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.

Yonder
(욘더 / Yondeo)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Hey everyone! I’m very glad to have found a moment to share another review with you. I’m currently in the last weeks of my MA and since I’ve submitted my final assignments I finally found some more time to watch series. The eighth show my Spin the Wheel app picked out also happened to be a very short one, so I was able to get through it quite quickly in-between my final assignment submissions. I must say that I didn’t remember this particular title or when I put it on my list, but it definitely must have had to do with the science-fiction theme and the fact that Han Ji Min plays the female lead, as she’s one of my favorite Korean actresses. I went through some mixed feelings while watching this, because while it looks absolutely stunning and has great acting in it, throughout the show the message wasn’t really clear to me. The ending did confirm my thoughts on it though, and for that I’m still giving it a fairly high rating. Let’s get on with it!

Yonder is a TVING K-Drama mini series with 6 episodes of about 35 minutes. It takes place in the near future – somewhere in the 2030s. The first episode starts off by stating that, “following the new law on euthanasia in 2032, a social system was put in place to face death.” We meet magazine reporter Kim Jae Hyun (played by Shin Ha Kyun) right before this new euthanasia procedure is administered to his terminally ill wife Cha Yi Hoo (played by Han Ji Min), who’s suffering from heart cancer. Moments before the procedure is set into motion, a mysterious woman (played by Lee Jung Eun) visits their house, asking for a moment alone with the patient. Jae Hyun has no idea who she is or what she’s there for, but Yi Hoo assures him that she invited her. The woman places a kind of chip behind Yi Hoo’s ear and only leaves Jae Hyun a business card, introducing herself as Seiren before departing without another word. The euthanasia proceeds as planned and Jae Hyun forgets about the strange visit as he has to bury his wife and is thrown into grief.
Not long after the burial, he receives an email – from Yi Hoo. Although he initially believes it to be scam, he quickly realizes it’s coming from the same company Seiren claimed to be from, BY N BY. When forensics contact Jae Hyun as well to ask about the chip they found on Yi Hoo after taking her body in, Jae Hyun deducts that Yi Hoo must have made some sort of contract with BY N BY – and is now apparently sending him video messages from the afterlife.
With the help of some friends, including Hacker Park (played by Bae Yoo Ram), his editor-in-chief (played by Choi Deok Moon) and forensics doctor Cho Eun (played by Joo Bo Bi), Jae Hyun is able to get in contact with the alleged creator of this company, Dr. K (played by Jung Jin Young). It turns out that Dr. K – who himself only ever appears as a hologram for some reason – created a digital world in which people can “design” their own afterlife based on the memories they choose to retain from their lives.
When Jae Hyun decides to visit BY N BY, he gets the chance to meet Yi Hoo again, but he is too disturbed and convinced that it’s all fake to appreciate the reunion. However, this changes when he meets some other people who regularly visit their deceased loved ones at BY N BY. One of them is a young girl named Peach (played by Yoon Yi Re), who lost her father and is more than happy to have found a way to keep spending time with him. She is a strong supporter of Dr. K’s ideas and invites Jae Hyun to meet some more people who are in the same situation. Just when Jae Hyun starts getting used to the idea of BY N BY, a new phenomenon presents itself in the shape of Yonder – the actual afterlife.

As an in-between note I just want to clarify the difference between BY N BY and Yonder the way I understood it – feel free to correct me if you believe I got it wrong. BY N BY basically stores holographic images of a deceased person with a fraction of their memories from when they were alive. They’re like avatars of the real people, you can’t physically touch them. Also, as a living person you can visit them by going through some sort of barrier to cross over to them and you can only stay for a specific period of time. Yonder, on the other hand, is the actual afterlife where the deceased go after passing away, where they basically live peacefully in their personally designed heaven where no time passes. In order to get to Yonder, you have to be dead, you can’t just visit there for a while as a living person, which is the main difference between Yonder and BY N BY.
In a way, BY N BY is like a “front office” to Yonder, introducing the living to the possibility of being reunited with their lost loved ones, like a preview. What makes this system most problematic is that BY N BY also offers the opportunity to make this reunion final.

Things start going awry when the avatars in BY N BY start encouraging their living relatives to come join them in Yonder. It starts with Peach – her father invites her to come live with him forever. It’s sad that Jae Hyun might have been able to talk more sense into her if he hadn’t been interrupted by the chance to interview Dr. K himself. That same night Cho Eun contacts him to say that Peach unalived herself, leaving a note to Jae Hyun saying that she’s sorry but that she has nothing left to live for without her dad. Shockingly, the other people he met from Peach’ circle quickly follow suit – apparently everyone prefers to die to be reunited with their loved ones over trying to make their own living without them. If that isn’t bad enough, the promotion of Yonder as the ideal heaven that promises a better life after death leads to a spike in euthanasia applications and suicides. Despite being so sceptical of BY N BY and Yonder and Dr. K, Jae Hyun eventually decides to join the trend and go live with Yi Hoo in Yonder.

One of the aspects I found hard to grasp in the story was why Jae Hyun suddenly changed tack. It was clear that he was initially very disturbed by the whole idea of BY N BY and Yonder, and he even called Seiren and Dr. K out on how they exploited people’s grief and memories of their loved ones from the start. When he noticed people committing suicide all over the place, he seemed genuinely alarmed – for good reason. Still, he followed them and was genuinely happy to be with Yi Hoo again for a while, as if he suddenly forgot all his (more than valid) skeptical thoughts.
The fact that I found it hard to determine his exact thought process also had to do with the fact that many things were kept very vague and abstract in the story’s narrative. Besides the amount of silent acting, I found many dialogues very cryptic – I generally couldn’t really tell what people were thinking. This in turn only added to the unpredictable nature of the characters and, consequently, the story. It really took “never let them know your next move” to a new level.

I honestly started doubting everything the moment Jae Hyun decided to go to Yonder. The entire time I was with him on how toxic it all was, how “keeping the dead alive” defeated the purpose of dealing with loss and grief and accepting death. Not only that, BY N BY and Yonder actually made money out of people’s grief, encouraging them to keep holding onto it rather than process their loss and move on. I think this was very toxic. I mean come on, to actually take advantage of someone’s grief by creating an avatar of their lost one who actively persuades them to come over to the other side? It’s even disrespectful to the dead, in a way. I don’t believe for a second that Yi Hoo or any of the other deceased people would ask their alive relatives to willingly give up their lives to join them in death.
What I also found intriguing was that apparently Yonder was so real to the deceased that they almost started forgetting they were dead themselves. When Yi Hoo got upset about the fact that their baby wasn’t growing and Jae Hyun also didn’t understand why this was happening, I was like, what? Have you seriously forgotten that you’re in the afterlife? You think new life is going to grow within death? The whole purpose of Yonder was to create a peaceful environment where every single day was the same. I thought it was weird that Jae Hyun, despite already acknowledging the repetitive elements in Yonder, didn’t even realize that no, of course his baby wasn’t going to grow. It never lived in the first place. It was only there because Yi Hoo designed it that way, regretting the fact that she never got to give birth because of her illness.

In the end I was relieved that Jae Hyun got brought back to life and confronted Seiren with the fact that what she was doing was wrong and that she needed to shut Yonder down. Even when it was revealed that Seiren was Dr. K’s wife, and that Dr. K himself was actually in Yonder with their teenage daughter, I couldn’t understand how she could’ve developed Yonder into what it became. When Jae Hyun confronts her in the final episode, it’s like she doesn’t even acknowledge what’s truly happening. She just keeps using the explanation that she built Yonder to accommodate the deceased, but she doesn’t seem to grasp that it isn’t just about people who are already dead. She is actually encouraging people to die, “exploiting people’s feelings to market a fake heaven”, to quote Hacker Park.
In my opinion, there was a different way this could’ve worked. I believe it would give many people a sense of relief to see their deceased loved ones live in a peaceful afterlife without feeling the need to join them. BY N BY could’ve just offered solace, it could’ve just existed to show people that their loved ones passed on happily and provide them with the comforting prospect that, when their time comes, they will be able to join them in that peaceful place. I honestly believe that Yonder may have been established with that initial purpose, but that it took on such extreme proportions because in reality, Seiren herself couldn’t deal with the loss of her husband and daughter.
The way this series portrayed how people kept clinging on to their lost ones, choosing to join them in death rather than cherish their shared memories and move on, was very painful to watch. It just made me feel like Peach and the others all fell victim to BY N BY’s marketing scheme, they literally gave up their lives for the ultimate form of escapism.
In the end, the thing I liked the most about the story was the final message about how memories are made valuable through the fact that you can’t return to them. You will never be able to relive them the same way, apart from replaying them in your head. BY N BY allowed people to relive the entire experience of those memories by recreating the exact environment, sounds, smells and feelings, but that in itself defeats the purpose of having a precious memory to hold onto, especially when someone passes away. What are we without memories? We deal with our losses because we have memories of our times with the ones we lost and those memories help us move on in the end.

Despite my confusion regarding the fact that Jae Hyun gave up his life to go to Yonder, I do feel like he needed the experience of spending time there to come to his final realization. The ultimate message of the story eventually comes down to what he tells Seiren before he turns his back on BY N BY for good: “Every person has a door they can’t close on their own, and you need to have someone to close that door for you.” Yi Hoo had said it to him and he’d repeated it before, but it wasn’t until he said it to Seiren at the end that it really hit me. I think this phrase depicts loss perfectly: when someone passes, they always leave something behind, and it’s up to the remaining relatives to deal with that in order to finally close the metaphorical door they left open. After actually spending time with his wife in the afterlife and realizing that even Yonder had its imperfections, Jae Hyun came to the conclusion that he really just needed to leave his wife behind him. He needed to get closure by “closing the door” his wife left open for him. So in that sense, I thought the ending was very powerful because it came back to the original perspective on how unnatural BY N BY’s proceedings were. Jae Hyun just needed to see for himself what Yonder exactly entailed before he could make the final decision.

All in all, I feel like this series would’ve fitted very well within the anthology of SF8 because of its vibe, setting and Black Mirror-esque qualities. I was particularly reminded of the BM episode “Be Right Back”, where a woman gets a clone of her deceased lover but eventually realizes that even something that looks exactly like him can never truly take his place. I was also reminded of the American series Upload, which, despite being a predominantly comical show, also features a system that “uploads” avatars of deceased people to a perfect resort-like afterlife – where their living relatives can also visit them by using a kind of VR-suit.
In hindsight, I do feel like the way Yonder depicts an ethically problematic way of dealing with grief adds to the powerful message of the story – that it’s important to cherish the memories of your deceased loved ones, but also keep them as just that: memories. The fact that they died isn’t going to change, and you’ll have to close the door at some point, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have to forget about them for good. It’s a complicated process; it’s messy and it’s raw and it makes you sway between indulging in your grief and trying to get over it. I think this series did a good job at depicting that chaos through Jae Hyun’s experiences.

To mention some more practical or technical aspects of the show that I liked: as I mentioned in the beginning, it looked absolutely stunning. From the hauntingly beautiful opening sequence to the shots throughout, it’s a cinematographical masterpiece. Additionally, the music gave me goosebumps in all the right ways. I especially loved the song played during the end credits called “DIVER” by Sondia. I thought it was reminiscent of songs like “Orbit” by Hwasa from The King: Eternal Monarch and “Adrenaline” by Solar from Vincenzo (which I didn’t even watch but I love me a good MAMAMOO K-Drama OST). In general, the series was of amazing cinematographic and musical quality, and the acting was very convincing as well.

I would say the only thing that occasionally bothered me a little was the consistently slow pace of the story and the way in which the characters interacted with each other. I would’ve liked maybe a bit more variety in pace and dynamic between both events and people. The ambiguity of certain dialogues also made it hard to follow things sometimes. For example, at some point it is suggested that Jae Hyun isn’t completely honest with his own feelings, and we also see a flashback in which Yi Hoo tells him this, suggesting that this was already the case before she died. In what way he wasn’t honest with his own feelings, I don’t know. I don’t think it had to do with the fact that he was only acting defensive towards BY N BY but actually yearned to get back in touch with his wife in the afterlife, since he kept coming back to the unethical nature of the service Yi Hoo signed up for.
Also, what exactly was that liquid that Yi Hoo got in Yonder when she snapped after realizing her baby wouldn’t grow? She was admitted to some sort of clinic because she got upset – something that isn’t supposed to happen in Yonder – and then they gave her some sort of medicine to take “when she didn’t feel happy anymore, and that it would take her somewhere dark again.” After they both drink it, Yi Hoo is seen closing her eyes while Jae Hyun is brought back to life. Does that mean that medicine took Yi Hoo to an even deeper layer of death? As in, beyond Yonder, where she really wouldn’t experience any feeling again? Where did it end for her and why did it bring Jae Hyun back to life?
It may have just been me, but I personally need these things spelled out to me otherwise I just won’t understand what’s going on. It also bothered me that no one, not Seiren or Dr. K, could give a clear factual answer to what Yonder actually was. Like, there must have been a simple definition, but they kept beating around the bush and stating cryptic statements. I couldn’t blame Jae Hyun for getting agitated because heck, how hard could it be to just call it by its name? While the lack of clear definitions regarding the concepts of BY N BY and Yonder did challenge me to make sense of them myself, I still would’ve liked some more clarity on the truth. Speaking of more clarity, I would’ve really liked to get some regarding Yi Hoo as well. Since she dies so early into the show, we basically only get to know her through Jae Hyun’s memories of her. We never get to see her thought process in deciding to sign up for BY N BY, and we never find out how she really feels about everything. It’s like she only exists in the show as a fragment of Jae Hyun’s memory where she’s depicted only as he wants to remember her – which again, is also kind of the point, I guess. In any case, I’m just trying to say that while I respect the ambiguity within the show, because it illustrates perfectly how things aren’t just black-and-white sometimes, I personally would’ve liked to get more explanation on what was happening for my own better understanding.

I’ll move on to some cast comments now, which probably won’t take up much space because the short duration of the show also facilitates a fairly small cast of characters.

While I haven’t seen any other dramas with Shin Ha Kyun, I realize that I know him from the movie Inseparable Bros, where he plays a physically incapacitated genius. I think he did a really good job in Yonder. The difference between Jae Hyun’s behavior and expressions in his flashbacks with Yi Hoo and after losing her are the perfect depiction of how losing someone important can just suck out the life and joy from someone. It was really nice to see him smile so widely and goof around with his wife in their shared memories together, all the more because it stood in such contrast with his personality at the start of the show, right before his wife is put down. After making the connection with his performance in Inseparable Bros I know he’s also a great comical actor, and I’m very curious to see more of his acting.

As I mentioned in my introduction, Han Ji Min is one of my favorite Korean actresses and I’ve loved her in everything I’ve seen her in so far. From Rooftop Prince to Hyde, Jekyll, Me to Wife I Know to The Light in Your Eyes and Our Blues, and there’s more series on my list that I’m very much looking forward to. Even though the majority of her scenes where of her character when she wasn’t alive anymore, she still managed to put so much into Yi Hoo’s character. I especially loved the flashback scenes of their worryfree time together, when they’d stroll down a Christmas market or went swimming. Those scenes were so important because they gave much needed insight into the relationship between Jae Hyun and Yi Hoo, how they interacted and experienced valuable moments together. After she got “uploaded” to BY N BY, I found it much harder to gauge her character because she seemed very different from her bubbly self when she was still alive. I have to admit I didn’t understand half of what she told Jae Hyun because it was so cryptic. She couldn’t say what she was, exactly, and even when Jae Hyun asked her what Yonder was, she only answered with “the place I’m in right now, the place where you aren’t”, like, riddle me that! Despite the fact that I would’ve liked to get a more definitive image of her character, I think Han Ji Min did an amazing job portraying a wide variety of emotions again, so this series definitely didn’t have any negative impact on her position on my faves list. I’m really excited for the next thing I’ll get to see her in!

Moving on to another favorite actress, I was really happy to see Lee Jung Eun in this. She’s featured alongside Han Ji Min multiple times, in Wife I Know, The Light in Your Eyes (where she played her mom) and in Our Blues as well. Besides that I’ve seen her in King of High School, Who Are You: School 2015, Oh My Ghostess, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, Tomorrow With You and Fight For My Way, and of course the movie Parasite. I’m sure I’ll see her in many more shows, old or new. She’s always such a familiar face and she always delivers a stellar performance. Despite Seiren’s disputable choices in developing Yonder, I can’t deny that she performed the role very well. Seiren may have been quite stoic, but it’s not as if there was no emotion behind it. Especially in the final confrontation scene, it was clear to see that Jae Hyun prompted her to think twice about the true repercussions of creating Yonder. Similar to Yi Hoo, I would’ve liked to see some more character building in Seiren. Like, was that even her real name? What was her life like with her husband and daughter when they were still together? We only see her in one flashback, standing at her daughter’s grave, but she never actually talks about her experiences or emotions throughout the whole process of developing the company based on her husband’s ideas, for example. She remains kind of an enigma, and while that does have its charm, I think it would’ve evoked more empathy for her character if there had been a bit more immersion into her psyche. I think this has more to do with the writing of the character, because Lee Jung Eun’s performance was still great.

Bae Yoo Ram was another familiar face that I thought was a very welcome addition to the cast of Yonder. In series with dark themes it’s always nice to have a light and uncomplicated character that adds a little humor and perspective to the whole thing without it becoming too much. I’ve seen him in a couple of movies such as Midnight Runners and Be With You, but also in dramas like Producer, Oh My Ghostess and Run On. I liked Hacker Park a lot, not just for the humor he brought but also because he was one of the people that kept Jae Hyun grounded and connected to the world of the living. He was there the moment he came back to life and I think he was also one of the few people who never felt the need to go to Yonder despite clearly not having many people to spend his life with. I liked that he was the one to throw the truth about Yonder’s purpose into Seiren’s face at the end. He was a really nice character and I liked how he kind of started making advances on Cho Eun at the end by saying he’d “close the door for her”, that was cute.

Yoon Yi Re hasn’t actually been in that many projects so far, I only see two movies and three series on her repertoire. I’ve seen 20th Century Girl but I have to admit I don’t remember her from there. I still have some shows with her on my watchlist, so I hope I’ll get to see more of her. Peach – or Yoon Soo In, as she eventually reveals her real name to be – was kind of a tragic character. She wasn’t able to let go of her father and decided she’d be happier clinging onto him forever in a bubble afterlife universe instead of exploring her potential in the many years she still had to live out her life. You might say she was “weak”, but I think to say that would be to truly underestimate the way losing a loved one – especially a parent you didn’t get to spend much time with before – can weigh you down. I think that for Peach, she didn’t just have to move on from her dad, she had to move on from the truth that she never got to know him properly, and that’s why the opportunity to reconnect with him must have resonated with her so much. Still, it was sad to see such a young and bright person utter that she didn’t have anyone else besides her father – how lonely must she have truly been behind that bubbly exterior? I think the actress did a very good job in portraying that friction between her cheerfulness and darkness. I hope I get to see more performances of her in the future!

To sum up this review, I think this was a short but powerful series. Although I struggled to find a way to relate to the mindsets that were depicted in this show while I was watching it, in hindsight I feel like the problematics of the depicted issues are actually part of the message. I feel like this may have made for a good movie or drama special or anthology episode as well. I personally would’ve liked it even more if some parts had been defined a bit more clearly and there would’ve been a little more flesh to the characters in terms of background. With just a bit more information on how Jae Hyun met Yi Hoo or Hacker Park, on his profession as a magazine editor, and on the history of Yonder through the relationship between Seiren and Dr. K/Jang Jin Ho. With a little bit more context, it would’ve probably blown me away even more. Still, I was very impressed with the depiction of the story, including its cinematography and soundtrack. I’m all for discovering hidden gems while going through my watchlist, and this was definitely one of them.
I think the ultimate message of the story really has to do with the fact that grief is a complicated and painful process and it affects everyone differently. The ideal way to deal with it is to accept that you’ll never be able to meet with them again and make peace with the fact that you’ll be left with only memories. Still, those memories are worth so much, as they are proof that the people who left are never truly forgotten, and they ensure that they’ll always be with you in an intangible way. They would want you to move on and find a way to move through their absence, and it’s best to honor that wish with everything you’ve got.

Thanks again for reading through this review until the end! I’ll be moving on to my next watch soon, so keep an eye out for the next mystery review!
Until then, bye-bee! x