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.

A Business Proposal
(사내맞선 / Sanaematseon)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hiya! I come back to you with a new review before the end of the month! I hope everyone is still keeping healthy and happy out there. I have to say, now that I started working 4 days a week instead of 5, I feel much more rested and I love that I now have some extra time fulfilling that need for rest by watching more drama series, as well. So the drama I watched this time is a very recent one, I decided to put my to watch list on hold for a moment to catch up on some highly anticipated 2022 dramas simply because I could not wait to watch them. This is number one and I can say right off the bat that I’m really glad I watched it now and didn’t force myself to wait. I really liked it. It gave me all the feels of a classic romcom K-Drama, but with actual straightforward, contemporary characters and even though the humor at times got a little slapsticky, it never got annoying or too much. I think it was a very nice mix of classic tropes, but it was also very refreshing because of it’s simplicity, not too much heavy emotional stuff, and very effective chemistry between the main characters. Without further ado, let’s go!

A Business Proposal is a 12-episode Netflix K-Drama with each episode lasting about an hour. It’s about food researcher Shin Ha Ri (played by Kim Se Jeong), who works at a company called GoFood. She’s really good at her work and belongs to Product Development Team 1, so she actually gets to develop new food products with her team. Her family consists further of her parents – I’ll call them Mr. Shin and Mrs. Han – (played respectively by Kim Kwang Gyu and Jung Young Joo) and her younger brother Ha Min (played by Choi Byung Chan). Her parents own a chicken restaurant at which she and her brother also occasionally help out. Ha Ri’s best friend is Jin Young Seo (played by Seol In Ah), who is from a rich family, but who is like a second daughter to Ha Ri’s parents and the two girls hang out a lot and get drunk together occasionally, they are the bestest of besties. On a side note, Ha Ri has a college friend, Lee Min Woo (played by Song Won Suk) on whom she’s had a crush for 7 years, but he never gave her the chance to tell him her feelings since he keeps going back to his ex – despite clearly having some unresolved feelings for Ha Ri too. Min Woo is a chef who also gets involved in a collaboration with Ha Ri’s company at some point, but in any case, he’s Ha Ri’s first love.
On the other hand, there’s Kang Tae Moo (played by Ahn Hyo Seop), he is the CEO of Ha Ri’s company GoFood. His grandfather (played by Lee Duk Hwa) is the Chairman of this company. Anyways, Tae Moo is a very stoic guy who’s a complete workaholic and has little interest in anything else. His secretary and also brother-like best friend is Cha Sung Hoon (played by Kim Min Gyu), and although he tries to alert Tae Moo of his occasional rudeness to people, he mostly just goes along with what he does. When they are together, they always pull a lot of attention since they are both considered to be very handsome.
One day, Tae Moo’s grandfather tells him that he is setting him up on blind dates since he wants Tae Moo to settle down and get married. As a workaholic with no interest in finding romance, Tae Moo refuses but then agrees to go on one date, even if it’s just to keep his grandfather pleased and not hear anything more about these blind dates. The date he’s set up with is, miraculously, Jin Young Seo, Ha Ri’s friend.
Young Seo receives notice of this blind date while she’s out drinking with Ha Ri and begs her friend to take her place in the blind date to scare him off, as Ha Ri has done for her multiple times before. After initially refusing, Ha Ri agrees that it will be the last time and she meets up with Tae Moo while dressed in a very extravagant way with a lot of makeup. She does her best to come off as raunchy as possible, and after she leaves the date she feels confident that he’ll never want to see her again.
But then the news reaches Young Seo that Kang Tae Moo is actually very interested in seeing “her” again – something went terribly wrong with messing up the date and Ha Ri is forced to meet him again a couple of times, although she keeps saying that she doesn’t want to marry him.
Of course, it’s a very complicated situation for Ha Ri since she found out during the blind date that this was her own company’s CEO (she’d never actually seen him before in real life) and she’s terrified that he’ll recognize her at work. So then there’s a part where she regularly has to change between her blind date persona and her real identity in order not to get found out and risk being fired.
It doesn’t take long for the partial truth to come out that she is not Young Seo, but then the story becomes that Young Seo hired her and they don’t actually know each other. Ha Ri tells Tae Moo that her name is Shin Geum Hee (incidentally the name of the protagonist of a very popular drama series in the show that everyone’s constantly watching in the meantime), and she’s even introduced to his grandfather.

Okay, so this is basically where all the issues start in the story, with Ha Ri digging herself deeper into her own lies. As I mentioned in the introduction, there were a few situations that became a bit slapsticky, and these were mostly situations in which Ha Ri tried to escape events that would threaten her identity to be exposed. Looking at it realistically, of course she wouldn’t actually have to resort to such dramatically comical solutions, but it did make for a good laugh. Honestly, I couldn’t with the one incident where she almost ran into Min Woo while dressed as Geum Hee and she just folded over and blindly headed towards the open door of a randomly parked car and hid inside. I mean, she probably thought it was an empty taxi or she just thoughtlessly climbed into a stranger’s car (of course it was Tae Moo’s car), but that really got me shaking my head because she could’ve literally just walked by Min Woo with her face averted and he wouldn’t have even noticed her. Maybe I’m being too serious here, but this just got me facepalming, haha. Anyways, there’s multiple of these situations that’d make me go ‘oh, girl, come on, there is most definitely a better and more natural way to get out of this’.
Her situation seems to be solved once Tae Moo suddenly contacts her saying that she (Geum Hee) is fired and they don’t need to meet again. This is when Tae Moo has discovered her true identity. They’ve been on several dates by this point and he actually started developing some feelings for her, but then while driving by the chicken restaurant, he sees her come out as Ha Ri carrying the trash. He harrasses her a bit at work in the week after that, but he can’t stop himself from constantly thinking about her while he’s on business trips and such, so he decides to forgive her. All seems to be good and well as the two come to terms with the whole situation and they actually start growing towards each other for real, but there’s one mistake that Tae Moo made that still makes what happened an open case – he never informed his grandfather of the truth about Geum Hee. As it happens, while Grandpa really warmed up to Geum Hee, he’s gotten into a very embarrassing situation with Ha Ri during a field trip for her team at work, a situation in which Ha Ri once again tried to hide from him so he wouldn’t recognize her face. Several occasions have happened since that have made Grandpa very suspicious of Shin Ha Ri, and when the truth finally comes out, it’s also not easy for her to win back his trust.

While this whole situation is playing out between Ha Ri and Tae Moo, there’s also the interesting pairing of Young Seo and Sung Hoon. They meet by chance at a convenience store one time and for both of them it’s like ✨D E S T I N Y✨. They both fall in love with each other at first sight. Of course, since we first only see Young Seo’s side of the story, we’re not sure of Sung Hoon’s side, but they keep meeting in fateful ways, at specific restaurants, and they even become nextdoor neighbors when Young Seo cuts herself loose from her father’s influence and starts living on her own. Sung Hoon initially draws a firm line between them, since there is the incident of her fooling his boss and sending someone else instead on her blind date with him. But it doesn’t take long for them to admit to their mutual attraction and they get physical with each other quite easily (although it probably helped that Young Seo was drunk the first time). Anyways, they manage to resolve any misunderstandings and start happily dating. While the main story is about Ha Ri and Tae Moo, Young Seo and Sung Hoon are definitely two very firm pillars and I would also like to call them fellow main leads rather than the ‘second leads’ because they were just as important to the story.

Moving on to my analysis – I think I’ve covered the summary of the series now more than enough – I would like to start with the relationships between all the characters, because I really liked the dynamics between the four of them. I will talk more about the romantic relationships, but first of all let’s start with the friendships.
I LOVED Ha Ri and Young Seo’s friendship. They were so comfortable with each other, it was really nice to see a realistic friendship between two women in a K-Drama where there was no shame, no need to hide anything, no need to keep up appearances. The last drama I remember seeing with this kind of female friendship was Because This Is My First Life, it’s just so refreshing to see two adult women in such a steady friendship like this. Ha Ri could’ve gotten angry at Young Seo for making her go to all those blind dates in her place but she never did. Young Seo could have become angry at Ha Ri for failing to scare Tae Moo off the first time, and while she did get a little annoyed, she never truly blamed Ha Ri for her or held it against her. They were just so loyal to each other and they trusted each other so much, like actual sisters. It was really nice to see them act like teenagers on one moment, and then really being there for each other, emotionally supporting each other the next. I think this might be one of my most favorite friendships depicted between women in a K-Drama so far, I really enjoyed their scenes together, there was never a dull moment.
On the other hand, there’s Tae Moo and Sung Hoon, and while they seemed to be a bit more distant than the two women, there was definitely some real bromance going on between them. That scene when this nurse came in while Sung Hoon was helping Tae Moo get dressed at the hospital and it just looked like they were hugging and the nurse was just like “I’ll give you two some space 👀” SENT me. I also loved that she just accepted it and got all giddy about it herself, haha, we’re all for acceptance on this issue in Asian drama series! Anyways, how Tae Moo started teasing Sung Hoon after that happened was so great, because you could finally see this mischievous side come out off him, and he’d probably never act like that with any other guy. I loved how Tae Moo and Sung Hoon were like actual brothers, and how Grandpa also just took Sung Hoon in as his second grandson. It was so touching when Sung Hoon finally called him ‘grandpa’ at the end after they found out he was sick. Their friendship and living situation also reminded me of the one of the male leads from Love Alarm. I have to admit that I think I missed the full explanation of how Sung Hoon came to live with Tae Moo and his grandfather, was the lady from the orphanage his biological mother? I thought she was, but did that mean she just couldn’t take care of her son full-time because of the orphanage? I’m sure they talked about it but I didn’t catch the full story, so if anyone managed to pick that up, do let me know!

What I really liked about this series as a whole was how it was so light and simple. It incorporated a lot of classical tropes and cliches but made it modern, and I also like that they used the show about the Geum Hee character in the background as a sort of reflection, because that was definitely an example of a very old-fashioned cliche drama series. It was like they made a parallel by letting the two shows exist alongside each other to create a comparison between old-fashioned and modern-time drama series.
I also have to say that it was very refreshing that there was no real, as I like to call it, ✨destiny✨ element in this series. With this I mean that there was no event that linked the characters to each other through the past, nothing that fatefully brought them back to each other as if they were meant to be. Before becoming a couple, the characters were completely unrelated to one another. They met in the here and now through self-created circumstances.
The only childhood trauma story was that of Tae Moo being triggered by rainy days. His parents died in a car accident on a rainy day while rushing to see him for his birthday, and he’s always blamed himself for that. It’s used more as a character development tool than as a defining back story in my opinion, because Ha Ri actually helps him get through it. She picks up on it by coincidence when she hears some people talk about it and then tries to accomodate him as much as possible so they won’t have to go out in the rain and while she doesn’t literally tell him “I’m doing this because I know about your trauma”, it was probably the best way to deal with it, because in that way Tae Moo also picked up on what she was trying to do for him without her having to explain it to him. I think it was really wonderful to see how close they became, they really became each other’s solace, each other’s rock. Ha Ri comforted him during rainy days and Tae Moo helped her get closure with her feelings for Min Woo in a time when they weren’t even officially together yet. It was heartwarming to see that their romance went as far as becoming emotionally dependent on each other, they opened up about their true feelings and especially for Tae Moo this was a pretty big step since he’d always kept stuff inside. It was so satisfying when he confided in her how worried he was about his grandpa when they found out about his illness. He asked her to come with him to the US, but was completely aware that this might be a selfish request and he was completely okay with her refusing, he didn’t even try to persuade her any further, he just said ‘I already knew, but I just had to get it out’.
I think the relationship between Young Seo and Sung Hoon was also very contemporary and realistic. I only got annoyed with Young Seo at ONE point, when she became really petty during the mountain climbing scene. Then I was just like, where did the Young Seo I loved so much up until now go?? But on the other hand, it was also to demonstrate that both of them needed to put in effort to make their relationship work. They couldn’t just rely on falling for each other at first sight and expecting everything to be perfect from then on. So I think it was good that they had these fall-outs as well, because they just proved to be obstacles that they could figure out together.
I think both couples represented mixed social rank romance, of each couple one party belonged to a higher social class than the other, and that also made it a bit reminiscent of High Society. In the end, while Ha Ri and Tae Moo did get the approval of Grandpa, they didn’t need to overcome that many other obstacles in regards to their differing social ranks, and Young Seo also cut herself loose from her father and his company in order to stay with Sung Hoon, even though it was hard to turn her back on her family. But I hope this is just another contribution to showing that love knows no boundaries, and definitely no differences on social ranks. People should all have the right to fall in love and be with the person of their own choosing, love should not be a business proposal.

I haven’t talked about Ha Ri’s colleagues yet and I really want to because these people were awesome. So Product Development Team 1 further consisted of Head Yeo Eui Joo (played by Kim Hyun Sook), Deputy Head Gye Bin (played by Im Ki Hong) and new employee Kim Hye Ji (played by Yoon Sang Jung). It was just so nice to see that Ha Ri had a solid team behind her at work, even though they were quite chaotic. Even when rumors started spreading that she was dating the CEO and even that she was two-timing him and Min Woo, her colleagues still had her back and stood up for her against gossipping employees. The dynamics between them were really nice and funny, and I also really liked how Ms. Yeo and Mr. Gye became a couple, especially because the dynamic between the two of them was opposite of what you’d might expect. I think the Product Development Team 1 scenes probably made me laugh out loud the most. I couldn’t with Hye Ji getting super drunk at that team dinner and just blurting out stuff, the drunk scenes were acted out really hilariously.

There’s two more side stories I have to address before I move on to my cast + final character comments.
The first one is the one of Min Woo and Ha Ri, and consequently, Min Woo’s ex turned girlfriend again, Go Yoo Ra (played by Bae Woo Hee). Just to cut to the chase, Yoo Ra is a real bitch. She only started dating Min Woo because she knew Ha Ri was interested in him and she just wanted to bother her. But then when Min Woo started rising in status as a chef, she suddenly starts wanting to get him all the press and attention to boast with him being her boyfriend. Her intentions were never clean with Min Woo, but as soon as she sees how much he still cares for Ha Ri, even as a friend, she still gets jealous. In my opinion, she really shouldn’t have poked her nose in their friendship to begin with. In the beginning it’s really obvious how much Ha Ri likes Min Woo, and we just feel so sorry for her when we see he’s getting back with his ex. But on the other hand, as soon as Ha Ri and Tae Moo start dating, we see Min Woo getting uncomfortable with that. He claims that he just doesn’t want Ha Ri to get hurt, but there really seems to be more going on. Of course, he’s already missed his chance by then, Ha Ri is already getting over him, and he never actually spoke out how he truly felt about Ha Ri, but I think it’s safe to say that they had feelings for each other but probably just never found the right timing or something. And then Yoo Ra started butting in, of course. What I did love about Ha Ri was how mature she remained, even while knowing that Yoo Ra wasn’t being very decent. She left it all up to Min Woo to sort out his own stuff rather than rat her out to him because that’s the mature thing to do. She was the kind of person who would just silently step back instead of forcing her own feelings onto him, and that was really characteristic of her, all the more in comparison to Yoo Ra who just went for keeping up appearances. In the end I really did hope that Ha Ri and Min Woo could be at least friends again, although I imagine it would take time, the two at least expressed that they’d be up for trying again. I’m glad it worked out between them.

Lastly, and this is something that I just felt like I had to bring up because it’s become such a meme online: Jo Yoo Jung. At some point, Young Seo’s cousing Jo Yoo Jung (played by Seo Hye Won) appears at their family’s company. She’s a very extravagant character who uses a lot of English in her sentences and acts very dramatically. She has a short story arc in which she is set up for a blind date with Tae Moo, but since Tae Moo goes off to confirm his love for Ha Ri, he asks Sung Hoon to go in his place. What happens next is that Yoo Jung actually falls for Sung Hoon on the spot and keeps bothering him even when he’s made it very clear that he has a girlfriend.
Like, I get that the “YOU KNOW I HAVE NO CHINGU” scene was very iconic and meme-worthy, but honestly, I didn’t really understand her contribution to the drama. It’s not like she formed an actual threat to Young Seo and Sung Hoon’s relationship, she was just a funny comical side character that disappeared again as soon as her antics were over. I wasn’t exactly sure what her deal was, in the first place, only that she was Young Seo’s cousin and that they were like cats and dogs but then Young Seo did also comfort her and you could see that, if they’d put their judgements aside, they might actually be able to get along. She did cause an incident that made Young Seo’s annoyance with Sung Hoon’s devotion to Tae Moo flare up, though, so she might have been a plot tool to cause that kind of situation to be brought up. Young Seo got pissed at Sung Hoon for always blindly following Tae Moo’s orders, mostly because they always caused him to lie to her about what was actually going on. In the end, the issue was resolved when she found out about his past, his mother who ran the orphanage, and Tae Moo formally apologizing to her.

Okay, so now we go onto the cast + character comments!

First of all Kim Se Jeong. Oh, how I love this girl. I’ve loved her since Produce 101 and I really like that she’s been picking up acting, because she’s really good at it. I might have been a little bit disappointed with School 2017, I am SO glad she got casted in this. I enjoyed every single scene, her bubbliness and quirkiness just splashes off the screen and she just had me flying with the little ‘rawr’ ad libs and her drunken acting behavior. I read on DramaWiki that the role of Ha Ri was first offered to Jo Bo Ah, so I am IMMENSELY grateful that Se Jeong accepted it instead of her. She just made this drama, she was amazing, I loved her performance from beginning to end.
Ha Ri is just such a grounded character. She’s really rational and smart, she’s not passive, she doesn’t let herself get swept away in stuff without having a strong personal opinion about it. She feels herself falling for Tae Moo quite quickly, but she never oversteps her boundaries and she only allows herself to think about it once he’s made it clear that he has feelings for her. And even then, she is constantly considering the possibility of them being together, she has legit worries since they’re from different worlds. You can just see how she doesn’t allow herself to get swept up in her emotions, she continues to be as rational as possible. She’s not insecure about herself, she has a natural confidence and it’s not that she lets herself be compared to anyone else. I thought she was a really likeable main character and her chemistry with Ahn Hyo Seop was really good.

Talking about Ahn Hyo Seop, it hasn’t been too long since I finished Abyss, after which I mentioned in my review that he’s become one of my new favorite actors. This drama confirmed this once again. He has certainly proved his versatility in acting because he was a completely different person than in Abyss. I honestly felt a bit weird about him playing the handsome stoic CEO character in the beginning, but he actually pulled it off pretty well! He’s just such a puppy in my eyes, it was kind of refreshing to see him as this kind of mature business guy, but what amazed me the most was how he pulled off the passionate scenes. The kissing scenes between him and Se Jeong were AMAZING. Like, nothing left to be desired for me. Especially the final one at the end of the second-to-last episode, I was really vexed when it ended there and the next episode just started with the morning after. I was like NOOOO!! I have mentioned it before, but I’m a sucker for really good passionate kissing scenes and when they get good, I just don’t want them to end too abruptly, haha. Anyways, I think he showed yet another side of his acting, although I think I still prefer him as a puppy, I’m not ready to say goodbye to puppy Ahn Hyo Seop yet. T^T
Out of every character in this series, Tae Moo most definitely had the most character development. I mean, just look at how he was in episode 1 versus episode 12. The way his heart was opened up to Geum Hee/Ha Ri slowly but surely was really natural and satisfying to watch. You could just see how it became apparent that all this time he just never allowed himself to be happy, to look for more in life than just his work. He blamed himself for his parents’ deaths and it had just imprinted this idea in his brain that they wouldn’t want him to be happy after that, that his parents also blamed him, which was of course absurd. But Ha Ri was the one who opened his eyes to the fact that none of this was his fault and that he had every right to search for his own happiness, as much as anybody else. Their relationship went from simply cute to really heartwarming and I loved that.
I still have a couple of Ahn Hyo Seop dramas left on my to watch list, and there’s no doubt he will continue to appear in many more dramas in the near future, so I’m definitely here for that!

I recognized Kim Min Gyu from Because This Is My First Life, but I see he was also in Who Are You – School 2015, The Sound of Your Heart, Just Between Lovers, and also in a couple more that are on my soon-to-watch list. He has a very unique face! I’ve never seen this kind of role from him either, or at least such a main role, I suppose, but I liked his character in this series. Sung Hoon was really mature and rational, and his patience with Young Seo was admirable sometimes, haha. I liked the plot twist of him also being struck by love at first sight by her, because he didn’t let on that this was the case right from the start. It was just nice in general to see two main couples with such good chemistry, the kissing scenes between him and Seol In Ah were also really good. The focus was on the first main couple, but I do like that they also showed some scenes from the relationship between Young Seo and Sung Hoon, in that way the two main relationships were still levelled out, like in Fight For My Way, for example. Anyways, it was fun seeing him act in this drama because it also brought a funny side out of him and I got to see a new side to his acting, which was nice!

I’ve seen Seol In Ah in several dramas before, I immediately recognized her face. She appeared in Producer, Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, and even in School 2017 along with Se Jeong! Record of Youth is also still on my list. I really liked her performance in this drama. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen her play a main role, but she really impressed me. I just loved her friendship chemistry with Se Jeong, their interaction just looked so effortless it wouldn’t surprise me if they were really close in real life. Especially her drunken antics made me crack up every single time, the scene where Young Seo and Ha Ri were brought home by the police because they had gotten too drunk to walk by themselves was hilarious.
Young Seo is really the best loyal friend anyone could wish for. She may have her petty moments and her own issues to deal with, but she was always on Ha Ri’s side, there to comfort her and join her in cussing out annoying people. I loved that she was more than just ‘the main protagonist’s best friend’, she really had her own life, she didn’t exist purely as Ha Ri’s support system but she was always there for her when she needed it. I liked how she just made her relationship with Sung Hoon work, too, not caring about anyone else but just going for it, following her own heart. I really liked her, apart from that one scene where she acted like a spoiled child, I really just loved her.

Can I just give a shoutout to Lee Duk Hwa who played the Grandpa? I LOVED him in this series. I’ve seen him in several dramas before, like Hide, Jekyll, Me, Suspicious Partner and Go Go Waikiki, but he really cracked me up in this drama. It’s like, even when he was being strict, he always had this mischievous twinkle in his eye like he wasn’t really angry, he was just trying to lure people out of their shell. After Tae Moo’s backstory was revealed and that he was with his Grandpa that night when his parents died and his Grandpa was right there when he saw them lying there and was trying to cover his eyes and yelling out of sorrow for this horror, it really said a lot about Tae Moo’s relationship with his Grandpa. He had taken in his grandson without a second of hesitation and raised him as if he were his father and mother in one. He really was the best supporting family member for Tae Moo and I love how he was also so welcoming towards Sung Hoon, even calling him his ‘other grandson’. It was fun seeing him pretend like he couldn’t accept Ha Ri, even though we already know he would break at some point, because he couldn’t deny what the two were feeling for each other and come on, if Tae Moo had forgiven her for the whole Geum Hee think, if the two of them had already resolved things, then why should anyone else have any objections towards their relationship? In any case, I really liked the Grandpa and also how he got so invested in that drama series. Again, how they did not make a link any sooner that Geum Hee was a fake name, but he just went ‘Shin Geum Hee? Hey, what a coincidence, that’s the name of the female protagonist in my favorite show!’ I really liked his performance in this series.

I’ve seen the actors playing Ha Ri’s parents multiple times before too, but for the father it was the first time he actually played a character that I found sympathetic, haha. I feel like he always plays the nosy reporter guy, haha. Anyways, I’ve seen Kim Kwang Gyu before in Oh! My Lady, Sungkyunkwan Scandal, I Hear Your Voice, Pinocchio, Gogh The Starry Night, Hwarang: The Beginning and Thirty But Seventeen. I liked to see him as the soft-hearted dad, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him play a father before, to be honest. I think he did very well, I liked the scene at the end when Tae Moo has just asked them for their blessing in dating Ha Ri with marriage in mind, and he just expressed his honest feelings of being worried of his only daughter facing evil gossip and things like that. They had a real heart-to-heart right there, and it was nice to see MEN talking about their FEELINGS and WORRIES. Normalize that!
Jung Young Joo is such an iconic actress. I’ve seen her now in Cinderella and the Four Knights, Jugglers, That Man Oh Soo, My Mister, Gyeryong Fairytale and Move to Heaven. She’s so extra, she’s played such extra roles but then it’s always funny to me when she gets casted as a mom because then she just becomes this extra mom and I’m always like, how did the dad end up marrying a woman like that, haha. I really liked her as Ha Ri’s mom, though, because her extraness didn’t become too much. She wasn’t just a comical character, I think she established Ha Ri’s family situation very well. You could say she was just more of a ‘tough love’ kind of mom, haha.

All this time I was thinking where I recognized Ha Min from and when I looked it up I discovered that it’s Byung Chan from VICTON! I knew him from Produce X 101, so I wasn’t expecting him to appear in a drama. Anyways, that was nice. Although he didn’t have a very big role, I really liked how supportive he was of his sister’s relationship with Tae Moo and when Tae Moo asked for Ha Ri’s family’s permission, he was just being that ANTM’s Alasia meme in the background, haha. He was just the typical little brother character, but at least his relationship with Ha Ri was good, I liked how her there were no tensions in her family whatsoever, she just had a really good support system.

I haven’t seen any of Song Won Suk’s dramas before, but for some reason he still looks familiar to me? Anyways, he seemed like the typical guy to be cast as the first love of the female protagonist, kind face, good friendship. I just wished that whatever he truly felt towards Ha Ri had come out earlier, because now until the end I wasn’t sure what exactly his deal was with her. He kept rejecting her, he never came to her, and yet he started acting jealous as soon as she moved on, that seemed a little weird to me. Anyways, I think it was for the better that he and Ha Ri stayed friends, it suited them way better.

I’ll end with the dramatic Miss Jo Yoo Jung, played by Seo Hye Won. Again, she looked so familiar to me, but DramaWiki is again telling me I haven’t seen anything with her before. It says she’s a musical actress though, that’s interesting. And I also see she’s in True Beauty, so I will see her in that once I get around to watch that.

The only series I’ve seen Kim Hyun Sook in was Are You Human Too? where she played Reporter Jo. I see she was also the main character in that renzoku drama Rude Miss Young Ae (I’ve never seen it but I’ve seen the name more than enough times to guess that it’s probably a classic kind of sitcom?). Anyways, I liked her character here, with her awesome glasses. She was so stoic, it was funny to see her try to suppress her cute side with Mr. Gye after they became a couple, but she was definitely wearing the pants in the relationship.

I liked that there were many actors that I hadn’t seen before, or that I now saw as a more major character for the first time in this drama. It really brought back the nostalgia of the classic romcom K-Drama with the many misunderstandings in the beginning, but it’s really nice how they managed to keep it modern. It was reminiscent of how it used to be, but executed as how dramas have developed through the years. As I said, I liked how the ‘Be Strong, Shin Geum Hee’ drama that was playing in the background seemed like a literal reference to those old-fashioned romantic dramas and it’s funny how they also showed the advertisement to the webtoon it was based on at a bus stop in the first episode. There were multiple of these subtle references to classic K-Drama and opening the fourth wall to the viewers.

Lastly, I REALLY loved the soundtrack for this drama. I’ve heard so many songs that I’m going to look up again to download, because everything was so cute and beautiful and fit the concept of the drama so well. So my compliments for the OST arrangement, and I also liked how they got MeloMance to collab with them on this drama by even making a guest appearance!

So yeah, I think this wasn’t a particularly long review but it didn’t need to be because the story in itself is so light and simple that it doesn’t need a full in-depth analysis. I just really enjoyed it, series like this make me reconfirm why I love K-Dramas so much. I’m glad I decided to watch this now rather than wait, and it’s made me decide to catch up on some other more recent releases first too before moving on with my original list. I’ve just become so hyped by all these exciting new dramas!
I think it’s important to keep including dramas that don’t necessarily cover heavy emotional themes, but rather focus on stories that feature modern, simple relationships, because it just makes them so accessible and enjoyable to watch. I would definitely recommend this if you’re looking for a good, light romcom. The whole vibe of the show was fun, the acting was good and I really want to give bonus points for the chemistry between all the main characters, because some moments were literally s i z z l i n g to watch. I also wasn’t surprised to hear that it was adapted from a webtoon, like it really seemed like these characters could be inspired by webtoon characters, in terms of personality and the dynamics they had between each other. One of my favorite runnings gags was definitely the “archaeopteryx” as a reference to Tae Moo, like how the heck did he look like that?? But I liked that they kept it in and the little dino bird popped out of Ha Ri’s phone every time he called her. It was also fun to see how, as time progressed, she wouldn’t flinch back because of it, but she’d actually enjoy it whenever the archaeopteryx came calling.
I also like that it again featured a line of business that isn’t very mainstream as far as I know, food production and food research. It was nice that the main characters already had their mutual interest in food products in common once they really started getting to know each other. I always appreciate it when women working in science-related jobs are highlighted through these representations.

I will be back with a new review probably next month, because again I really want to take my time with the next one. I’m already excited to get back to you! ^^

Until then!

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.

Love Alarm
(좋아하면 울리는 / Joahamyeon Ullineun / Ring If You Like)
MyDramaList rating (for both seasons): 7.0/10

Hello everyone! I’m back with a new review! It hasn’t been that long since my previous one, but I managed to finish this quite fast despite it having two seasons, since neither season has that many episodes and I had more free time last week. I had been curious to watch it for a while, because I noticed that it was hyped pretty much when it came out, but also that people overall weren’t very enthusiastic about it. I wanted to make my own decisions about it, so I decided to give it a try despite other people’s opinions. And I have to say, I’m probably going to be one of those people that actually have some good things to say about it. I actually liked it. I think it had a really good message in the end. I’m not sure why people weren’t satisfied with it, but I could really relate to the characters and their feelings and I think the ending was wrapped up really nicely, leaving me with no further questions. This review might be more positive than others, so if you’re up for that, let’s get going!

Love Alarm is a Netflix K-Drama with two seasons, Season 1 consisting of 8 episodes and Season 2 consisting of 6 episodes, and each episode is about an hour long. The story is about Kim Jo Jo (played by Kim So Hyun), a high school student. She lives in a time where a certain app is very popular, the Joalarm (Love Alarm) app. When you install this app, it synchs with your heart, and it can ‘ring’ the Joalarm of the person you like if you’re in a 10 meter radius of them and vice versa. It’s a very handy way to determine whether you have feelings for someone and the other way around. No wonder it’s very popular among high school students, because it elevates the excitement of school romance. The Joalarm doesn’t lie, it will ring when someone near you likes you, but it doesn’t give you a name, it’s just a signal detector. Jo Jo doesn’t have this app initially, mainly because she has more important things on her mind. I’ll explain more in detail later, but in a nutshell: she lost her parents when she was very young, she’s been living with her grandmother ever since. When her grandmother got sick and they had to move to Seoul to get her into a good hospital, she moved in with her aunt and cousin from her mother’s side. She’s been doing nothing but pay off debts to her aunt and her grandmother’s hospital bills, and she works two part-time jobs after school in secret. Since she officially isn’t allowed to work part-time as a high school student, she even lies to her friends about it, says she’s attending an afterschool academy to study harder. So yeah, she’s having a tough time and she doesn’t really have time to think about Joalarm because there’s not even anyone she’s interested in. She does have a boyfriend in the beginning of the series, but she can’t seem to put effort in their relationship and he’s the only one showing his affection. As if her life isn’t already stressful enough, it only gets more extreme when Hwang Sun Oh (played by Song Kang) transfers to her school. He’s the handsome rich son of a politician running for mayor and a famous actress, and he’s a model who just returned from America.
Sun Oh lives in a very big house with his parents, and also with Lee Hye Yeong (played by Jung Ga Ram) and his mom. Hye Yeong and his mom have been living with Sun Oh’s family since the two boys were little, they needed a place to stay and they are helping around the house in return for staying there. Hye Yeong works at one of the part-time jobs that Jo Jo works at, and we immediately see that he has a thing for her. He always looks out for her, and while he doesn’t approach her directly or even talk to her, he always makes sure that she gets home/on the bus safely and he’s satisfied by just watching her smile from a distance. When Sun Oh returns, he immediately notices his best friend’s behavior towards this girl and he also becomes interested in her. Although it first seems as if he just wants to know what Hye Yeong sees in her, he ends up falling for her as well. In contrast to Hye Yeong, Sun Oh is VERY straightforward with his intentions, and he manages to sweep Jo Jo off her feet within the first week of meeting her. Hye Yeong sees this happen and silently resigns. He won’t even admit to Sun Oh that he has feelings for Jo Jo because he doesn’t want to get in his friend’s way (even though he liked her first). Jo Jo eventually installs Joalarm and through the app, her and Sun Oh’s feelings for each other are confirmed.

This is where it all starts, with Jo Jo and Sun Oh falling for each other.
In the beginning, I was a bit confused as to what everyone’s intentions were. I didn’t understand why Hye Yeong kept denying that he had feelings for Jo Jo even though it was so obvious. And I also wondered why Sun Oh went after Jo Jo in the first place. At first, I really thought he just wanted to check her out as his best friend’s wingman to see what kind of person she was, to see if he could see what Hye Yeong saw in her. But then he came on so strong and even kissed her like that in the first episode, and that really made me go… Okay, what? Because it almost seemed like he was seducing her on purpose, while knowing Hye Yeong had feelings for her, maybe to prove to his friend that she wouldn’t be suitable for him because she’d agreed to kiss him so easily? Or something? These were explanations that went through my mind. But apparently, he’d already become romantically interested in her within a couple of days. Jo Jo’s narration at this point did say that the kiss came before the feelings, so even if she’d had the Joalarm, it wouldn’t have rang, and neither did his. But it did all happen pretty fast after that.

The kissing thing then blows up at school because Jo Jo’s friend Kim Jang Go (played by Z.Hera) sees them and sends a picture to Jo Jo’s boyfriend, Il Shik (played by Shin Seung Ho), since she is in love with him herself. Because of this, and the fact that Jo Jo had been hiding so many parts of her private life from her friends, Jang Go starts ignoring her at school. Jo Jo becomes completely isolated and Sun Oh is the sole person to give her solace. As we see it from Jo Jo’s perspective, he is like the one light at the end of the dark tunnel for her. He is so sweet and caring at that point and I was so happy for her that she at least had one person like that because apart from him, she was all alone in the dark.
In the meantime, there’s also her cousin Park Gul Mi (played by Go Min Shi), one of the most popular girls in school, who keeps blaming Jo Jo for everything that goes wrong in her life. Gul Mi develops a crush on Sun Oh, as does everyone else, but when he and Jo Jo get together, she blames Jo Jo again for ‘taking him away from her’.

Honestly, I cannot think of a character that I’ve pitied more than Jo Jo. In reviews I only find people commenting on that they find her unrelatable and annoying, but I could really see where she was coming from. Despite seeming like a cheerful person, Jo Jo carries a deep trauma with her, one that has such a strong hold on her that she can never seem to escape from it no matter what she tries. She’s always felt like a burden, and the reason for this is so completely unfair and not her fault. At some point we find out that her parents attempted to commit a family suicide with her when they were still living on Jeju Island when she was little. By chance, she survived because she woke up in time and vomited out the stuff they gave her, but it was too late for her parents. After walking and running for a long time, she reached her grandmother’s place, but ever since she started living at her aunt’s, she’s always felt like she was imposing, because they always make her feel like she’s imposing and even mooching off of them.
It made me SO mad how Gul Mi talked to her, putting everything on her like that and even making her feel like she was the one who killed her parents. She kept threatening to ‘tell them what happened in Jeju’ as if Jo Jo committed some sort of crime. Gul Mi didn’t even fully understand what had happened and how Jo Jo was feeling about it, but she stopped at nothing to make her feel horrible.
So yeah, Jo Jo doesn’t exactly have a very warm environment and I’m still surprised at how she kept going. Some people would’ve already given in to depression and despair, and Jo Jo might have been dealing with these things as well, but she never let them get so far that she’d harm herself and this is something that makes her very strong. However, every person has a limit and people constantly kept pushing her towards hers.

In the first couple of episodes, everything seems to be smooth-sailing for Jo Jo and Sun Oh, it’s clear they like each other very much and they make a cute couple. But then, everything changes when they get into an accident during a school trip to Jeju Island. After finally deciding to go on the trip (Jo Jo initially doesn’t want to because of the bad memories she has of the place) they decide to go for each other. After a small fire breaks out in Jo Jo’s dorm which triggers her trauma, they go on a drive on Sun Oh’s motorbike but they crash. After this, Jo Jo can’t get in touch with Sun Oh for a few days and beats herself up over hurting him like that. It is in this desperate moment, where she is very triggered and overwhelmed, that her classmate Chon Duk Goo (played by Lee Jae Eung) gives her an exclusive item to install on her Love Alarm, a Shield. If you install this, your signal won’t reach the person you like, so it’s a way to protect your feelings from being exposed. She chooses to install it. She regrets it the minute she does, but it can only be taken off by the developer. So when Sun Oh finally appears in front of her again, she has ‘proof’ to break up with him – she doesn’t ring his Joalarm anymore.
The reason why she had to break up with Sun Oh is until this moment not very clear to me. In my opinion, it didn’t have to get to that. But I do understand that she was triggered enough by hurting the one person that got close to her, that she felt like she had to hide again. I think it was mainly a trauma response, but it was a real shame how it went.
Of course, Sun Oh is the most shocked of all, because how can her feelings for him suddenly be gone? He asks her time and time again to open the app again, to try again, but it’s no use. Jo Jo ends up breaking Sun Oh’s heart.

Some time goes by, I believe it’s now somewhere after high school graduation and before college admission. By this time, Joalarm 2.0 is about to be launched, and only members of the Joalarm Badge Club (people with a minimum of 3,000 hearts) are allowed to join. In the meantime, Jo Jo has started an Instagram account where she uploads beautiful but eerie illustrations under the name ‘The Ringing World’. These drawings are based on her own past, and story, but also inspired by the effects of Joalarm on society. As the artist she remains anonymous, but her drawings become very popular.
It’s around this time that she meets Sun Oh again. He is now dating a famous influencer/fashion designer, Lee Yook Jo (played by Kim Shi Eun), but he can’t ring her Joalarm. As Jo Jo tries to avoid Sun Oh, Hye Yeong comes back into the picture. He spots Jo Jo a few times and is determined to take his shot the old-fashioned way, without using the app. He tries to get to know her by simply approaching her personally. At this point, Jo Jo only knows him by face and name as Sun Oh’s friend from high school.
Sun Oh finds out that Hye Yeong is approaching Jo Jo and the two guys also start to grow apart.
Although this part of the series doesn’t last very long, it’s important to note that around this time, more and more controversy is happening around Joalarm. There have been several murder cases that were allegedly inspired by the app, and even a mass suicide of a group of more than 20 people, causing Anti-Joalarm protests to arise more frequently.

I will talk about this more elaborately later, but I think this was a very important part of the story. Because of course, there are multiple sides to everything. This Joalarm app, however romantic and exciting it might sound to some people, can also drive you crazy with loneliness. If it works out for you, it’s nothing but great. But it can also make you feel like an outcast if it doesn’t. It can make you feel unloved. I mean, it literally says ‘no one in a 10m radius loves you’, which can be quite depressing to hear. At this point, people are waging so much on this app, it’s become a part of society, people are using it for everything. Even at weddings it’s now become custom that, everyone shuts down their Joalarm at the end of the ceremony except for the bride and groom so that they can make sure they actually love each other for real. It’s become such a defining thing. And this is what made this series so Black Mirror for me. It did from the start, and especially when the mass suicide happened and things started going sideways as people started getting the wrong kind of inspiration from the app, but it really shows us the dark side of technology. The side that is masked by all the excitement and all the hype that buzzes around it. The app becomes the thing that determines how you feel, not the other way around, and this is very dangerous.

Now what we have figured out by now, is that Chon Duk Goo, Jo Jo’s former classmate, is actually the developer of Joalarm. He created it in order to confess his feelings to the girl he liked, which happens to be Gul Mi. But after Gul Mi shows her disgust when Duk Goo rings her Joalarm, Duk Goo also becomes concerned about the use of the app, and we even see him jump out of his own window one time, suggesting that he ends his own life. It turns out that this was a failed attempt, but he did have to recover and left Joalarm in the hands of his older brother while he was recovering. His older brother, Brian Chon (played by Ki Do Hoon) is the one who goes along with the Joalarm 2.0, even though Duk Goo actually told him not to. The new function on Joalarm 2.0 is that you can see all the people who will come to love you in the future, so people who have budding feelings for you. The idea is to stop people from feeling lonely when there’s no one in a 10m radius, to give them hope that they will still meet people who will love them later on.
The presentation of Joalarm 2.0 is where Season 1 ends, with excitement going on inside the hall whereas outside a bunch of protestors (led in megaphone by someone who I still think is Duk Goo) makes a fuss.

Tiny point of critique: the transition from Season 1 to 2 isn’t very smooth. Season 1 ends with a very clear cliffhanger, them all coincidentally meeting at the presentation of Joalarm 2.0. Season 2 suddenly starts some time later, at a random different moment in time. I kept thinking that I wanted to know how that meeting at the end of Season 1 had ended! Suddenly we are somewhere else, and even though they do talk about it, that the meeting happened, I would’ve liked it if Season 2 had just picked up directly from where Season 1 had ended.

Anyways, Season 2 starts just after Joalarm 2.0 has been launched and by now we’ve had another time jump – Jo Jo is now in college and Hye Yeong has moved out of Sun Oh’s house. The two have started dating. Hye Yeong is the sweetest boyfriend ever, he’s so incredibly patient and considerate. He’s even fine with the fact that she can’t ring his Alarm. He doesn’t know about the Shield, but he is willing to wait for as long as it takes to gain her affection. Meanwhile, he makes it his personal goal to ring Jo Jo’s Alarm 10 times a day to make her feel loved. In other words, he’s too good for the world.
Jo Jo’s feelings towards him are definitely growing, but she still can’t seem to open up to him 100%. She still has too much holding her back. She’s still living with her aunt and Gul Mi, she still hasn’t dealt with her trauma, Sun Oh starts approaching her again about what happened in high school. She can’t seem to move on as she’d like and just focus on her relationship with Hye Yeong. She knows that ultimately, she will have to tell him about the Shield and why she installed it in the first place, but she keeps putting it off. In the meantime, she tries to track down Duk Goo, as she now knows he’s the developer, to ask him to take off the Shield. But Brian Chon says it’s impossible to take it down and Duk Goo himself is still nowhere to be found. Now Jo Jo is in a pickle because she regrets installing the Shield so much. If only she had Joalarm to figure out her feelings for her, but now she can’t do that. What she does get from an anonymous number (again, thank you Duk Goo), is another exclusive item to use on her app: a Spear. With this Spear, she can send a Joalarm signal to a person of her choice, one that pierces through the Shield. She decides to send it to Hye Yeong, and by doing this she unknowingly creates a shift – she uses her own volition to send it to someone of her own choice, without using the app’s instructions of whom to send it to.

I really don’t want to go into too much summary details, I think I’ve already done that enough up until now, so this is where I want to move on to my analysis of the story. Starting with the event that I just described, of Jo Jo using her own volition. When he returns to Joalarm, Duk Goo tells his brother Brian the reason why he didn’t want him to continue with Joalarm 2.0 and he uses Jo Jo as a case example.
However romantic and exciting the idea of the app might be, fact remains that it takes away people’s own volition in choosing who to love. The app, although it’s just meant to be a signal indicator and detector, is starting to interfere with people’s decisions. Also with the Joalarm 2.0 function to see people who will love you in the future, Duk Goo emphasizes that people are not willing to look past the possibilities that the app provides. They won’t look further than these indicated recommended people. He compares it to an algorhythm that shows us what movies to watch, we won’t look past it and just choose from the suggested assortment. People were unconsciously eliminating hundreds of possibilities by choosing to follow exactly what the app was showing them.
The fact that the developer of the app came to this conclusion after carefully observing what it did to people was just so powerful to me. You could see that Duk Goo had really reflected and learned from his own experiences. He wasn’t just some bitter guy that couldn’t deal with the fact that the girl he liked, the girl that inspired him to create Joalarm, didn’t like him back. He went as far as to help people like Jo Jo who got caught up in it as well. Hearing his character say these things just made me nod my head in agreement because that’s exactly what it was, it just analyzed the full picture of Joalarm, the good and the bad. As I mentioned before, when Jo Jo was regretting the Shield and thought that without Joalarm, she wouldn’t be able to make a decision, it just became clear to me how much everyone in this story was depending on it. How convenient to not even have to look inside your own heart anymore to determine how you feel – now you have a machine to do that for you, too. It might be a great invention, but it also takes away people’s will to actively pursue someone regardless of the feelings of both parties. It takes away the thrill in the chase. And most of all, it takes away the need to tell each other that you love them. The words ‘I love you’ have literally been replaced by the sound of Joalarm. And that’s why I found it so beautiful that at the end of the series, when Jo Jo and Hye Yeong confirm their feelings for each other for real, Hye Yeong reminds her that they shouldn’t forget to tell each other ‘I love you’ as much as possible. Because by then, it has become such an unfamiliar phrase. It has become something that people didn’t say anymore because Joalarm said it for them.

I want to talk a bit about a couple of main characters in more detail before I move on to the cast comments. One thing I liked about this drama is how well it showed that everyone and everything has multiple sides to them. You may see a story from one side, but there’s always a truth from another side somewhere. You never know what people are carrying with them, so don’t judge a book by its cover.
I’ll start with Jo Jo. As I said before, she is probably one of the most pitiful characters I’ve seen in a K-Drama in a long time. Her life just seems so unfair. As if it isn’t enough that she went through something so traumatic as a child and is still suffering the repercussions of that daily, the people around her also don’t go easy on her at all. It really seems as if she can’t catch a break, as if everything she touches falls apart. That’s what it looks like to herself, and that’s why she can’t seem to stop beating herself up. Even when she finds happiness in her relationship with Sun Oh, and then with Hye Yeong, she can never get herself to fully acknowledge that she deserves this happiness. She’s constantly reminded of her past and she constantly feels like she’s a burden to other people and it’s horrible that a person should feel like that.
I didn’t read that many reviews, but I read enough to learn that many people seem to have been annoyed by Jo Jo’s character, that they didn’t like her and when I started, I was worried that I might feel the same. I was worried that it would get super frustrating, that she wouldn’t be able to make up her mind and remain passive throughout it all. But she actually got her act together! It takes a while, yes, and it takes two final bombs to drop. The first one is Hye Yeong finding out about the Shield. He overhears a conversation between her and Brian Chon and loses faith in her sincerity. The second one is that some guy is arrested for the Joalarm-inspired murder cases. He claims that he was inspired by Jo Jo’s Ringing World illustrations, believing them to be some sort of prediction or prophecy that he had to fulfill, causing Jo Jo to even be partially blamed for these murders. And this is where she decides to get herself together. She writes a public post in which she openly reveals herself as the illustrator and what the drawings mean to her, she even opens up about her past. She meets Sun Oh to have a closure talk. She then messages Hye Yeong that she will come clean to him about everything after doing one last thing, and for this thing she has to travel back to Jeju. She participates in a marathon and during this marathon, she finally confronts her trauma.
The most beautiful thing about this is, again, the plurality of it. First, we hear Jo Jo’s narration say, ‘It’s not because I hated you, you were just too heavy’, played over a scene where young Jo Jo leaves her teddy bear behind as she’s walking away from her house. But after actually facing her trauma in the form of her younger self, these words are repeated and it’s like she’s saying it to herself, to the young version of herself. And this made so much sense. Instead of carrying that young girl, that trauma with her all the way while hating it and wanting her/it to go away, she ends up literally embracing her. This scene really made me tear up a little, because despite Jo Jo’s slightly passive and anxious behavior throughout the series, this was the time when she showed the most determination to get her act together. She finished the marathon and there was Hye Yeong waiting for her at the end. She managed to overcome her own issues by herself, and she managed to get with Hye Yeong by her own volition. She may have installed the Shield for Sun Oh, but Hye Yeong made her want to take it away.
And of course the final most gratifying scene was where we get to see Jo Jo’s Joalarm log, so we get to see in which cases she would’ve rang Hye Yeong’s Joalarm if she didn’t have the Shield, and we see all these scenes between her and Hye Yeong. All these scenes in which she wondered if his signal would’ve gone off if she’d had the Alarm. And I also liked that she had a final talk with Duk Goo, and that he told her that the only thing keeping her from giving in to her love for Hye Yeong was that she was afraid because she couldn’t ring his Alarm. She didn’t have that confirmation, and that made her doubt her feelings. Because the signal wasn’t there, she couldn’t be sure if it would’ve rang if it had been there. And that’s exactly what I mentioned before, that’s what Joalarm took away from people, that certainty in their own feelings.
Anyways, I just want to say that even though at some points I did feel like she had to express her feelings more clearly, I was not annoyed by Jo Jo whatsoever. Her responses seemed legit if you looked at where she was coming from, I completely understood that it was hard for her in particular to be honest about that sort of thing when she felt like her whole existence was a burden to the world. I think it’s important to focus on how well she managed to get out, despite suffering from trauma and depression, how she kept going on her own and eventually managed to face her past and her trauma all by herself and got to go back to the most loving guy in the world.

As a child, Sun Oh has also had it tough. His family may be famous, but they’re definitely not a happy close family. The family dynamic reminded me of the one from Radio Romance, where they were just pretending to be a happy and perfect family, but it was all scripted. At least Sun Oh didn’t lead a scripted life, he did everything he could to rebel against his parents, he had enough freedom for that. Hye Yeong really is the closest person he had, it’s like he has a personal bodyguard in his best friend. So I can understand that, when Hye Yeong shows interest in a girl, Sun Oh would also be interested in her, as a brother would be interested in his younger brother’s crush. But I still don’t understand what made him confront Jo Jo like that. Of course, in the first episode we don’t know about Sun Oh’s back story yet, so I have to say that when he first appeared, I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for him. He seemed pretty snobby, like he just assumed that everyone would fall on their knees for him. He didn’t blink twice at receiving 10+ hearts as soon as he walked into his new school, and when he approached and kissed Jo Jo like that in that alley, a red flag went up because he was doing it while knowing that his best friend had feelings for her. I’m still not sure what he was thinking there, if it was because he really was romantically interested in Jo Jo already at that point, or because he was trying to test or prove something (but what, then?). It just didn’t feel right. But after that, suddenly his charms just became undeniable. He wanted nothing but for Jo Jo to be happy, he may have flaunted his privilege around a bit but his intentions turned out to be really good. You could tell he really loved Jo Jo, and this didn’t change even going into Season 2, where he still couldn’t ring anyone else’s Alarm because of this.
I felt bad for him when Jo Jo suddenly broke up with him like that, because it really was a one-sided decision and she didn’t explain anything to him (one of my least favorite tropes). But then when he just didn’t seem to be able to move on, even when she got together with Hye Yeong, and he kept approaching her even though he knew he was making her uncomfortable… I mean, I understand, I really do, he needed the closure as much as she did, but I still found myself thinking that he should just let it go. He had a really cool girlfriend who, like Hye Yeong, didn’t even mind waiting until he would be able to ring her Alarm. I’m glad he managed to save his relationship with her, in the end, but it did take having that closure talk with Jo Jo for him to decide that he could finally move on and that he wanted to make an effort for Yook Jo.

On how many occasions can we say that the second male lead actually got the girl? I don’t think there are many, but Hye Yeong managed to do it! He really worked himself up from nowhere! Honestly, he was the person who loved her the most from the start and he let so many people go first, he didn’t even become petty when Sun Oh snatched her away from him (not that she was his, but you know what I mean, it would’ve been a normal response to get petty and jealous). In the beginning, when they were already making a love triangle out of them, it felt wrong because Jo Jo didn’t even know Hye Yeong yet, she knew him by face from school and her part-time job, but she’d never talked to him before and she definitely did not know he had a crush on her. So in the beginning it just seemed like Hye Yeong didn’t even stand a chance against Sun Oh. But I really love how the tables turned and how Hye Yeong found a way to bypass Joalarm. In regular K-Drama, the second male lead never gets the girl especially because he chooses the old-fashioned way of being patient. In this scenario, this actually worked out for the best. He managed to leave such a big impression on Jo Jo through his sincerity that even she decided to disregard what Joalarm may or may not have been telling her and she voluntarily chooses him of her own accord. It’s hard to believe that there’s any real person out there as kind as Hye Yeong. Honestly, he had so many reasons to be angry and to spite people but he never did. He always chose to be kind. Even when his back story was revealed and it turned out that his father was in prison for murder and that he might get out on parole, and he actually started doubting his own good nature because he was scared he would be like his father, and I was just like, ‘Bro… you literally have 0,00000% evil in you!!’. He was so unbelievably good and I felt so anxious for him whenever it seemed like Jo Jo would take a step back.
I love how they managed to put that one scene in perspective by the way, when Jo Jo suddenly disappeared from Hye Yeong’s list of people who would love him in the future. He interpreted it as that she suddenly wouldn’t be able to love him anymore – and as it happened because Sun Oh kissed her at that moment, we’re all led to think that it’s because she’s going to choose Sun Oh after all. But at the end it’s clarified that that was the moment where Jo Jo’s feelings for Hye Yeong were confirmed. Sun Oh kissed her, and all she could think about was Hye Yeong. The reason that she disappeared from the list was because she wasn’t someone who ‘would love him in the future’ anymore. She’d started loving him in the present. That was such a great revelation. It’s quite smart of the writers to reveal in hindsight how much she actually already loved Hye Yeong without even being aware of it herself.
Anyways, Hye Yeong is a saint. Even when he finds out that Jo Jo hid the story about the Shield for him, he doesn’t even get angry with her, he just tells her that he wanted her to be sincere, that was enough for him. And as soon as she figures her stuff out, he’s right there, back by her side again. All I can say is that I’m happy for both him and Jo Jo that they managed to find each other, that they managed to actually slowly build up an ‘old-fashioned’ romance in a world where love is normally determined through an app.

Park Gul Mi is, until the end, my least favorite character in this series. While she did become kinder to Jo Jo and even started standing up for her more, the way she treated Duk Goo until the very end was just unbelievable to me. She is a very selfish person. From the start, when she’s still in high school and practices to become an idol trainee, it’s clear that she only cares about appearances. She joins the bandwagon of Sun Oh fangirls without hesitation and doesn’t even want to consider the possibility of him not reciprocating her feelings because, after all, “she’s so pretty”. That’s really all there is to her. She is disgusted by Duk Goo and when he keeps ringing her Joalarm, she even gets a little threatening to him. Despite her own life in which she’s allowed to do whatever she wants by her mom, even though they don’t have a lot of money, she blames everything that doesn’t go as planned on Jo Jo. She’s always yelling at her, always saying mean things and her mother always just happens to come in whenever Jo Jo tries to say or do something back, so it’s never Gul Mi’s fault. Until her mother does walk in one time when Gul Mi is cussing Jo Jo out and then the dynamic changes a bit. Gul Mi becomes a bit of a disappointment to her mother when everything she tries fails, first the trainee thing, then the online shopping channel.
Gul Mi’s sole goal becomes to meet the developer of Joalarm, to join the Joalarm Badge Club. For what purpose, who knows, she’s not thinking ahead of that, she just wants to be in the center of attention. However, in order to do that, she’ll need to gain 10% of 3,000 hearts (which is the minimum amount to get into the Badge Club) and then he’ll let her on the Hot People list. She goes for it, fakes it until she makes it to make people send her hearts. Only to be confronted with Duk Goo when she actually makes it into the club. And instead of reflecting on her actions, reflecting on how she treated Duk Goo and how fake her ambitions are, she treats him the exact same way as she did in high school. I was too stunned to speak during this scene. Like, it’s not that I expected her to suddenly like him, but to at least feel some humility? I mean, come on, SHE was the initial inspiration for Joalarm! Without her, the whole app wouldn’t have been made! But no, she doesn’t get humble. Rather, she goes into another direction to ask for attention by continuing to spread the news that she is in fact the “muse” of the developer to create Joalarm, even after cussing said developer out in his face because he still isn’t worthy of her.
I really don’t mean to be disrespectful about the character, but to me Gul Mi showed the least change and maturity of all the characters in this series. She literally didn’t care about anyone else’s feelings, she just wanted the virtual proof that people ‘loved’ her. Popularity and fame meant everything to her, and she was obsessed with getting hearts, she didn’t even care from whom she got them as long as they got her up in the ranks. You could say that she was one of the sheep that just went along with the virtual technology without really feeling the need to make their own decisions when it came to finding what they truly wanted to do. She was someone who didn’t mind remaining empty inside as long as she could fill that void with virtual hearts.

Chon Duk Goo is definitely one of the key characters of this series. In high school, he is this short and geeky looking guy who just wants his crush to be happy, but then can’t help but feel hurt when she expresses her disgust for him. All the more because he can’t stop loving her. Even when they meet again in the end, years later, he still rings her Alarm. It’s so ironic that the person who created Joalarm ends up as one of the ‘victims’ of it. I mean, he did jump out of his window. They didn’t elaborate on why he did that per se, and how he disappeared and then suddenly came back, but his brother took over the company in his absence. Duk Goo learned his lesson with the app and even objected the idea of version 2.0 because he realized how it took away people’s own volition to determine their own feelings. I think he was a very responsible developer, he really thought about the good and the bad, and not just about making money out of it. He was really thinking of the feelings of the people who would use it, and that made him a very kind person. I liked that he had this sort of kindred spirit thing going on with Jo Jo, it’s like they just understood each other and he even gave her those Shield and Spear tools to help her figure her stuff out. He didn’t use her as a test subject, he really wanted to help her. And I also like how he was able to face Gul Mi after all that time, although I couldn’t blame him for being surprised when she still cussed him out like that. I mean, you’d think a person would’ve changed at least a little since high school. Anyways, Duk Goo was really important and he may have steered Jo Jo a little in her decision to use the Shield, but in the end it was really the right decision for her to do so since it allowed her a way out of the system, as you could say.

Let me move on to my cast comments!

Kim So Hyun, my girl. I’ve been watching dramas with her since she was still a child actress and I think I say this every time, but I’m so proud of how much she’s grown. She’s her own lead actress now, still only 22 years old, but she already has mastered such layers of emotional acting it still surprises me. I’ve seen her in a bunch of stuff, as a younger version of a lead character in The Moon That Embraces The Sun, Rooftop Prince, I Miss You, I Hear Your Voice, The Girl Who Sees Smells, Goblin, and then as a lead character in Who Are You – School 2015 (in which she played a double role), Page Turner, Let’s Fight Ghost, Ruler – Master of the Mask, and Radio Romance. The Tale of Nokdu and River Where The Moon Rises are still on my list as well. I think she did really well in this series. Although I can understand where people are coming from with their critiques, as her way of acting can leave things to be desired and I remember I personally wasn’t very impressed with her performance in Radio Romance, but I think that she did very well in portraying the layers of Jo Jo’s character. I think she portrayed very well the cautiousness of feeling happy while expecting it to fall to pieces at any time, and when it did, the need to immediately pull back and hide. She has very expressive eyes as well, and I feel like she always has to do a lot of crying (her role in I Miss You, oh my god). I would like to see more different sides to her acting, that’s true, but I can’t say that it bothered me in this case and I was just glad that her character chose to be strong and determined in the end. If she’d only remained passive and gloomy, it would’ve been more frustrating for me to watch, but the way it ended made up for a lot.

This is actually the first drama I’ve seen of Song Kang! (edit: Okay, I need to take this back because I see that he was in The Liar and His Lover, but I kind of reppressed that one.) There are still a couple of dramas with him on my to watch list, so I’ll be looking forward to those! I think he was a good choice for the role of Sun Oh, not just because of his looks, but I think he also showed a lot of variety and layers to his character. He has the most adorable smile, but he can also look so hurt and angry it’s almost intimidating. I’d really have to see more of his acting performances to make a good judgement, but I did like him in this. Even though I said that I thought he was kind of snobby in the first episode, I also couldn’t blame Jo Jo for being enticed by him because he was definitely very charming even though he seemed a little dominant and I didn’t completely trust him. I am looking forward to seeing him in Nevertheless and Forecasting Love and Weather, and I might even watch Navillera if I’m in the mood for it because it seems pretty good.

Love it when a hyped K-Drama has a bunch of actors that I’ve never seen before. Jung Ga Ram is such an actor, I haven’t seen anything of him but I loved him in this series. As I said, I was beyond excited to find out that the second male lead would actually get the girl this time. We’ve all been waiting for this to happen! I just really like how he portrayed Hye Yeong, he was so kind and patient and he has such a kind face, too. I can hear people argue about that his looks may not win over Sun Oh’s, but that made it all the more satisfying to me because that’s what it was going for. Looking past the surface, looking past the screen. It took time for Jo Jo to completely fall for him, as it’s supposed to go. Loving someone shouldn’t be decided by a ringtone, it takes time to get to know each other and as you fall in love with a person, they’ll become more and more attractive in your eyes automatically. That’s how I’ve experienced it, in any case. That’s what made their relationship all the more real to me, you could really see that his efforts paid off, he had won Jo Jo’s feelings because of who he was, his kindness, how he was always there for her no matter what. No forcing, just someone willing to take it as slow as needed, and that’s what made him the most ideal guy to me, too. I really liked his performance in this, I hope he’ll do more dramas in the future!

Go Min Shi seems so familiar to me, but I can’t figure out where I know her from! The only two things I’ve seen her in are Age of Youth 2 and Go Go Waikiki, but I remember her from neither. Anyways, as we say, if you hate a character then it means that the actor did a good job. I really wanted to like Gul Mi, I wanted to find an aspect of her to like, to say, ‘See! She’s a good person after all!’, but it didn’t really come this time. I guess it just shows that there’s different kinds of people! If she’d been like everyone else, it would’ve been boring, and this way there was even a comical aspect to her character because she was just so obsessed with her ranking that she just went a little crazy, haha. I see that she and Kim So Hyun actually differ 5 years from each other, I wouldn’t have said that. Anyways, as an evil step-sister turned slightly less evil in the end, I suppose she did well, haha.
And I’ll immediately go on to point out Park Sung Yeon, there she was again! I’ve been seeing her in every drama series I’ve watched the last month. In this series she played Jo Jo’s aunt, and while she was a bit of an unpleasant character in the beginning as she always chose her daughter’s side, she did become more apologetic and sympathetic towards Jo Jo eventually. I love how she ended up being able to go on a group hiking trip and was all excited about it. She must have felt really limited in her freedom as well with these two girls to take care of and she may not have always dealt with it so well, but in the end it was clear that she changed perspectives and didn’t blame Jo Jo for her sister’s death anymore. Just to clarify, I’ve seen Park Sung Yeon recently in Abyss and Arthdal Chronicles. She’s also in some series that I’m interested in watching, so I hope I’ll be able to see more of her. By the way, I noticed that she doesn’t even have her own DramaWiki page! D:< She’s done more than enough to earn one so I might even make it myself. Don’t let this actress be unacknowledged!

I also hadn’t seen Lee Jae Eung anywhere before, but apparently this is the only drama series he’s done so far, he’s more of a movie actor. I found him a very interesting choice for this role, because following typical K-Drama standards, his visuals would automatically nominate him for the ‘loser’ role. I really don’t want to sound mean when I say this, I actually see it as a good thing. This is what Duk Goo was made out to be in the series and I just want to appreciate that they’re not solely choosing actors based on their ‘good looks’. I was really happy to find out he didn’t actually die after jumping from his window, and that he was able to re-emerge as the influential person that he’d become – the founding developer of Love Alarm, the app that had taken over the country. It’s just a bit of a shame that he created it for Gul Mi and was then treated like that. I would probably feel like that was a bit of a waste, haha. Anyways, I like how genuine he portrayed his character, he was really timid but also very sharp and he saw things exactly the way they were, he wasn’t naive or anything like that. He saw things that the main characters maybe felt but hadn’t even mustered up the courage to put into words yet. I really liked his talk at the end about people losing their own volition to the app and how they weren’t looking beyond the surface anymore, it was really strong and accurate. It’s certainly something we can learn from today as well.
Taking another side track here, Duk Goo’s brother Brian Chon was actually played by Ki Do Hoon, the guy who played Yangcha in Arthdal Chronicles!! I remember I’d seen that he was in Love Alarm, but it still took me a while to recognize him without his face mask on, haha.

I feel like it’s been ages since I saw Song Sun Mi in a drama, but it actually hasn’t been that long, haha. She was in Start-Up playing Suzy’s mom, and I also know her from Personal Preference and Lookout. She was pretty enigmatic as Sun Oh’s mom, because initially it really didn’t seem like she cared much for her son, but she did seem to choose his side more than her husband’s, especially when the latter turned out to be cheating on her. She even suggested on mutliple occasions that she’d help Sun Oh get Jo Jo back, and I was concerned she’d actually pull some strings to get involved in her son’s business more, also when he’d told her that Jo Jo chose Hye Yeong and she was eyeing Hye Yeong’s mother in that specific way… But she ended up doing nothing. I think she kind of found her own peace in the way she was living, even after being humiliated by the news of her husband’s cheating. It was nice seeing her act a little more warmly towards Sun Oh at the end, but they still never became a really warm family.
In this she was the complete opposite of Hye Yeong’s mother, played by Shim Yi Young. I see that she was in Mary Stayed Out All Night but I barely remember anything from this series, it’s been way too long. She was also in Legend of the Blue Sea, though, and in Thirty But Seventeen. I recognized her face, but I suppose I remember her slightly from the latter. Anyways, she was such a warm and loving mother to Hye Yeong. I still don’t know exactly what happened that made them end up at Sun Oh’s family house, except that it had something to do with Hye Yeong’s dad going to prison, but it didn’t seem like there was any weird or bad tension between them. Hye Yeong’s mom was so sweet, and the only time we see her show any kind of sorrow is when they’re talking about his father. You can really see where Hye Yeong gets his good manners and kind nature, he may have been worried about resembling his dad visually, but he got his character from his mom and we’re all glad he did.

I just flipped out when I realized that Sun Oh’s manager Kim Min Jae was played by the same guy who played the female lead’s mentally challenged brother in Melting Me Softly! I kept wondering where I knew him from, I’m so sorry mister Yoon Na Moo. T^T

Also, although she only appeared in Season 1, I was really happy to see Z.Hera again! She played Jo Jo’s friend Jang Go who had a crush on her initial boyfriend. It’s been ages since I saw her, the last thing must have been School 2017. I’ve also seen her in Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo (my heart still aches from that) and Ruby Ruby Love. I’ve missed her! The only thing I found a pity was that she never gave Jo Jo a chance to explain herself. Like, I get that she was mad at her, but Jo Jo really wanted to make amends with her, and she just completely shut her off while she (probably) knew she didn’t have anyone else. She could’ve given her a chance to make up for lying. I’m not saying it was good of Jo Jo to lie about it, but I just wished there had been a way for them to make up. They were really good friends before it all happened in the beginning and you could tell she meant a lot to Jo Jo. I hope to see more Z.Hera soon!

I didn’t think I knew Kim Shi Eun from anywhere although she did seem slightly familiar to me. Turns out she was in School 2017 and Room No. 9! In the latter she played the younger version of a minor character who appeared only briefly so I may not have made that connection, but at least I was right to think I’d seen her face before. She has a really cute smile! I was worried that she might become the spiteful new girlfriend who would confront Jo Jo with the fact that she needed to back off from Sun Oh because he was with her now, but she was none of that. She was really cool, as I mentioned before. She was definitely hurt by the fact that Sun Oh didn’t ring her Alarm, but she never saw it as a reason to give up. She wanted to make him ring it and was willing to put in all the necessary effort. There came a point where it seemed hopeless and she actually broke up with him and then left with another random guy who did ring her Alarm and I was like, ‘You’re just gonna go with the first best person now?’ but in the end hers still only rang for Sun Oh. And I was really glad that he chose to go after her, as well. In a way, Sun Oh also made his own choice there, he chose to ignore the Alarm that only rang for Jo Jo, he chose to put in effort to make it ring for Yook Jo. I’ve compared her to Hye Yeong before, because she was to Sun Oh what Hye Yeong was to Jo Jo. She was patient, she didn’t get mad, even though she was hurt or disappointed she kept smiling and she was over the moon when he started making effort as well. She accepted that he would need time to get over Jo Jo, it was clear to her that she’d meant a lot to him. She chose not to be the bitchy new girlfriend, she chose to be patient with him and respect his decisions and that made her a very mature character. I liked her!

And of course I’m always happy to see Kim Young Ok, the ultimate K-Drama grandmother, as Jo Jo’s grandmother. She didn’t even have a speaking role and only appeared in flashbacks or while she was barely conscious in the hospital, but it was clear how much she meant to Jo Jo. Everything Kim Young Ok does works for me, she’s such a precious lady.

Okay! So now for some concluding comments before finalizing my review. As I said, I was a bit worried that I might not like this series after hearing some disappointed comments and reviews about it. The ones that are on the top on MyDramaList are also very negative, but I was actually positively surprised. I guess I saw something in it that others didn’t, and the other way around.
I just think this series expresses so well how important it is to keep thinking and feeling for yourself and not to let other people OR things determine your feelings for you. Yes, it can be hard to figure out what it is you’re truly feeling, but we all have to deal with it. As I’ve said multiple times before in my reviews, I believe that feelings are uncontrollable. They just happen and they tell you how you feel whether you like it or not. Joalarm took away people’s own ability to do this, to feel what they feel without control, and to decide for themselves what they had to do in order to act on those naturally occurring feelings.
I’ve mentioned this before, but it really reminded me of Black Mirror, especially of episodes like Nosedive and Hang the DJ. First of all, because it’s about feeling validated. The people obsessed with hearts might be seen as an equivalent to people who are obsessed with getting likes on social media. If you don’t get any, you may get demotivated and insecure and you might start to feel that no one likes/loves you. Secondly, because love is regulated through a system, people aren’t even trying to listen to their own hearts/feelings anymore. They just follow the app’s guidelines because that’s what will tell them who they supposedly love and there’s no reason to look further once you ring someone’s Alarm.

In hindsight, I thought it was a pretty good series. It had a good and clear message, and I believe it’s also a warning to modern society as we are starting to be led by technology more and more. It might not always be a bad thing, but we have to keep in mind that our own feelings and thoughts are still the most important, and that we shouldn’t let those be determined by machines. I think Jo Jo was a very inspirational character in that she had to deal with a very real trauma and felt very alone and isolated in a world where all people cared about were hearts and appearances. No one was willing to look deeper than the surface/screen, no one was willing to look past the limited possibilities that the app gave. No one felt the need to make any additional effort because everything would be taken care of for them. Jo Jo had to figure out her life all by herself. She was lucky enough to find someone like Hye Yeong, who was also willing to lay down the technology and go about it the ‘old-fashioned’ way. I think it would not be easy to go against the system like that, to lead such a guided life with an app and then still be given the opportunity to make your own choice and really make it. Jo Jo was brave enough to choose her own. She was brave enough to direct her feelings to the person she wanted to direct them to, and to send them to Hye Yeong as one would a regular confession of love. If she hadn’t installed the Shield, she would’ve probably stuck with Sun Oh just because the app told her to, and she wouldn’t even have considered Hye Yeong as a possibility, no matter how much he would’ve tried to pursue her.

I’m glad I gave this series a fair chance despite my prior expectations, because it did surprise me in a good way. I can say now that I don’t fully agree with most of the negative responses, I actually understood where the main characters were coming from and I was able to find logic in their behavior. I think it’s really important to keep in mind in what kind of world they were living and how pressuring it was for some people, some people who were not able to enjoy the good aspects of the Joalarm app. It’s also important to consider Jo Jo’s trauma and how deeply rooted it was, and that it was a normal response for her to take a step back, because everyone around her treated her like a burden and she wasn’t used to being loved by anyone besides her grandmother ever since she lost her parents. I think there’s definitely a lot of logic to find in it. People may not agree with the fact she chose Hye Yeong over Sun Oh, but I only thought that was a refreshing decision to make. It just made sense to me and I was really proud of Jo Jo at the end, because she still managed to face her past and embrace it and no longer feel it as something weighting her down. The ending was just really satisfying to me, everything just fell into place and all the questions I had towards the end were answered. So for me, it was a good one!

I’m actually not entirely sure what I’ll watch next because besides my list I do have a growing urge to catch up on some more recently trending series that I can’t wait for to watch. So the next one will probably be a surprise for all of us, haha. At least now I finished my batch of trending K-Dramas from 2019, woohoo! xD

See you next time! Bye-bee! ^^