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

Backstreet Rookie
(편의점 샛별이 / Pyeonuijeom Saetbyeoli / Convenience Store Morning Star)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Hi all! Just popping up to share my final review for July! With summer holidays coming up in a few weeks I’ll probably not get to watch much but I’ve already decided on my next drama so I’ll try to finish that one in August.
Before that, let’s look at this “Morning Star” of a drama! I’ve been hearing so much about this, and it’s been ages since I saw the teaser and thinking YES NEED TO WATCH THIS. I mean, Ji Chang Wook and Kim Yoo Jung in a drama together?? Of course I would watch that! But then some years passed by and I still didn’t watch it and I also heard there was even a kind of controversy around it, so I got a bit nervous to start on it. On the other hand, I really wanted to see what this was about for myself so I finally got to watch it and I think I can make this a good review discussing both sides of this series. I can see where the controversy comes from, but on the other hand I was also surprised by how much it sets itself apart from ‘regular’ K-Drama and I can’t wait to share my thoughts. Leggo!

Backstreet Rookie is a 16 episode drama (or a 2 times 8 back-to-back episode drama) that centers about a convenience store. The store manager, Choi Dae Hyun (played by Ji Chang Wook) used to work for the headquarters of the store branch, but now his family runs the store. He may be the manager, but he doesn’t have any employees so he’s basically on his feet 24/7, leaving him completely exhausted. His family members are sometimes able to take over the store for a short time while he gets some rest, but they all have their own jobs and things to do, and since he’s the main person in charge of running the store, in the end it all comes down to him. That is until his family starts urging him to take on a part-timer because not only is Dae Hyun turning into a hot mess, the sales are also not going up. Dae Hyun’s handsome face is an advantage, especially since it helps promote goods to the regular group of high school girls that visit the store after school, but the truth is that they don’t care about the promotions – they just want to get a picture with the cute store manager. While Dae Hyun keeps convincing himself that everything’s going great with the promotions and the store, he knows that it’s not true.
On the other hand, there’s Jung Saet Byul (played by Kim Yoo Jung), a high school dropout who’s had to fend for her and her younger sister ever since their father passed away a couple of years earlier. Their father was a Taekwondo instructor and taught his kids how to defend themselves, and even when she was still in high school, Saet Byul has used these skills to get back at street delinquents. However, one day this causes her to be expelled from school and ever since then she’s been part-timing all over the place. She’s a hard worker, she’s strong and has a knack for dealing with customers, so she also does well. In the meantime, she’s still trying to make sure her younger sister Eun Byul (played by Ahn Sol Bin) doesn’t get in trouble…. which she does, repeatedly.
How do these two characters get involved with each other? Actually, Saet Byul has been in love with Dae Hyun since she was a kid. He used to come to her father’s dojo and one time he saved her from getting injured. It was love at first sight for little Saet Byul. In the first episode, that takes place when Saet Byul is still in high school, she sees Dae Hyun again and when he tries to reprimand her and her friends for smoking, she brazenly kisses him on the mouth. Another three years later, the starting point of the story as we’ll follow it, Saet Byul suddenly appears at Dae Hyun’s convenience store and applies for the part-timer job. Dae Hyun is initially bent on proving that she’s not to be trusted, but has to eventually agree that she’s the best part-timer he could wish for.
As Saet Byul slowly makes her way up to a regular employee and more, Dae Hyun gets to deal with even more drama on his side; his girlfriend Yoo Yeon Joo (played by Han Sun Hwa), who still works at the store’s head quarters, isn’t very appreciative of Saet Byul working there and starts to interfere between the two of them.

There’s actually a bunch of interesting storylines in this series. Besides what’s mentioned above, there’s a lot going on in both Dae Hyun’s family and Yeon Joo’s. On Saet Byul’s side there’s a whole storyline about Eun Byul becoming an idol trainee whilst still under the influence of a couple of nasty delinquent girls.
And there’s also the storyline of Dae Hyun’s eccentric friend Han Dal Shik (played by Eum Moon Seok), and Saet Byul’s friend Hwang Geum Bi (played by Seo Ye Hwa) who travel their own enemies to lovers path. In-between there’s a lot of chaos, comedy, guest appearances and references to other shows that you might not understand if you haven’t seen those other shows (like me).

Let me start by acknowledging the controversy about this drama, and mainly about the first episode. Honestly, for me it was all right until Dal Shik got introduced, but there’s definitely some issues that have understandably put people off. First of all, the age gap between the two main characters (and the actors). This drama is from 2020, two years ago, so Kim Yoo Jung was 20 years old while Ji Chang Wook was 33. I have read a lot of comments about the surprise people felt that these two actors even agreed to this show. Apparently, this drama was adapted from an R-rated webtoon of the same name, and netizens were just determined to hate on it from the start because that in itself was already ‘problematic’.
In hindsight, the reference to the original webtoon has been put into Dal Shik’s character, as he is an artist for adult webtoons and throughout the story he’s working on something called ‘Her Reggae Boy’. When he is introduced in the first episode, he’s basically arousing himself while he draws his webtoon, making all kinds of noises and movements behind his drawing table. To me, this scene in particular was very nauseating and it made me really uncomfortable to watch. It just immediately made me cautious of his character because he just seemed very dirty and suspicious. Which leads me to the next point, again tied to Dal Shik – many people have criticized his character for being very racist. Not only does he look like he’s impersonating a typical ‘reggae’ person with his dreadlocks and clothing, singing typical reggae songs all the time, but he also gives off a very non-sanitary impression. There’s flies buzzing around his hair all the time, he lives in a tiny dirty appartment, he always seems to be wearing the same clothes… admittedly, it’s not a great way to represent a certain culture, and all the more since he, as a Korean, doesn’t even belong to that culture himself.
Then there was also the issues of minor Saet Byul kissing adult Dae Hyun on the mouth like that in the first episode, showing heavy physical violence between teenage girls, and the low camera angles that were used in the karaoke sessions of Eun Byul and her friends, as they were all wearing pretty short skirts.
So yeah, from the first episode, I definitely agreed with these comments. I was a bit nervous to continue to watch it as it all suddenly got a kind of inappropriate feeling to it. Also, I was kind of amused that they’d BLUR the cigarettes whilst showing heavy street violence and blood streaming down people’s faces was completely okay. Seriously, if you’re going to censor stuff, at least be consistent.
However, to me it felt like after that first episode, the problematic aspects were reeled in A LOT. I actually don’t think I felt truly uncomfortable at all after that first episode, it was almost as if they’d learned from the comments on Ep 1 and then proceeded to make things okay again. And truthfully, even though in the beginning everything and everyone was a mess and an extreme charicature, as the story progressed I think every single character matured in a way. They even refrained from an actual makeout scene between the two leads at the end, even though they got together, and to me that felt like they did consider that showing a kissing scene between two people with a huge age gap would make some people uncomfortable. I actually thought that was quite original, in hindsight.

You can say a lot about this series, but you can’t deny that it stands apart from regular K-Drama. Not just in the aspects that I’ve mentioned above, but I was also very interested in how they chose to build up the story, and mostly the romance between Dae Hyun and Saet Byul. Of course, Saet Byul is in love with Dae Hyun from the start and we find out that she definitely has an ulterior motive when she applies to work at his convenience store. But until episode 11, there’s actually no mutual romance building between the two.
That’s because the drama with Dae Hyun’s girlfriend Yeon Joo takes a VERY long time to resolve itself.

Dae Hyun and Yeon Joo have already been dating for three years, ever since they worked at the head quarters together. Dae Hyun quit the HQ at some point to run one of their convenience stores by himself, but they’ve not stopped dating. But there are some very distinctive differences that should have already caused alarm bells in their relationship way before it started getting rocky between them.
First of all, while Dae Hyun is the most dedicated boyfriend ever who would do everything for Yeon Joo, Yeon Joo hasn’t even told her mother about Dae Hyun. In three years of dating, she’s never mentioned him to her family and that’s why she keeps putting off the moment where she introduces him to them. Everyone at work knows about it, but for some reason Yeon Joo hasn’t told her mother. We later find out that this is because she doesn’t want Dae Hyun to know that her family is actually one of the main shareholders of HQ. She doesn’t want him to look at her differently. Lame excuse, if you ask me, but okay.
In every aspect, we can see that Dae Hyun is way more invested in their relationship. Yeon Joo has to literally keep reminding herself of reasons why he’s a great guy and why she wants to be with him and she also even lets herself get swayed. Her childhood friend Cho Seung Joon (played by Do Sang Woo) is clearly out to woo her and keeps trying to get her to stay with him rather than see Dae Hyun. We find out later that he is actually the one who convinced Dae Hyun to leave HQ because it would be bad for Yeon Joo’s reputation and he shouldn’t stand in her way.
Anyways, Yeon Joo doesn’t seem to be too affectionate with Dae Hyun, even their scenes together seem like they haven’t actually been seeing each other for that long. Honestly, in their first scene together I thought she was just going to be a character for two episodes as a woman that Dae Hyun went on a date with, but who wouldn’t actually be an actual threat to his romance with Saet Byul in the end. The way he got all super nervous when he thought she was inviting him to a hotel and she just took him to the gym to work out together, that didn’t scream “intimate 3-year relationship going strong” to me.
But AS SOON as she got wind that Dae Hyun’s new part-timer was a woman, and AS SOON as she saw Saet Byul, she immediately went all jealous gf on him and it had me shook. She literally forced him to fire Saet Byul, just because she was intimidated by her. Saet Byul was an amazing employee, she even became Employee of the Month and she worked her way up to Assistant Store Manager, but no, that wasn’t a reason that she should stay, she was still eyeing Dae Hyun too eagerly and that made her a threat.
And here we got to the point that annoyed me the most. I even made some in-between comments about this part so I would remember my feelings of frustration towards Yeon Joo when I’d get to writing the review.

If you don’t mind, I’ll now proceed with referring to Yeon Joo as *Miss Audacity* in this review. I don’t think I’ve been so aggravated by a character in a long time, but Yeon Joo is definitely on the list of most hypocritical K-Drama characters ever. Seriously, WHAT WAS GOING ON WITH HER. She literally treated Dae Hyun like trash, she didn’t want to introduce him to her family, she claimed she was fond of him but still she took every single misunderstanding between them to make things awkward and Dae Hyun was always the one who had to come crawling back to her with an apology. In the meantime, she freaking CHEATS on Dae Hyun with Seung Joon, she makes Dae Hyun fire Saet Byul against his while because it will ‘appease’ her and as thanks she just treats him like he’s nothing. She’s not willing to ‘talk’ about anything, and whenever they get an opportunity to talk, she walks away 2 seconds after they meet.
In the end, in episode 11, she breaks up with him without explaining anything; she invites him to dinner, says ‘I want our last meal to be the way you like to have it’, and then just leaves without even having the meal.
The way that she just couldn’t make up her mind about what to do about Dae Hyun, then chose to let him go, then decided she still wanted him back because she realized ‘she let herself get swayed and he was still such a great man’, then proceeded to make him crawl back to her again because she happened to walk in on him while he was being goofy with Saet Byul, causing yet another misunderstanding… just the way she had so much more to apologize for but kept turning all the misunderstandings onto him was so selfish. She kept telling him that HE was the one not being honest, while she was literally hiding his existence from her mother and she never told him she made out with Seung Joon. She made me so mad, honestly, and in hindsight I don’t understand why the writers let this go on for so long. It should’ve just been dealt with halfway through the show. Now it only ended in episode 11 or 12, and there was only 4 episodes left to suddenly make Dae Hyun switch his romantic interest to Saet Byul. Which, by the way, wasn’t done in an unnatural way, but still, there should have been a more established build-up between the two. And then of course, after they broke up and Dae Hyun went through a crisis to let her go, Yeon Joo suddenly decides it’s totally okay to just come back to him after she finds out he gave up his HQ job for her – because yes, that event from the past was suddenly enough reason for her to give him another chance. SERIOUSLY. I was really glad that Dae Hyun set his boundaries straight after that, that whenever she made a new attempt he was like ‘Nahh, we’re just colleagues now, bye’.
Also, Cho Seung Joon was just poking his nose where it didn’t belong. I believe he was the Director of HQ and his father was the Chairman. He got between Dae Hyun and Yeon Joo from the start by getting Dae Hyun out of HQ, and then he also encouraged Yeon Joo to cheat on her boyfriend with him. He even went so far as to sabotage Saet Byul’s other promotional part-time job she had outside of the convenience store, like who the heck gave him any right to meddle so much in other’s affairs just so he could get Yeon Joo for himself? Unbelievable!
Lastly, to finish the trio of most aggravating characters, Yeon Joo’s mom. Yeon Joo’s mother (played by Kyun Mi Ri) is the typical rich lady mom who seemingly has the best interests for her daughter’s future, but also doesn’t hide what her true intentions are. She wants Yeon Joo to be happy, but not with Dae Hyun. She wants her to marry Seung Joon. In the end, she literally pulls a ‘reverse Parasite’ on Dae Hyun’s entire family – she hires his parents individually as her chauffeur and insurance agent to embarass Dae Hyun and show Yeon Joo that she’s better off without such lowly people. It was disgusting to see how she treated people she believed to be below her, seeing them get all excited for getting such a good job offer while she was just openly using them to her advantage. She even had the audacity to basically tell Dae Hyun’s mom that her daughter deserved more than her son. I was beyond proud of Dae Hyun’s mom in the final episode when she told Yeon Joo’s mom off for being an uncaring parent. That was gold.

So yes, moving on to the next part: Dae Hyun’s family. As established above, Dae Hyun’s family is considered to be quite poor. His mother Gong Boon Hee (played by Kim Sun Young) sells insurances but doesn’t have a lot of success, his father Choi Yong Pil (played by Lee Byung Joon) doesn’t have a real job, and his older sister Choi Dae Soon (played by Kim Ji Hyun) is only out for the profits she can get and only visits her family and the store when her husband is away. On first glance they are not a very tight family, mother Boon Hee is quite violent towards father Yong Pil, and we also learn that Yong Pil is secretly yearning back for his first love ‘Jang Mi’ who now lives in China. Especially in the beginning, I found myself wondering a lot how these two even got married and had two children together. However, as I mentioned before, Dae Hyun’s parents also mature A LOT throughout the story. I think the biggest cause for this happens when they find out they’ve both been hired by Yeon Joo’s mom to embarrass Dae Hyun. There’s a scene where Mom and Dad are sitting at the dinner table together and have a heart-to-heart talk and this was an amazingly strong scene. I don’t remember which episode it was, but I remember that this was a really good episode altogether. The actors suddenly showed such great and serious acting that it had me really impressed. Here, they finally started to become a real family and thei values towards each other also really came through. Boon Hee went ahead with selling the double insurance plan to Yeon Joo’s mom, because it would still give her a really big raise at work. She knew what Yeon Joo’s mom was doing, but she grit her teeth and sold it to her anyway because her family needed the money.
All in all, even though there were moments where her constant screaming made her a bit obnoxious to me, Gong Boon Hee was a really great character. She took in Saet Byul when the girl lost her home to a scam of her real estate agent, and she cared for her like it was her own daughter. She stood up for her son against Yeon Joo’s mom because she wasn’t going to let her pride be wiped away by the likes of her.
When she started encouraging Dae Hyun to get closer to Yeon Joo again, she did reflect on her behavior afterwards and beat herself up over hurting Saet Byul’s feelings. You can say a lot about her character, but her heart was definitely in the right place.
Even Choi Yong Pil pulled himself away from his ideals on his first love. He chose not to take the trip to China and when Jang Mi suddenly visited him in Seoul he also kept showing her the door. It was a fun plottwist that Jang Mi was Boon Hee’s friend who had disappeared without a word when they were kids – Jang Mi actually came back to Seoul to find Boon Hee to make amends and I believe this eventually also mend something between Boon Hee and Yong Pil, because Boon Hee probably always thought he still wished he’d married Jang Mi over her. In the end, all’s well that ends well between them.

Now let’s move on to Saet Byul’s side of the story. As mentioned, she faces a lot of issues with Yeon Joo as the latter basically threatens her to quit the convenience store in order to ‘not get in Dae Hyun’s way’. She gets scammed out of her house and then Eun Byul suddenly runs away with all their money to audition to become an idol trainee and Saet Byul is basically left alone, after everything she’s done for her sister. She’s taken in by Dae Hyun’s mom and starts living at his house, but at some point she feels like she can’t bother them for too long. The real estate scam is eventually resolved and she manages to get her deposit back and even though her relationship with Dae Hyun is starting to bear fruits by then, she decides to go after what she wants to do first. She takes the GED exam to finalize her high school graduation and starts earnestly thinking about her future, and not just her initial intentions with Dae Hyun. I think this was really mature of her. When Dae Hyun finally came to her with a love confession, if it had happened in the beginning of the series, she’d have jumped on the opportunity at once, but when it happened she actually took a step back and told him to wait for her until at least she passed her GED. I think that was a very mature thing to do, and it also showed her growth as a character.
While it was a bit selfish of Eun Byul to just disappear with all that money, it’s clear that her objective came from a good place. She may have been quite the troublemaker, but she wanted to pay Saet Byul back for all she’d done for her and that’s why becoming an idol just couldn’t wait for her, she had to debut as soon as possible so she could help her sister. I’m glad the two sisters were able to work out their issues in the end, especially since they were both pretty headstrong.

I also want to mention Kang Ji Wook, since he had a special guest appearance here. Kang Ji Wook (played by Kim Min Gyu) was Saet Byul’s childhood friend, as a child he’d also been under her father’s Taekwondo lessons and Saet Byul always called him ‘Puppy’ (‘kangaji’) which is also a pun on his name, as in her phone she saves him as ‘KangaJi Wook’. Ji Wook is now a celebrity actor, and he helps Saet Byul by keeping an eye out for Eun Byul and how she’s doing at her agency since he has connections there. He’s in love with Saet Byul too, and hopes that they might cross the boundary of the friendzone, but it’s obvious to him too how much she’s into Dae Hyun. Still, he attempts to get between them once or twice. One time, he’s part of a promotional action from HQ by participating in a challenge to take over the convenience store as the manager for 25 hours. During this shoot, he actually goes so far as to tell Dae Hyun to back off, which I thought was quite daring. In my opinion, he needed to watch his boundaries more, because at that point, Dae Hyun wasn’t even actively pursuing Saet Byul yet, so this came kind of out of nowhere for him. Seeing her together with Ji Wook did awaken his jealousy, yes, and after that he did kind of start ‘competing’ with Ji Wook, but still, there wasn’t even a real competition there; Saet Byul was never getting over Dae Hyun. Ji Wook had no other choice but to give up after a few attempts. Even so, he remained a loyal friend to Saet Byul, and although he even got involved in a scandal with the two sisters because of those annoying delinquent girls who were still on Eun Byul’s back, he made sure to clear everything up properly and Saet Byul managed to give this reporter all the information she needed to set everything straight, so that was wrapped up nicely as well.

Finally, I need to talk a bit about Dal Shik and Geum Bi, because this was pretty wild.
Ever since high school, Hwang Geum Bi and Cha Eun Jo (Yoon Soo) have been Saet Byul’s best friends. They got into trouble together, they got beaten up together, they hang out on street corners together, and they always got each other’s backs. All three of them were initially quite violent, but Saet Byul was the only one expelled from school permanently. Geum Bi, being from a rich family, was allowed to come back to school after a few years, so she’s now a 22-year old in a class of youngsters, and Eun Jo is working at a hair salon. Geum Bi gets more storyline than Eun Jo in the end, but Eun Jo is still always there to catch her friends when they fall, the three remain very close until the end.
So initially, Dal Shik and Geum Bi LOATHE each other. Geum Bi has beaten up Dal Shik on several occasions, and has insulted his appearance, calling him ‘caveman’ and ‘monkey’ – kind of insulting to his already culturally inappropriate appearance. But they keep meeting, and without knowing it, they’ve already gotten involved with each other in a way. As it turns out, Geum Bi is a huge fan of Dal Shik’s webtoon and she’s always the first one to leave a comment. At one point, they even exchange phone numbers and it’s like having met their soulmate. But then the time comes that they agree to meet in person and all hell breaks loose when they realize who the other person is that they’d admired so much. After wallowing in their own misery for a while, Geum Bi ends up helping Dal Shik get new inspiration for his webtoon and the two finally come to terms with how they truly feel about each other – they manage to put their first impressions of each other aside to find that they are in fact each other’s soulmates. I think that in setting aside their prior judgements of each other, Dal Shik and Geum Bi also matured a lot.
Honestly, I thought that mostly Geum Bi completely switched character. She used to be this scruffy too-old-to-be-in-high-school delinquent girl, but then at home she was suddenly this lovely ‘agassi’ who wore frilly dresses and flowers in her hair. When she got together with Dal Shik, she really became this person for good, she didn’t even dress the way she did in the beginning of the series and she became way less violent, too. I guess LOVE took away all of her violent tendencies as well.

Altogether I saw a very big shift in the growth of almost each character in this series, and this still made it a very entertaining drama to watch for me. It was really different from regular K-Drama in the way it was built up, but also in how the characters were placed together, the dynamics between everyone were very original and even though they put several storylines into the show, everything was wrapped up neatly and nothing felt too forced or rushed. The story comes full circle when Dae Hyun, who was briefly promoted to consultant back at HQ, decides to go back to running the store again, and falls back into his old routine of being on his feet for 30+ hours straight. Saet Byul, who had been away for a while to work on a farm taking care of flowers (she initially wanted to become a florist since she loved flowers and knew all the meanings of the ‘flower language’) then returns in the exact same way as she entered the store in the first episode to apply for the part-timer job. When she finally agrees to be with him, the two get close to kiss, but at the last minute they both turn to the camera with mischievous grins, and it ends with a zoom-out to where the actual drama crew is shown as they wrap up the last scene. The last part is narrated by Dal Shik, as he mentions that ‘Backstreet Rookie’ is going to be his new webtoon. He and Geum Bi agree on the name ‘Backstreet Rookie’. The original title literally translates as ‘Convenience Store Morning Star’, and the ‘morning star’ part is a direct a pun on Saet Byul’s name. It also refers to the convenience store being a beacon of light for people in the dark night, like a lighthouse, as Dae Hyun himself also mentions at some point.
The romance build up was very unique and original for a K-Drama, because even with a slowburn, this usually starts about halfway through the story. In this case, there were literally 4 episodes in which Dae Hyun finally realized his feelings for Saet Byul after Yeon Joo was (finally) out of the picture, and even in these final 4 episodes, there wasn’t any sudden switch in his behavior. It wasn’t like he suddenly became aware of his feelings for Saet Byul, I guess he realized that they’d been there before but now he was able to follow his heart without any restrictions. The age difference was also never mentioned at any point, so that also wasn’t a reason to keep his feelings to himself. It just kind of happened naturally in the end, but I still thought it might have been better to start this build-up between the two main leads a little earlier. Now it just seemed as if, during the entire period up until Yeon Joo dumped him, Dae Hyun never even saw Saet Byul in a romantic light, it was just suddenly mutual after he officially got over his ex. And the good thing is that he also didn’t become petty, he didn’t even go to extreme lengths to avoid Yeon Joo, but he was firm enough to block her last attempts to get back together, and in that way he also became much stronger than before. In the beginning, he would also come crawling back to her when she gave him an opening, but he really learned his lesson, especially after finding out what Yeon Joo’s mom had been putting his parents through and how Yeon Joo had never even mentioned him to her family before.
I still think it had a pretty satisfying ending. There’s always people being salty when there’s no final kiss between the leads, but I don’t think it’s fair to judge a series on that alone. As I mentioned before, I feel like omitting a final makeout scene after they confirmed their mutual feelings had to do with smoothening out the controversy of their age difference. I don’t think I would’ve minded seeing it, to be honest, because the chemistry between the two main actors was really nice and I wasn’t even thinking about how much they differed in age – it also didn’t seem to matter between the two of them, so who cares? But I can live with the ending as it was, they showed enough affection through their hugs and hey, they were shown kissing twice in the show anyways! One time in the first episode and one time in Saet Byul’s fantasy! So there you have your kisses, go sleep on that.

I think I’ve mentioned most of what I wanted to say! I hope it was worthwhile to read, because I did make some remarks about this as I was watching. It always feels good to be in the “zone” when writing a review when I know exactly what I want to discuss. So moving on to some cast comments!

As I mentioned, the two main leads were my foremost reason to watch this drama.
Ji Chang Wook has stolen my heart in Suspicious Partner and I’ve been following his dramas ever since. So far I’ve seen him in Healer, Seven First Kisses, Suspicious Partner, and more recently in Melting Me Softly and Lovestruck in the City. People may have been surprised to see him in this drama, but I actually really enjoyed seeing a different side of him. He’s always casted as the typical handsome successful guy, but to see him now as an underdog character, seeing him being a complete and exhausted mess was very refreshing. It just proves that he’s so much more than just a handsome face. I really enjoyed his performance in this drama, and I really liked his chemistry with Kim Yoo Jung too, it never felt even the slightest bit awkward. Dae Hyun is a really good guy who proves how much he cares for the people closest to him, even to the point where he makes a fool out of himself when the other person doesn’t treat him back equally. In the beginning with Yeon Joo it makes him a bit naive, but I was glad that he recognized the truth of things well enough in the end to not give her another chance to take advantage of him. I really want to see more diverse sides of his acting, this was a good example!

MY BABY YOO JUNG. Honestly, I’ve watched her grow up through K-Drama and I was so happy to see her in this role. It was definitely not a typical casting choice, but I really liked her as Saet Byul. The first thing I saw her in as a child was The Moon That Embraces The Sun, along with Yeo Jin Goo and Kim So Hyun, all my babies have grown up to be their own main characters now T^T I’ve also seen her in Moonlight Drawn By Clouds and Clean With Passion For Now (in which, mind you, she had an even bigger age difference with her co-star and A LOT of makeout scenes). I also really want to watch Lovers of the Red Sky. I have to admit that at the beginning of the show, I was a bit scared that she would be sexualized in a way, but I think that it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. All in all I was really glad to see her in this role because she also showed me a new side to her acting, she wasn’t the deer in headlights that she plays so often, she really was her own independent, strong young woman. I’m so proud of her and I hope she gets even more opportunities to grow as an actress, she’s growing up so pretty, I have to stop myself from getting emotional. And as I’ve mentioned, her chemistry with Ji Chang Wook was so natural and nice to watch, I really liked them together. Saet Byul may have seemed a bit obsessive about Dae Hyun in the beginning, but as things got more serious and she got involved with his family and went through all the stuff with the scam and her sister’s scandal, she really grew up and started putting more value to her own future, not just to being around Dae Hyun and waiting around for him to fall for her as well. I loved her.

I’ve seen Han Sun Hwa before in God’s Gift – 14 Days (apparently? OMG SHE WAS JENNY?!) and School 2017 (right, the police officer!), and she also had a cameo in 20th Century Boy and Girl, but I don’t really remember much of that. She did seem familiar to me from the start, but it’s probably because of the first two series I mentioned. I never really saw her in a big role like this before. Anyways, yes, what can I say, I don’t think it’s ever easy playing the second female lead, especially when she becomes a very disliked character. But as I like to say, when a character sets your teeth on edge, it just means that the actor is doing a good job. That’s what I’ll keep it at, haha. I still feel like the whole thing with Yeon Joo shouldn’t have been dragged out for 11 episodes in a 16-episode drama, it could’ve ended much earlier and that’s what was a bit annoying to me. Also, when after that whole ordeal she thought she could just walk back into Dae Hyun’s life and he would immediately agree to getting back together, like, seriously? Did she have ANY reflective skills? She just didn’t deserve Dae Hyun, is what it came down to. And she also never saw any real fault in her own actions, like in the end she only apologized for her mom’s behavior, she never even apologized for how she’d treated Dae Hyun and how she CHEATED on him. So yeah, the hypocrit definitely learned her lesson.

Apparently, Ahn Sol Bin is an idol in real life, she’s in the group Laboum (I’ve only heard of the name). She has a familiar face, and when I look her up I see she was in Reunited Worlds and even had a cameo in Itaewon Class, but I don’t remember her from either of those. Anyways, she had a pretty wild character here. She was as hot-headed as Saet Byul, but just a bit more immature. At first I doubted her intentions a little bit, but it became obvious how much she cared about her sister and the whole ordeal with her running away to become an idol in secret to pay her back came from a good place. She also came to Saet Byul for help when the annoying delinquent girls started sabotaging her new idol career, and in doing so they managed to resolve the whole thing, so I’m glad that the sisters’ relationship ended on a good note.

Kim Sun Young is such an icon. I was so excited to see her in this show. I’ve seen her before in many things, like Shopping King Louie, Legend of the Blue Sea, Lookout, Because This Is My First Life, Romance is a Bonus Book and Crash Landing on You. There’s a still a lot of her dramas on my watch list, too. I love how she’s just not afraid to show all different kinds of sides to her acting, from hysterical and exaggerated to comical to serious and heartfelt. I think she showed multiple sides in this series. I have to admit that in the beginning, when all she did was scream and beat up her husband, Boon Hee was a bit obnoxious to me, like I remember thinking ‘why can’t she just talk normally??’. But then her character made such a switch and she showed such vulnerability despite NEVER going out of character. You could really see that she was a mother, even to Saet Byul, and that she would gladly stand up for her family and pride against some rich bastards like Yeon Joo’s mom. I think she was a good representation of how people grow up differently, and how they are still wise enough to see what’s going on, even when they’re being manipulated by people who are ‘better off’ than them. She represented her neighborhood but never lost her values. Again, I ended up loving her.

I’ve also seen Lee Byung Joon in several dramas before, like Secret Garden, Dream High, Me Too, Flower!, I Hear Your Voice, She Was Pretty, Another Oh Hae Young, Hwarang, Sensitive Boss, Go Back Couple, I’m Not a Robot and What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim?. I don’t think I ever really saw him in a very big role as the main lead’s father like in this series. I liked that the writers gave him some backstory too, and also found an opportunity to show how his character developed and grew in his own way. He also came face to face with being embarrassed and this caused him to completely devote himself to his wife and kids, and to stop yearning for that faraway first love in China. I don’t think I’ve ever liked his character as much as here before in previous shows, he was a good guy.

I thought I recognized Eum Moon Seok at first, but I actually don’t think I’ve seen any dramas with him before! So he was a new face to me. On one hand I am pretty curious what the actor has to say about Dal Shik’s character, especially after the whole controversy. It must have been a whole experience walking around in that attire. He occasionally switched to the hairdo he had in The Fiery Priest in a fun, inside cameo kind of way, but nothing was ever explained about why he’d chosen to live his life as he did and why he chose to walk around with this look. On the other hand, it did show that he had made his choice leaving behind his family’s rural land and living by himself in Seoul like this, he didn’t seem to have any shame regarding how he dressed or presented himself, so he must have had a certain confidence in that aspect. His character started out as the most problematic to me, but he became more bearable throughout the series as it’s established that he is a very loyal friend to Dae Hyun and overall a good person with a very romantic heart. I could’ve seen it coming that he and Geum Bi would end up together, but I still found it amusing that they did.

I haven’t seen any of Seo Ye Hwa or Yoon Soo’s dramas before, so they were both new faces to me too! While at first they seemed to be like Saet Byul’s irresponsible street friends, as we get to know them better we also find out how loyal they are and especially Geum Bi shows us a whole different side to her character and life. From her first appearance, I would’ve never guessed that she would be the friend who managed to get Saet Byul in that super deluxe hospital room, it went against her initial image so much!
But I both liked them, and maybe I’ll see them again in another drama one day!

So yeah, with that I think I can conclude this review! I had a good time watching this, and I’m glad that I gave it a chance despite the controversy. I was surprised by how different it was from the usual K-Drama in terms of characters and build-up. Both the start and the ending weren’t typical for a K-Drama in my opinion, but they managed to pull it off and as a result the drama was at times very bizarre, but that in turn made it pretty interesting for me. I like when writers suddenly seem to change course and head in an unpredictable way but still manage to wrap up the story without making the change too random.
In the end I think they succeeded in creating a story about family, or maybe just the feeling of family, surrounding this convenience store. The convenience store was the true main character. It stood at the center of the majority of the events in the series, it became the place in which Dae Hyun and Saet Byul finally came together, it even became part of the family, you could say. Even if the neighborhood was a little shabby, it was still a community, and the convenience store really was the beacon at the center of it.
Having a place like that in a neighborhood like that, I think, is very special and important.
I’m glad I gave this drama a fair chance, as I did end up enjoying it.

So now I’m going back to my watch list for a bit, to some more series from a couple of years ago. I will be going on holiday in a few weeks so I hope to be able to finish the next review within August, but we’ll see, because I also don’t want to rush anything.
Anyways, thanks for reading again and until next time! Bye-bee!