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

Run On
(런 온 / Reon On)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hiya! Back with a new review!
I took my time with this one as well, which was fine because it wasn’t a very eventful drama, so I just put on an episode when I was in the mood. I was really curious since I saw it on Netflix and it also seemed to have an interesting cast, so that’s why I put it on my to-watch list.
When I started it, I was kind of missing some action, but after I finished it I have to say I found it a very refreshing drama, and the simpleness and realness of it really makes it one of a kind.
If you’re a fan of action, or seek out dramas with an exciting storyline, you may or may not be able to appreciate this as much since it really mainly focusses on the characters and their personal journeys.
I’d also like to devote some words to the title, since it turns out that ‘Run On’ doesn’t necessarily have to do with physical running. There were several interesting things that jumped out to me in this drama, so I’m excited to share my review on it. Since there isn’t too much to cover in terms of storyline, this review will focus primarily on the characters and their relations to/with each other.

As for a short summary: Run On is a 16-episode Netflix K-Drama, with episodes of a bit over an hour, about two very different people who meet by chance and then are drawn to each other despite their differences. Ki Seon Gyeom (played by Im Shi Wan) is a national athlete, and the youngest child of a famous actress and an assemblyman running for president. He has lived his live for his family, to be the son that makes his parents proud, but this has caused him to become very detached from himself. Then there is Oh Mi Joo (played by Shin Se Kyung), a translator/interpretor who mainly works in the movie subtitling business. Mi Joo is an orphan and has always had to fend for herself and live for herself. She has some people around her who she’s close to, but she works late into the night and sometimes sleeps during the day, so she’s never had to depend on anyone else before. As a movie fanatic, Mi Joo is a big fan of Seon Gyeom’s mother, Yook Ji Woo (played by Cha Hwa Yeon). Seon Gyeom and Mi Joo meet coincidentally at first, but then keep meeting more often after getting to work together.
On the other hand we have Seo Dan Ah, (played by Choi Soo Young), the CEO of her own investment agency called DANN who happens to sponsor Seon Gyeom and other famous athletes. Seo Dan Ah comes from a complicated family, she has two half-brothers whom she’s not close with, and she’s constantly looked down upon by her oldest brother for being a woman – as she ‘naturally’ won’t be able to inherit their family’s company. She comes across a painting at a café which intrigues her, and when she inquires about the painter, she finds out it’s still just an art student. But she’s intrigued with his work and approaches him. This art student is Lee Yeong Hwa (played by Kang Tae Oh), who is immediately quite taken with Dan Ah. Something interesting blooms between the two of them as well as they get more involved with each other, a bond that starts with a push-and-pull over a painting.

What I want to say from the bat is that these four main leads were, from the start, not like any other drama with a four lead system like this. First of all, even though they all knew each other, there was no rivalry between them whatsoever. I found it funny because where you usually have the four leads clearly divided into two pairings of one woman and one man, in this case the two men and the two women also had very interesting relationships with each other. Even though Mi Joo was very wary of Dan Ah because of her eccentric personality, they did become closer at the end, be it in their aloof ‘you’re weird but you’re okay’ kind of way. Seon Gyeom and Yeong Hwa also became friends and even started sharing an apartment. Of course the couples were very clearly divided into Seon Gyeom & Mi Joo and Dan Ah & Yeong Hwa, but it never caused too much chaos within their group. Yeong Hwa occasionally sought comfort with Seon Gyeom when he was upset about something that had to do with Dan Ah, but that was about it. Also, there was a lot of talking amongst them. They all talked about their feelings a lot, and I feel like in other K-Dramas they leave that out a bit to create misunderstandings and add to the drama, but in this case it was really refreshing to see the main characters all have such meaningful conversations with each other.

I mentioned in my introduction that the title ‘Run On’ didn’t only have to do with physical running. Since Seon Gyeom is a national track athlete and there is actual running in the series – Mi Joo and Dan Ah also participate in a marathon at some point, it would be easy to also link the title to that. But, also after reading some other reviews, I think it’s safe to say that the title refers more to a metaphorical running. That is, how everyone runs along their own life, their own journey. And it’s logical to mistake this for a race sometimes, having to catch up with other people, feeling like you’re stuck in the same place or you can’t seem to go any faster than you’re currently going. But I think this series really showed that everyone runs their own path differently. And also, that things like relationships or things that are usually marked as ‘happy endings’ are not the same for everyone. I think they did a really good job in depicting this, and not only through the four main characters, but also through the side characters. I have to admit that in the beginning, I was a little unsure of why so many minor characters were introduced, especially because I didn’t really get how relevant they would be in the rest of the story yet. But in the end it became clearer to me, or at least this is how I felt, that it really was meant to show the journeys of different people, not just the leads. Every single character was running their own journey of life in this series, and even though they all got stuck at some point, they were guided towards the pace that was right for them. I also really liked how this became clear in Dan Ah’s words to Yeong Hwa in the end, ‘You’re already running towards the finish line while I’m just walking towards the halfway point.’ Everyone has their own pace in life, and even when you meet someone that you’re attracted to, it’s not always easy when you find out their pace is different from yours. This was especially clear in the leads’ romantic relationships. Seon Gyeom and Mi Joo ended up taking a chance on it, while Dan Ah decided it was for the best to not have Yeong Hwa struggle to adjust to her pace and vice versa.
After taking some time to collect my thoughts about this drama before starting on the review, it really dawned on me how healing this series actually was. It was warm, realistic, and very comfortable to watch.

I would like to talk in a bit more detail about the main characters’ personal journeys.
Of all four, you could say that Seon Gyeom had the most storyline, also because his family was also featured more regularly than any of the other leads’ family members. The series starts off with something that triggers Seon Gyeom’s realization that he has never lived for himself, his desire to obtain his own life outside of his father’s influence. It also immediately illustrates Seon Gyeom’s character as a person who lives his life for others rather than for himself. In the first couple of episodes, when he’s still an athlete, he discovers that one of his teammates is being abused by a couple of other athletes. Their real beef is with Seon Gyeom since he always beats them in races, but since they can’t touch him because of his status and reputation, they take out their frustration on the youngest of the team, Kim Woo Shik (played by Lee Jung Ha). Seon Gyeom realizes this at some earlier point but Woo Shik keeps saying that he can take it. Until one time, when Seon Gyeom finds him beaten bloody in a shed one time. Woo Shik ends up at the hospital for his injuries. Seon Gyeom is the only one who refuses to turn a blind eye to this violence – even the coaches tell him to back down and not say anything about it. Even when Seon Gyeom attacks the two athletes responsible, he is baffled to see that everyone is trying to cover for him and make sure he gets a minor punishment, even though he himself wants to be kicked out if that’s what it takes to stand up for his friend. He ends up admitting to a whole group of international journalists that he won’t run anymore because he attacked his teammates and he resigns from being a runner. This comes as a shock to his father, naturally, who just wanted him to stay put. Now that Seon Gyeom is (finally) starting to rebel, he can’t control him anymore. The relationship between him and Mi Joo begins for real when he persuades Woo Shik to tell the true story about his abuse to a reporter and Mi Joo helps translate the interview into English so it spreads to international magazines, in order to clear Seon Gyeom’s name for having allegedly ‘meaninglessly assaulted’ his teammates.
While jobless, Seon Gyeom puts in a lot of effort to get Woo Shik back on his feet and training and starts searching for new agencies for him. He also helps persuading an old trainer of his to come back to work for the tracking team at his old high school, he helps a young girl from the tracking team from getting harrassed by her bully’s family, and he helps his sister get out of a scandal. He does a lot for other people while remaining jobless himself, until he finally gets a job as an agent in the last episode. He gets Woo Shik to be represented by DANN agency.
It was very realistic how Seon Gyeom, however justly his actions were for his teammate, finds himself to be a little aimless in being unemployed, but he gradually manages to pick himself up. He still can’t shake the habit of getting up early to run every day, and other than that, he finds ways to spend his time and makes some unexpected friends on the way. It really seems like his own personal journey begins only after he quits the tracking team. From that moment on he actively decides to choose himself, no matter what the repercussions for his family (actually, his father) would be. He finally sees the light and decides that he can’t go on like that anymore.
What’s so endearing about Seon Gyeom’s character is that he takes this huge decision and then ends up with the aftermath realizing that he’s actually not sure what to do next. And then he grows closer to Mi Joo and becomes increasingly interested in her life, which is so different from his. They don’t even share a lot of common traits or interests, but still they can’t help gravitating towards each other. I found his character very interesting because even though sometimes it seemed like he knew exactly what he was doing, exactly what his goal was, he also appeared very naive and oblivious. Even in his relationship with Mi Joo, it seemed like it took him a while to really pinpoint what it was he was actually feeling for her, and when she struggled because of his dad’s involvement in their relationship, he had a hard time understanding this, it seems. Or at least, what he should or could do to make things better. But I think it became very clear that, as soon as they took some distance from each other, he started missing her more and more. Until he finally managed to turn his feelings into words and asked her to please not break up with him.

Oh Mi Joo is also a very interesting character. She went through a lot by herself as a kid, because she was an orphan, and she’s had to fend for herself and discover what worked for her and what not. It was in a difficult period during high school that she discovered the soothing of sitting in a dark cinema watching a movie. And the movie quote that most inspired her to keep ‘running on’ was ‘Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up again’. It’s mentioned only once in the series I believe, when she tells Seon Gyeom about it, but I feel like it’s really a metaphor for the entire series as well. The dialogue in this drama was just so good! Usually there’s a lot of talking without much actually being said, but in this drama, the dialogue was one of the best parts of it. Sometimes talking really is the best way to really get to know each other. And I think it was a very part of Mi Joo’s character that she chose to become a translator/interpretor, because she wanted to convey beautiful messages into other languages as well. So that people all over the world would be able to get inspired by a quote like that, even if it’s spoken in a different language. Her job is literally to be a medium of conveying messages from one audience to the other, and I think that’s also why she was able to read other people so well. I actually wrote down a quote from one of the first episodes where Mi Joo has just started getting to know Seon Gyeom and she says, ‘His life is filled with everyone around him but himself, whereas I only have me’, which is basically the foundation of both of their characters. She already had part of him figured out from the start and that was really cool about her in my opinion.
Slightly unrelated to the story, I personally was very inspired by Mi Joo’s character. Personally, I’ve always loved translating, and I’ve considered making a career switch to focus on multi-media translation and subtitling multiple times. So when I got a glimpse of Mi Joo’s work in this drama, I went like, OH MY GOD I WANT TO DO THIS TOO. I still haven’t gotten anywhere regarding final decisions or plans, but the way they depicted this line of work in this drama and the way Mi Joo talked about really sparked something in me again. I’m really grateful that this drama showed me this and reminded me of this back-of-my-mind dream of mine, just when I was struggling with my current slightly unfulfilling job.
I kept feeling very detached from Mi Joo for some reason, but I ended up realizing that this was exactly what her personality was like. She wasn’t used to having people around her to care for and who cared about her. She wasn’t used to coming home to someone in particular, or to stay up waiting for someone to come home. That’s why, when things started to get ambiguous between her and Seon Gyeom, she had a really hard time figuring out where she was standing. She kept trying to keep a distance from him as to not give herself any expectations, but then he would give her expectations and then suddenly vanish, leaving her anxious. So I think the whole push-and-pull feeling between was very realistic when you look at their respective personalities. Seon Gyeom was also not used to someone actually caring about where he was, where he slept, what he’d eaten, so it didn’t cross his mind to inform people of that. Despite her detached personality, Mi Joo was very confident about herself and her skills in translating. She speaks fluent English, she was confident with her own looks, etcetera. It was just really about the worlds they lived in and whether to could succeed to align those, since blending them didn’t seem to be an option, what with Seon Gyeom’s father in the mix.
One of my favorite moments was when they were at the premiere of Yook Ji Woo’s new movie and Seon Gyeom’s father turned up unexpected, allegedly to ‘support his wife’, while she just wanted him gone. But they ran into Seon Gyeom and Mi Joo there and even after his father semi-threatened her to ‘go back to her own place’, she just took Seon Gyeom’s hand and said ‘I’m really good at finding a ‘place’/’seat’, so let’s go.’ That just showed so much grit and I loved how her personality set her apart from regular K-Drama female leads. Find yourself someone as bold as Oh Mi Joo! And it was really endearing from her side that she would sit through the entire ending credits just to see her own name as the translator at the very end. Even if everyone else had already left the cinema hall by then, even if no one noticed it or considered the person who’d enabled the subtitles for them so they could understand the movie’s message, it was enough for Mi Joo to see her own name, as it was her own tiny reward. Of course, in the final episode, she gets a much bigger reward as a director she used to work with in the past (adorable guest appearance by Kim Seon Ho!) came to tell her that, because of her translation of his movie that didn’t do well in Korea, his movie was now getting acknowledged abroad big-time. You could just tell that that meant so much to Mi Joo, even if she didn’t get any material award or whatever, she really just thrived on those tiny rewards, and that was really endearing and humbling.

Seo Dan Ah was possibly one of the most interesting characters to me in this series. I REALLY liked her character. She also had grit, but in a different kind of way then Mi Joo. Dan Ah was a selfmade career woman, she had had to fight her way up in her male-dominated family, constantly trying to dodge any obligations pushed her way. When they started waving marriage in her face, she told her family she was gay just to get out of marriage interviews. I personally liked how she so openly talked about liking women, even if it was to spite her brother, and even threw it back at him when he used the expression for ‘coming out’ the wrong way. Still, of course, it’s not okay to use the gay card as an excuse just because it’s convenient for you while there are others actually struggling with coming out for real because society will not accept them for who they are. In this regard I really appreciated her apologizing to Ye Joon (I’ll get to him later) in the end, for using something he was actually struggling with as an easy excuse to get out of something. Overall I had a lot of respect for Dan Ah, and I also really felt for her because she was working SO hard while pretending to have her shit together all the time, and when she suddenly finds herself falling for someone younger, she still can’t grant herself that relationship. She still values Yeong Hwa’s individual journey without her more than her own with him in it.
In the beginning, she seems quite eccentric, not only in her personality and use of words, but also in her interests. She finds herself intriguid by Yeong Hwa’s paintings without having met him before, and it was really fun to see how much joy she took from bumping into Mi Joo, because Mi Joo was really trying to avoid her. Dan Ah is quite cheeky, she likes to tease people, and she doesn’t seem to care a lot about people’s personal lives if they don’t involve her. I personally thought she was being a little cold to her younger brother, the idol, when he was so bent on getting along with her. I wondered why she insisted on denying him as her family, because he personally didn’t do anything wrong in my opinion. But then it was even more satisfying when she finally acknowledged him in the final episode after their father had died and she still managed to become the Vice President of his company. She’s had a life similar to Seon Gyeom’s, in that she was never allowed to fulfill any dreams she had of her own, simple ones like playing soccer, and that that resulted in her feeling like everything she liked would at some point be taken away from her and leave her with regrets. This is also exactly the reason why she broke up with Yeong Hwa, she just couldn’t put herself through it again. Towards him, of course that was a little unfair, because she’d already decided it was going to end before it even started (I personally relate to this A LOT ahem). But in this case, Yeong Hwa really loved her back, and there really wasn’t a real reason why they had to break up besides Dan Ah’s personal mindset. But then again, as I said in the beginning, happy endings come in multiple forms. Even though I would’ve loved to see them end up together or even see a proper mutual kiss between them, they decided it was best to say their goodbyes to each other in order to grant each other their personal journeys at their own pace.
One thing that I didn’t fully understand, though, was Dan Ah’s sickness. It’s mentioned and shown before that she has some sort of illness and she needs to get injections or something, and then she collapses during the marathon which is when Yeong Hwa finds out about this. But other than that, it didn’t come back. They did show that her younger brother also had some problems and her father also fell ill in the end, so maybe it was hereditary? I thought they were going to do something major with that plot tool in the end, but they didn’t, so I didn’t really understand what additional purpose it had to Dan Ah’s character other than something else she had to cover up with her sassy personality.

Lee Yeong Hwa was a very likable character. He was pure, honest to his feelings, and definitely not a pushover. After Dan Ah suddenly expressed her attraction to him after first treating him like nothing more than someone providing her with a painting, he didn’t immediately fall back in pace with her. He took a step back, saying ‘stop playing with my feelings like that’, and I respected that a lot about him. Even though he was undeniably in love with Dan Ah, possibly from their first meeting on, he never invaded her space. The chemistry between them was SO good, and it was also really illustrated by their theme song. I LOVED that OST, it’s called ‘Starlight’ by Jang Hyo Bin, and the instrumental in itself is already so enticingly seductive, it just captured their chemistry brilliantly. I kept waiting for a moment where they’d just jump on each other, haha, but that didn’t happen. Dan Ah kisses him one time before their feelings actually align, but during their ‘alignment’ they only have a couple of sweet hugs, and Yeong Hwa kisses her on the forehead once when they say goodbye in the final episode. I really craved for some more intimacy from them, or at least one passionate kiss like the one between Seon Gyeom and Mi Joo in her bedroom, but on the other hand I also respect that it didn’t happen. If they had gotten intimate with each other, it would have probably been even harder to break up and I feel that Dan Ah was holding in A LOT but that she didn’t let it happen because of her dooming knowledge of that it would probably not work out, which is also a little sad.
Anyways, back to Yeong Hwa, so he’s an art student with the real intention of becoming a painter after graduating. He makes very interesting painting with a lot of colours, I personally liked the style a lot. But somehow Dan Ah is able to permeate through that and see what kind of person he is through his paintings and this intrigues him in turn as well. When we see him in class, he seems to be a very popular and liked classmate. His best friend is one of his college mates, Go Ye Joon (played by Kim Dong Young), and Yeong Hwa also tutors his little sister Go Ye Chan (played by Kim Shi Eun), who is secretly passionate about boxing despite her mother’s disapproval. Ye Joon’s and Ye Chan’s mother is Dong Kyung (played by Seo Eun Kyung), and she actually works at Dan Ah’s agency as well. She’s the person who ends up giving Woo Shik a chance to be represented by DANN. This family is one of the units of other characters that I described earlier to also be part of the group that’s running their own journey. We find out that Go Ye Joon is gay and that he has a crush on Yeong Hwa, however he has never been able to come out to his family. When he finally does, his mother chooses to walk away from him, blaming herself for not keeping a closer eye on him. In the meantime, Ye Chan is following boxing classes despite her mother’s strict disapproval, and when she’s found out, she is taken off the lessons immediately. But even as minor a character Dong Kyung was made out to be, it was a nice little side arc their family was featured in, because it was also part of Dong Kyung’s journey to accept her children for who they were and let them do what they wanted. I really liked that in the final part where you see literally everyone, also characters that only appeared in one or two episodes, running their own journey, going on with their lives and getting somewhere, Dong Kyung actually took boxing classes together with her daughter.
Going back a little to Yeong Hwa, I just think the best scene to illustrate his character was when Ye Joon came out to him and told him that he was his first love. Instead of feeling awkward about it, Yeong Hwa just started crying and hugged him so tightly! It was really endearing to see how much he cared about his friend, how he had had to hold this in for so long and that he finally told him. Yeong Hwa was just the best person.

It was so interesting how some characters who I really didn’t think that much of in the beginning really all had their own significant journeys in this drama, it really showed how everyone’s paths were important and that everyone just needed to find their own pace to get to their own finish line, or even just get to the distance they were aiming for without a finish line.
It was also interesting how Yook Ji Woo, when introducing her new movie in the first five minutes of the first episode, simultaneously created an introduction for all four main leads. She gives a basic summary of the theme and after each description, we are shown one of the four leads, as if it’s already foreshadowing that this is going to be a story about them. She says, ‘It’s one of those ordinary love stories where one can be a nutjob (Seon Gyeom), a loser (Mi Joo), a psychopath (Dan Ah), a piece of trash (Yeong Hwa), or someone’s first love.’ All of them did actually turn out to be someone’s first love! The cinematography was really cleverly done, from the start. I probably missed a lot of the symbolisms or foreshadowing, I’d really have to watch it another time to get a new perspective with all these new things I realized in hindsight!

Let me talk a little about Seon Gyeom’s family.
Even though his parents were still together, when Ji Woo chose to become an actress, she dived completely into that and I feel that it was also a way to get away from her husband. Seon Gyeom’s father, Ki Jeong Do (played by Park Young Gyu) is by far the most selfish and unpleasant character in the entire series. He literallly only cares about his own promotion and that his family does what he says in order to compliment his image of being a caring husband and father, while he is actually the opposite of that. Ji Woo isn’t even used to him showing up at her premieres and she really doesn’t even want him to – she’s created her own life and career apart from him now. He only turns up at her events when he wants to fake-show what a loyal husband he is and to complain about Seon Gyeom’s inobedience to her, of course blaming his entire upbringing on her. The worst part is that, as soon as Ji Woo opens her mouth and starts threatening with divorce, he also becomes super toxic and manipulating, scoffing about how she could possibly think that her life is her own now and that he can wreck her life just as easily. He also really doesn’t seem to care about his children’s happiness, as long as he profits from it. His oldest daughter, Seon Gyeom’s sister Ki Eun Bi (played by Ryu Abel) is a professional golfer who has done nothing but make her father proud. She has also lived according to his wishes, even though she does have a lover back in the United States who she’s still pursuing because he keeps running away from her family (with good reason). However, her father is involved in creating rumors that she and another candidate running for president are dating when they go on a golfing trip together. He just wants to show her off to his colleagues, but some pictures get taken of her trying to help the other candidate guy positioning his golf club. During this, Seon Gyeom also shows up to cuss his father out and take his sister away, although she shushes him to stay out of it. This causes so much embarassment for Ki Jeong Do that he vents his frustration on Mi Joo. Pictures have been taken of Seon Gyeom and his new girlfriend and he knows exactly where to find her since she accepted money from him before to ‘spy’ on Seon Gyeom in the beginning of the series. He threatens her that she is the reason his family is now falling apart and this in turn causes Mi Joo to temporarily break up with Seon Gyeom, because she just can’t stand being treated like this again (with good reason). Anyways, Seon Gyeom’s father is literally the worst. He’s such a childish and despicable man.
I was a little confused at the end though, because it almost seemed like Ji Woo wasn’t even aware of what her children had been going through while she’d gone off being an actress. She was still a very loving mother to them herself. But then, when they ended up getting Eun Bi out of that scandal, Seon Gyeom was like ‘I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago, I’m telling mom. Apparently it’s normal to tell your mother about it when father has done something wrong’. But that just made me go, huh? Did Ji Woo really didn’t know about this? I mean, couldn’t they have done something about it much sooner? Because now they called their mom and she was all ‘CANCEL THE PLANE TICKETS TO HOLLYWOOD, I’M OFF TO SAVE MY CHILDREN’, but it just really struck me as odd that this only happened NOW while it had been happening for at least ten years. Does that mean that Ji Woo really wasn’t involved in Jeong Do’s life anymore at all? She certainly knew what a nasty man he was, did she really leave her children with him because she thought he’d be okay to them?
Anyways, I’m glad she finally went to him in the final episode and slapped him in the face so hard and just shoved the divorce papers under this nose. That was so satisfying, seeing him lose literally everything because he’d set everyone against him himself. He really dug his own grave.
I like how one of the reviews I saw on MyDramaList was like, ‘this drama is so sweet, it’s like a very sweet white chocolate with 99% sweetness and that remaining 1% of bitterness is Seon Gyeom’s father’ xD

I think I’ve now covered the most important events and characters, so now I’d like to make a few comments on the cast.

Im Shi Wan looks SO familiar to me, but when I check DramaWiki it seems like I only know him from The Moon That Embraces the Sun where he was the female lead’s younger brother’s teenage version. I didn’t have any other reference of his acting to compare with, but that can also be a good thing. Anyways, I just think he was adorable in this drama. Sometimes I couldn’t really figure out what he was thinking, since he kept pushing people away despite looking very approachable. He could sometimes be unexpectedly sassy in stark contrast to his innocent appearance. But he really did make me laugh out loud a couple of times and I think he had great chemistry with Shin Se Kyung. I’d like to see more of him in the future!

This might be the first review I write for a drama with Shin Se Kyung, but I really like her. She’s really different from other actresses, she always brings something refreshing to her roles. I really liked her in The Girl Who Sees Smells. I liked her a little less in Bride of the Water God, but that drama was generally not very worthwhile so I’m going to blame that on the writing. I just remember how her energy was pretty much nowhere to be found in that drama, and maybe it had to do with the fact that she played someone with depression, but I still didn’t really like it. But that didn’t stop me from following her new dramas! I’m also very soon going to be watching Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung, which is going to be the first historical drama I see with her, so that’ll be exciting! I think she ultimately portrayed Mi Joo very well, seen as it’s a pretty complicated character. Even though she was the female lead, we only get a few quick flashbacks into her youthly struggles, and I think that’s because she personally doesn’t dwell on those too much. The focus isn’t about where she’s been, but on where she’s going, and that is also a very important message within the whole ‘Run On’ story. She was living in her own world most of the time, but she never shied away from talking to people about how interests, she was never ashamed of her life and line of work, even though other people would probably frown at her lifestyle (Seon Gyeom certainly did). But the good thing was that he didn’t try to change her, because she definitely wouldn’t have wanted that in the least. It was cool to see this composed and mature character from her, she portrayed a really human and realistic person. Also, she’s freaking gorgeous.

It was my first time seeing Choi Soo Young AKA Girls’ Generation’s Sooyoung in a drama, but it felt like she belonged there! Her acting was so natural and cool. I really liked how she portrayed the many layers of Dan Ah, from her eccentric and mischievous outside to her tormented and vulnerable inside. In one of the final scenes from the last episodes, where the four leads were eating snacks together, I was watching her acting in the background and it was so natural! Her timing and continuous background acting even if she didn’t have lines were really good. This may sound like common sense but you’d be surprised to see so many actors only act when they have lines and just ‘shut off’ when the other person is speaking until it’s time for their next line again. She really surprised me in this drama, or should I say jumped out to me. She was able to convey so many different emotions, and I really enjoyed watching her performance.

I LOVE Kang Tae Oh. He’s one of those actors that will just always bring a smile to my face. I’ve written reviews on a few of his dramas before, such as Short and My First First Love, but he still mainly gets side character roles and it’s such a shame because he’s so good and I always love watching him. I think he was a really good choice for Yeong Hwa, because he just has that youthful energy (I just found out he’s only still 27?!) and that great smile. I especially loved the scenes when he was with his friends and at college where we got to see how he was perceived by his college mates and he just was so naturally bubbly. I think Dan Ah becoming his first love made him mature very fast, not only because she was older, but also because he got to deal with some serious feelings, also in the way they broke up in the end. He went from bubbly boy to mature guy! I also really like that they made him a painter. I always like to see art in dramas, and I guess he didn’t actually paint these by himself in real life, but these paintings were really amazing. I liked that the paintings became kind of the rope in the tug-of-war between him and Dan Ah. I also really liked their chemistry, as I said before. Well done!

The final two people I want to mention before concluding are May and Jung Ji Hyun.
Park Mae Yi (or Mae Hee?) – nicknamed ‘May’ for convenience (played by Lee Bong Ryeon), is Mi Joo’s closest friend but also her colleague/team leader? I’m not entirely sure anymore but I feel like she was Mi Joo’s boss in a way as well. She was someone who lived with Mi Joo and they ate together a lot, but you could see that they also knew each other well enough to leave each other alone at the right moments as well. May never worried about Mi Joo when she was pulling allnighters and when Seon Gyeom enters her life, she just very easily leaves them be. Even though she appears to be a big part of Mi Joo’s life, she also has her own journey, which ultimately leads her into a relationship with Jung Ji Hyun (played by Yoon Je Wook), Dan Ah’s secretary. That scene with the failed surprise birthday party for Dan Ah where they met was hilarious xD They were introduced as a couple to the rest of the group completely out of the blue, no one had paid any attention to it, but that’s exactly what I liked about it, because it just proved that really everyone was running their own paths, whether noticed by other people or not. Even the people in the background you don’t pay attention to have their own journeys to travel, their own races to run.

I really liked the ending sequence where it was just a collection of footage from all the characters, even the special appearances and the minor side characters, and how they went on with their lives. I think this definitely illustrated the essence of what ‘Run On’ was about and wrapped it up all nicely. I haven’t gone into too much detail about the individual events such as Mi Joo’s interpretor’s job with the foreign staff, Seon Gyeom and Mi Joo’s team endeavour to bring Seon Gyeom’s old coach (played by Seo Jung Yeon, she’s a great actress) back, etcetera, but I think I was able to review on the essence of the series and the things that stood out to me the most. One last shoutout goes to Kim Won Hae as the bartender because I just love this man no matter what kind of roles he plays. I feel like his character may have had another purpose, but I think I just wasn’t able to recognize it as I’m not too great at recognizing symbolisms and metaphors as quickly as I’d like to. xD Anyways, I really liked the cameos and guest appearances in this drama.

As I mentioned before, if you’re all about the action and the passion and the exciting plot twists, this drama might not exactly be your cup of tea, but if you’re okay with a simple, romantic and healing story about life that focusses on a couple of people trying to love themselves as well as others, then I’d definitely recommend it. The dialogues are great, and the whole message of the story is so human and realistic. I didn’t cry, personally, but I can definitely imagine people relating to the characters in more deeper ways. The themes were good, I was glad to finally see someone come out as gay in a K-Drama, and it was just great to see everyone talk out their feelings and misunderstandings like that.

Thank you for taking the time to read my review, and I’ll be back soon with a new one soon. The next one on my list is supposed to be a real tearjerker so let me just get my tissue box before I start…. Until next time!