ‘not that important’. I actually felt a bit sorry for him in that moment. Of course it was a very emotional scene where Eun Oh finally told her two best friends that she was the camera thief Jae Won always talked about, that she was “Seon Ah”. So it would be a bit awkward to go after that, to be honest. But still, I’m glad at least Eun Oh felt bad for him, Rin Yi was literally just like ‘But you already broke up three years ago, wtf’.

What I also found interesting was how they suddenly inserted Oh Dong Shik’s story in the end. Oh Dong Shik (played by SHINee’s Choi Min Ho) was a police officer who appeared a couple of times as a side character. Sun Young landed at the police station a couple of times when she passed out drunk on the streets, as well as Jae Won when he started drinking while thinking about “Seon Ah” and he would come to the station, drunk, to tell them to catch that camera thief.
However, in the final episode, Oh Dong Shik suddenly got his own little romance story. There was this popular young actress, Hae Na (played by Hong Soo Joo), and they turned out to be close in real life. It wasn’t specified how they knew each other, she just called him ‘oppa’ and came over to his house sometimes to play games. Oh Dong Shik is a very humble and well-mannered guy, so he keeps trying to make her leave as he’s scared she might be busted hanging out at his place and he doesn’t want to ruin her reputation. Hae Na doesn’t hide that she likes him a lot.
It came a bit out of the blue for me, especially since they literally introduced Hae Na in the last episode, but it was still sweet. It was also interesting that they chose to spend the final episode on this completely new couple instead of working out more stuff with the 6 existing main characters.

At the end, I felt like the whole interview concept fell through a little bit. By the time they all sat in front of the camera again to say goodbye and took a group picture together (in which Kyung Joon and Rin Yi were very awkward), I was already feeling like ‘Ah right, this is how it started’. I feel like they could have maybe kept the interview/documentary thing going a bit stronger throughout the whole series, because it started to fade away to the background at some point and then when someone started talking into the camera again I was like ‘Oh, right, there’s supposedly someone sitting next to them with a camera, filming their whole private conversation’.
There were plenty of scenes where I felt like the supposedly present documentary makers weren’t there, though, where the scenes were just ‘normal’ drama scenes. Like with the final break-up scene between Geon and Sun Young, I didn’t feel like there was anyone sitting opposite them, filming the whole thing. There were moments when the ‘cameraman’ was clearly there, because in those scenes at least one person would keep sneaking nervous glances at the camera. But there were also a lot of scenes that were definitely not part of the interview. Sometimes it wasn’t completely clear to me what they were going for, where they filming everything or not? This also went for the scene in which Kyung Joon and Rin Yi met Eun Oh’s cheating ex-boyfriend and his new wife at the architecture company and assaulted him for hurting Eun Oh, and the scene where they broke up in Kyung Joon’s car. Those were legit, focussed, acted scenes, and not part of the interview/documentary, I’m positive.

This won’t be a very long review because it’s not a very long drama and I believe the message was very simple and clear, so I’ll just go on with my cast comments now.

Ji Chang Wook is one of my major K-Actor crushes, I still have a couple of his dramas on my to-watch list. I can’t believe this is the first Ji Chang Wook drama I’m writing a review on! Gotta change that 😉
Anyways, I like that he brought in this versatility in his character, like people all agreed on how different Eun Oh was from her “Seon Ah” impersonation, but Jae Won was also a different person in Yangyang than he was in Seoul. He was a beach boy, man! The tan, the hair, the surfboddd! And then in Seoul, he was like a tormented romanticist who couldn’t move on properly. I liked to see another different side of him. Ever since Suspicious Partner, still one of my alltime favorites, I’ve been enjoying seeing him in romantic roles, rather than in action stuff which he used to do mostly before. I liked his performance, how he also showed this playful and romantic side to him.

I swear, Kim Ji Won is growing on me with every new role I see of her. This may be my favorite role of her I’ve seen so far. I saw sides of her acting I’d never seen before. Before, she’d usually be cast as the bitchy character because of her RBF, but seeing her as “Seon Ah”, all giddy and laughing and free-spirited, it was like she was a completely different person! I believe it’s the first time I’ve seen her laugh so much in a drama. I really loved her performance. I still am baffled on how Eun Oh was able to make such a switch in personality, how she was able to let go and change into “Seon Ah” for the summer, because it really did feel like a different person. But I really related to her when she was struggling with ‘who she really was’. I’ve actually had a talk about this with my own therapist one time, that there were so many different sides to me that I couldn’t show to anyone and I had this idea I needed to pick ONE to define who I was, and then my therapist was like, ‘but why not just embrace them all?’ and that option just made my jaw drop. For Eun Oh too, it seemed like she wasn’t aware that she could actually be “Seon Ah” if she wanted to, that side to her personality was in her somewhere, it’s not like she put on a completely fake show. So she needed to be reminded that all those different sides to her were still all HER, all Lee Eun Oh. So she even got a bit of a psychological revelation there!

Of course I know Kim Min Seok from a lot of things, he’s been casted in stuff more and more these days! I think I’ve seen him in about 10 different things now. I like how he keeps getting opportunities to show off his acting skills and not just as a funny friend or side character. He’s been getting more main roles as well, good for him.
I didn’t know So Joo Yeon, but I know she’s in the Korean version of A Love So Beautiful which I also want to watch. She’s so cute!! Them dimples!! I really liked how comfortable she and Min Seok looked in playing out their relationship, they were really adorable together. Until the point where Kyung Joon started to get a little judgy about how she lived her life, I really had no worries about them, like I really thought they would just stay together. So that twist at the end, even though I believe there was definitely stuff to talk about, was very surprising. But I guess it really defined their characters as well, why Rin Yi chose to break up with him immediately. As she mentions after that ‘If there is a reason to break up, then it’s better to break up’. I liked how she put herself first like that, although I did feel a bit bad for Kyung Joon. Of course he shouldn’t have gotten involved in her life in that way, especially since she herself was perfectly okay with how things were, but she didn’t tell him about her mother. If he had known how her mother had treated her, he wouldn’t have done this to her, or at least not like this. So I did find it sad that they broke up, but I guess that’s all up to varying mindsets!

I recently saw Ryu Kyung Soo for the first time in Itaewon Class, I didn’t know him from anything before that. He hasn’t done that many dramas yet, mostly movies. Anyways, I liked Geon. At first he seemed to be a little like, the odd one out, the loner, the only single guy. But then his past relationship with Sun Young was revealed and we got to see more layers behind his casual demeanor and I grew to like his character.
I believe I have only seen Han Ji Eun in 100 Days My Prince where she was that gisaeng! I’ve also seen Fated to Love You, but that’s too long ago and I don’t remember her from there ^^” Anyways, I really liked her character. She was such a mess, haha. But there was still this very vulnerable side to her, which really showed in the scene where she officially broke up with Geon. You could see so many emotions, even though in the beginning it seemed more like she was just a very outgoing girl who wasn’t thinking of starting anything serious with a guy. I really would’ve liked to see a little more of the romance between her and Geon though, they left a lot to our imagination there.

I also really liked the guest appearances of Min Ho, and not to forget Lee Sang Woo and Park Jin Joo as Bin and Ra Ra, the two super friendly people on the beach. They were a couple: Bin owned the surfboard workshop where Jae Won helped out and Ra Ra had a ramyeon restaurant next to it where “Seon Ah” worked when she was there.
I really liked the scene when Eun Oh first came there and stumbled upon the restaurant and she ate and cried and Bin and Ra Ra were so nice to her, giving her all the food.

Also, that pizza place that Rin Yi worked at looked insanely familiar… I can’t help but feel that it was the exact same pizza place from It’s Okay To Not Be Okay?! It looked so familiar!! xD

The soundtrack was also really nice, with some cool Janet Suh songs, although I was a bit startled when the first song that started to play came on with ‘HELLO MY BITCH’ xD The subtitles said ‘Hello, My Beach’, and I was like, Nahh they’re definitely not saying “beach”‘ xD they even explained in the credit scene (where everyone dressed up, loved that) that it was about a woman, so maybe it was just censored.

Anyways, I liked watching this! It wasn’t too deep, not too heavy, it was easy to follow and watch because of the short episodes and the cast was small but strong. It definitely wasn’t the most spectacular thing ever, but I liked the concept and that it was a little different from the usual K-Drama setup. It was light, it was modern, it was original in its own way. And it still gave you things to think about! This is what I love about K-Dramas like this, even if the storyline isn’t even that major or dramatic, as long as it teaches you something about one specific thing (such as different opinions on dating in busy modern-day life) it already deserves some credit. As long as I can learn even a tiny bit from it about anything, then it usually gets a bonus point. I want to give a shoutout to the writers because the monologues and dialogues were VERY well written. It definitely gave me things to think about from a different perspective.

So thank you for reading this not so long review, I hope it was still enjoyable and I will be back with another one! 😉
Bye-bee! 😀