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.

One Day Off
( 박하경 여행기 / Bakhagyeong Yeohaenggi / Park Ha Gyung’s Travel Journal)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hello everyone, and welcome to another review. I know it hasn’t been long since my last one, but my Spin-the-Wheel app picked out a very short and sweet series for me which I went through quite fast, again. Honestly, the streak of wholesome series continues! I can’t even describe how happy this makes me, because apart from the fact that I really like the tone and vibe of these shows, they also align with how I’m feeling and living these days, so it really feels meant to be that I’m getting to watch these stories at this particular moment in my life. This was another very refreshing, light and wholesome little series, and I’m excited to share my thoughts on it. Let’s get this adventure started!

One Day Off is a Wavve Network Korean mini series that consists of eight episodes with a duration of about twenty-five minutes each (much like my last watch, One Night/Morning). I watched the series in full with good English subtitles on BiliBili. This series focusses on the titular main character Park Ha Gyung (played by Lee Na Young), who teaches Korean literature at a high school. Despite being a teacher and having to deal with a lot of people (and teenagers) all week, Ha Gyung is a big introvert who gets drained pretty quickly. To escape from these stimuli, she goes on a one-day trip every Saturday to “walk, eat, and let her mind wander”. On these trips, she sees new things, meets new people and always learns or experiences something new, however mundane it might be. Every episode features a different trip to a different location that she visits for different reasons, to meet someone, check out a temple, exhibition or local bakery, and return back home the same day. Simple as that.

This series turned out quite differently from what I expected. From the trailer, I thought it would function as some sort of tourism promotion for all the places Ha Gyung visited. In that aspect, I was proven completely wrong. Instead of showcasing every place by letting Ha Gyung go around it and experience it like a tourist, we only get to see specific locations within the place, and the focus seems to be more on the encounters Ha Gyung has then on providing an image of what each town, city or island has to offer. While they sometimes do give some atmospheric shots of the location at first, the story always focusses on one specific spot or person. What’s also interesting is that Ha Gyung doesn’t hold on too strongly to her own plans. Although she does typically have at least one reason to go to a specific place, she very much lets herself go with the flow, even if that takes her off her intended path. In that sense, the series is structured very much like its titular character: it wanders, sometimes aimlessly and sometimes with a goal, but always brings you back to base with a new perspective or something to keep in mind.

While we do get introduced to different characters in every episode, Ha Gyung is the one constant throughout, and so I would like to elaborate a bit more on her character before going into the episodes and things that jumped out to me.
I personally thought Ha Gyung was a very interesting character. She initially seems like a typical introvert that somehow ended up in a job that forced her to talk to and communicate with people all day long – apart from teaching, she’s also revealed to be in charge of the student council and the PTA. But instead of charging up from an overwhelming week at home during the weekends, she goes out. She doesn’t want to do anything but she also doesn’t want to stay at home, and so she goes on a trip to ‘do nothing’ in a different location. I thought that was a really nice way of looking at it, and a nice motivation to get out of the house as well. I also liked that in episode six, when a downpour of rain and some other circumstances keep her from taking a trip outside the city, she decides to just explore her own neighborhood.

“Let’s go along a path I’ve never tried. There are plenty of adventures just outside my doorstep.
Stepping outside can already feel like a trip.”

With this mindset, Ha Gyung is able to make something out of every trip, even if she ends up doing nothing. It’s so simple yet so profound, depending on how you look at it. Ha Gyung never sets out with the goal of gaining new insights or experiences, but she doesn’t close herself off from them either. Sometimes she drifts off her intended path to spend time with one specific person, like when she coincidentally (or fatefully?) meets the artist of her favorite childhood comic book, or ends up following a little girl on her quest to find a specific sort of bread instead of finishing her own pilgrimage. Every episode is different in that way, and that was very refreshing.
Since this series is basically a fragmented ‘anthology’ of Ha Gyung’s life, we don’t get to know her through and through. We learn snippets about her past throughout the episodes but never a full timeline, or even how she ended up being a Korean literature teacher. Her connection to literature is never explained either – in fact, we never even see her read a book on any of her travels.
To me, in hindsight, everything comes down to the notion of ‘it’s not that deep’. We don’t need a full dissection of Ha Gyung as a person and what led her to live her current life. Even the fact that she lost her best friend from high school is only revealed in the very last episode, as if they specifically didn’t want to make that a defining part of her personality. While other shows would’ve revealed an element like that at the start of the story as a part of the main character’s past, here it was literally saved until the final episode, and even then it didn’t overstay its welcome. Ha Gyung allows herself to cry and then laugh about it, and then goes back home at the end of the day, as usual.
To sum up the bits of information we got on Ha Gyung through this series: she’s a big introvert that’s very happy by herself. She is single, lives alone and doesn’t seem to be bothered by that at all, as it allows her to do things her own way and come and go whenever she wants to. She values her own time and space and goes to places purely for herself, because she wants to go there. There are various occasions where people start talking to her and she seems uncomfortable or zones out, suggesting that she’s really not looking for company or conversation. However, when the situation is right and her interest is piqued, she does occasionally initiate contact by herself, even if it’s just to satisfy her own curiosity at that moment and doesn’t expect anything more from it. She lives a very independent life and it’s clear that she wants to keep it that way.
I did like it when, in episode six, we got to see a more unfiltered side of her when people from school kept calling her on the weekend about some situation and she really dreaded picking up the phone. That was really relatable, lol. I also liked how friendly she talked with the headboy from her class. It was very clear from her expressions and tone of speech when she felt comfortable talking to someone or not.
The last episode gives us the biggest flashback of her as a teenager (played by Park Se Wan) and we learn that she definitely had some development since then – she used to really not care about anything, but since she decided to go on Saturday trips it seems like she has acquired a certain appreciation for the simple things in life and feels content in her own way. To me, she seemed like someone that valued her alone time and also didn’t like being dragged into too much hassle by other people. While trying to avoid conflicts as much as possible, she sometimes just couldn’t get out of them, like when she got into an argument with that elderly man in episode four. I really liked the way she dealt with that: she cried about it on the bus ride back, dealing with her own frustrations in silence, and then still went to apologize when they got off. Even if she didn’t have to – maybe she just didn’t want this feeling to ruin the end of her trip – she showed she was the bigger person by apologizing and smoothing things over. I thought that was such an interesting twist. Like her, I had also been scoffing at this man for being so rigid and close-minded, but I also saw the meaning in her apologizing just to clear the air and not part ways on such rancunous terms. To me, it felt like she did it because she realized it wasn’t worth getting so worked up about it – this man wouldn’t change his way of thinking, anyway. By apologizing, she showed a maturity that even he couldn’t deny, and she even got some snacks for it as a result.

I’d like to quickly go over the episodes and Ha Gyung’s adventures and encounters. In the first episode, she visits the famous Daeheungsa Temple in Haenam for a quiet retreat day. Ironically, this quickly proves to be difficult, as people constantly keep talking to her and she can’t even focus during the group meditation session. In the end, she joins a woman (played by Sunwoo Jung Ah) wearing a ‘Noble Silence’ tag – meaning that she’s there for introspection and prefers not to talk – on a walk and that encounter brings her to listen, smell and feel the temple’s surroundings in a way she would’ve otherwise never gotten to experience. I thought this first episode really set the tone for the rest of the series, and I was initially kind of disappointed that not every episode was like this. The contrast between all those noisy people at the temple and the quiet relief that the silent woman offered was almost tangible. The way the woman showed her how to listen, smell and touch – experience the environment without uttering a single word, was strangely profound. I also loved that, when they reached the end of the path and arrived at that beautiful lookout point, the first and only thing the woman said was: “I can finally breathe again.” It might have seemed so simple, but it really summed up what I thought this series would be about – finding ways to breathe again, to find relief from the hustle and bustle.

In the second episode, Ha Gyung goes to Gunsan to visit the art exhibition of her former student, Kim Yeon Joo (played by Han Ye Ri). I liked how they framed this ‘reunion’ in terms of Ha Gyung’s current issue with a student who had declared that she would drop out of school to pursue a career in the arts without going to university. Yeon Joo had been like that as well, and had immersed herself in the arts after being motivated by Ha Gyung, who ironically didn’t even remember giving her that motivation. It was interesting how it started with showing Yeon Joo as kind of an oddball, still craving her teacher’s validation and even being criticized by her friends behind her back. This story felt like it directly connected to the issue Ha Gyung was facing with the other student, so it immediately felt very different from the first episode. Here, we didn’t actually get to see any other part of Gunsan than Yeon Joo’s studio, which I initially found a bit disappointing – I had been prepared to get a proper taste of every place she visited. Still, it was an interesting episode since it also gave us some more background information about Ha Gyung and her history as a teacher and how she had actually managed to inspire former students without even being aware of it.

In the third episode, Ha Gyung goes to Busan to visit the International Film Festival. There, she has an almost fateful-like encounter with a man. In any other situation, this would make for a romantic start of something special. If anything, Lee Chang Jin (played by Goo Gyo Hwan) seemed particularly in the mood for romance. Their meeting feels so wondrous that it even makes Ha Gyung agree to spend the night there and catch a morning movie together before she goes back. This is the first time we see her adjust her plans and decide to stay the night at her travel location. However, the next morning, he doesn’t show up. What I found the most interesting about this episode was that nothing felt forced about it. Ha Gyung opened herself up to the idea of spending more time with this man, who seemed to be on the exact same wavelength as her, but then also didn’t linger on the disappointment when he didn’t show up. I was just happy that she went inside the cinema anyway, after waiting for him for a while. If I get movie tickets and the other person doesn’t show up, I’ll just watch it by myself instead of wasting both tickets, so I’m glad she did that as well. I did find Chang Jin a bit of an enigma though, because he just seemed to want to live his life like a movie and leave everything up to chance. It was like he was hoping for a ‘serendipity’ situation. He chose not to meet her at the movies with the idea that they would meet again somewhere anyway if they were really meant to be, or something. Maybe the fact that they kept missing each other said enough, lol. Anyways, another very different yet interesting story.

In episode four, Ha Gyung takes a bus trip to Sokcho, which holds precious memories of her first and last family trip. I liked that they inserted real footage of old times here, it gave her narration a lot of texture and supported it visually. Here again, we learn a bit more about Ha Gyung’s past, mostly in terms of her father, who lost his job after the economy boom dropped. Interestingly, this episode mostly focusses on Ha Gyung’s way back from her trip, after showing only a little bit of her time in Sokcho itself. As she’s waiting for the bus back to Seoul at the station, she gets caught in an argument between an elderly man (played by Park In Hwan) and another person, as the former comments on protests against unemployment, shown on the television. He seems to have quite conservative views, and states that young people shouldn’t have anything to complain about, that they have it easy thanks to what his generation worked so hard for to accomplish back in the day. When asked for her opinion, Ha Gyung says she doesn’t agree with him and that the current youth has their own set of problems, and that it can’t possibly remain silent in society with all these minds at work. The elderly man, clearly set in his ways, completely bashes her for not going against his opinion, and his harsh words upset Ha Gyung very much. She cries on the way back in the bus, but after seeing how he and his wife talk to their grandchildren on the phone she calms down. She ends up apologizing to the man, after which he hands her some of the snacks they were planning to give to their grandchildren. I briefly mentioned this episode before because I thought it had such an unexpected twist. The fact that this story focusses on the way back from a trip rather than the trip itself was new, and I also found it interesting that it left a bitter aftertaste, because the elderly man never admitted to his own short-sightedness. On the other hand, it was nice to see how a bus ride could soften the tension and make even him agree to leave the argument behind. To me, it felt like Ha Gyung was definitely the bigger person by apologizing, even if it was just to set her own mind at ease and not go home with lingering rancunous feelings.

Episode five was another special one: Ha Gyung unintentionally ends up in Daejeon after getting off there because she thought she saw a cat on the platform. On top of that, she coincidentally meets the artist of her favorite childhood comic ‘The Dancing Kangaroo’. They are both waiting in line for a popular restaurant, and since the dish they want to eat isn’t available to single customers (honestly, I can’t with this rule), they end up sharing a meal at the same table. The artist, Goo Young Seok (played by Gil Hae Yeon), then invites her for tea at her studio and even gives her the final volume of the comic that she’d been looking for. After that, they visit the National Science Museum where they look at stars together and end up participating in a dance session outside. I thought it was really fun how they adjusted the structure of this episode to match Young Seok’s new story idea. She tells Ha Gyung she’s contemplating a story about a time loop in which the world keeps ending (giving me major Baby It’s Over Outside vibes). To match that, instead of telling the story of the episode in chronological order like usual, it starts at the end and keeps rewinding back to several hours earlier. I loved the play on how Young Seok’s cat ‘called’ Ha Gyung out of the train to end up in Daejeon, like their encounter was destined to happen. This was the first episode in which Ha Gyung ended up in a different place than she’d intended, and it resulted in one of the best experiences for her, where she even got to meet someone she really admired and obtained something she had been looking for for a long time.

To keep things diverse, episode six doesn’t feature a trip at all, or at least not in the way Ha Gyung had envisioned. It’s raining really hard the entire day, and on top of that she’s being pestered by the PTA about a gaming contest her class organized by themselves. The teachers and parents are against this since it ‘distracts’ the students from their studies, and Ha Gyung is the one who has to put an end to it, even though the students refuse to stop. This felt like an example of the fact that sometimes things just don’t go as planned, and I liked that Ha Gyung made the switch to sticking to her own neighborhood so easily. No matter what your routine is, sometimes a plan just doesn’t work out and you’re not able to leave. Instead of moping and regretting the lost opportunity, Ha Gyung decides to still go out in the pouring rain and visit a museum. There, she meets the art teacher from her school (played by Jo Hyun Chul), who always takes his class on field trips to exhibitions and such on the weekend. At first, it seems like she doesn’t really want to talk to him, also because he makes light of her tense situation with the PTA, but she still ends up going home with a satisfied feeling.
One thing that stuck out to me here was the notion that even the tiniest thing can change your perspective. When Ha Gyung first goes out, an earthworm gets on her shoe and she screams while kicking it off. During her conversation with the art teacher, he mentions how he never knows how to deal with earthworms, as they will shrivel up in the sun when it stops raining anyway. On her way home, Ha Gyung spots another earthworm and decides to take it off the road and put it somewhere safer, away from the cars. This little detail was so meaningful in its own way. Even if she barely paid attention to the other things the art teacher was ranting to her about, she did pick up on that idea of how to deal with an earthworm and changed her attitude towards it in the most subtle way, by putting it somewhere else instead of leaving it on the road. This is what I mean when I say that, even if nothing ‘noteworthy’ happened in the episode, there was always something, the tiniest thing, that Ha Gyung took from it. Also, seeing her get back home, getting all warm and freshened up, making herself a kimchi pancake and eating it by the window while the rain outside continued was the coziest thing ever.

In episode seven, Ha Gyung takes a plane ride to Jeju, with the plan to visit all twelve bakeries on the island. Her self-proclaimed ‘obsession’ with bread has never been mentioned or hinted at before, so this is another thing that we newly learn about her. About halfway through her ‘pilgrimage’, Ha Gyung comes across a little girl called Yool Ah (played by Kim Min Chae) who seems to be looking for a very specific type of bread (‘snail bread’) for her mom and grandma. On her way, she is being followed by an elderly lady (played by Kang Ae Shim) and Ha Gyung spontaneously decides to join the adventure. Ultimately, Yool Ah finds the bread she was looking for: a roll cake that reminds her of a snail’s house and that comes with tasty red bean bun freebies. When she arrives home, the mysterious lady that’s been following her turns out to be her grandma, and the roll cake is meant as an ancestral rite for Yool Ah’s mother who has sadly passed away.
Again, this was such a cute and unexpected adventure. In a way, Ha Gyung abandoned her own adventure to join someone else’s and wasn’t even disappointed that she only got to visit six bakeries. What also jumped out to me was that this episode felt like a kind of promotional documentary for the Jeju bakeries: it even included short interviews with the shop owners about their businesses. At some point, it even reminded me of the Japanese variety show Hajimete no Otsukai, which features young kids on their first ever solo errand. You can watch it on Netflix, it’s really cute. Wrapping it up with the revelation that Yool Ah had been on a quest to find the roll cake for her mother’s commemoration was really heartwrenching. I loved the twist on this one.

Finally, episode eight shows Ha Gyung on a trip to Gyeongju, the place where she went on her first high school trip. It also introduces us to Lee Jin Sol (played by Shim Eun Kyung), or rather the ghost of her. We briefly see Jin Sol before at the end of episode six, where she sits besides Ha Gyung on the couch and steals a piece of her kimchi pancake. At that point, we still have no idea who she is, and it even made me wonder if Ha Gyung secretly had a room mate or something. This series has a habit of introducing things without context and then coming back to explain them later. As soon as I saw that Jin Sol looked the same in Ha Gyung’s high school flashback as she had on her couch as an adult, I suspected she might not be alive anymore. It’s not that Ha Gyung occasionally went back to Gyeongju to remember Jin Sol – she literally says that this is the first time she went back there by herself – so maybe she just went back for the memories and allowed Jin Sol’s spirit to accompany her.
When she learned of her friend’s death, Ha Gyung admits that she first cried her eyes out and then started laughing as she thought back on their craziest memories together. I think this episode did the same thing: it didn’t linger on the sadness of Jin Sol’s death, but instead focussed on their friendship and the good memories they shared. As such, it didn’t feel heavy or emotional at all. It remained very light and hopeful, much like the rest of the series. Ha Gyung hang out with the spirit of her friend, in the place where her memories of her were the strongest, and bid her farewell again at the end of the day. I also like to think that being reminded of how Jin Sol always wanted to take pictures with her is what made her ‘photobomb’ that picture in the end. Maybe that prompted her to be more open about having her picture taken, who knows.

The way I see it, every episode reflected a part of Ha Gyung’s life as an introverted single woman and introduced her to something new, in the tiniest and subtlest of ways. It could be anything: a new restaurant, a new person, or a new perspective. While every episode stood on its own, it was nice to get a little bit of cohesion through the whole story, like how specific elements were already introduced at an earlier stage before they were touched on in more detail later. I think Ha Gyung went about her life in a very healthy way: even though she preferred her solitude, she didn’t avoid people when they crossed her path, and she really just let the wind carry her wherever she was meant to go. Not every encounter has to have meaning, but they all often end up getting one. This was a very light and sweet depiction of appreciating life as it came, without expecting too much of anything.

I thought this series was very unique, from the cinematography to the music to the storytelling. It even looked a bit arthousy sometimes. While I appreciated that every episode was different, both in execution and outcome, I can’t deny that I sometimes fell back on my initial disappointment with what I’d originally expected. I would’ve personally liked to see more of the actual places. On the other hand, I do respect this series for what it is, focussing on what it chose to focus on. I guess I just would’ve liked it to focus a bit more on environments than on people, lol.
Apart from that, I also think something can be said about the fact that we never truly got to know Ha Gyung in her entirety, due to the fragmented nature of the story. We basically just see her on eight consecutive Saturdays, skipping the full weeks in-between. Also, we only get a few snippets of her as a teacher. We only see her stand in front of her class once, and then a few times in the teacher’s lounge and the hallway, but that’s it. How she ended up becoming a teacher and where her speciality in Korean literature came from, we don’t know. But maybe those are also all things contributing to the ‘it’s not that deep’ factor. Considering what we learn about Ha Gyung, she might not even have such a strong attachment to Korean literature as a subject. Still, I would’ve personally liked to get a bit more context here and there. As much as I can appreciate it for what it was, I can’t deny that I feel more drawn to characters and stories with a bit more emotional depth to them. But again, that doesn’t take away this series’ charm at all – I’m really glad I watched it, and it definitely opened my eyes to the new and different insights it offered.

I would like to make a short cast comments section, since there were some surprising appearances here and there. Something I love about shorter series like these is that it really doesn’t matter for the actors. If anything, actors always jump out to me more in shorter episodes, because they get to show off their skills without being completely outshined by the main lead(s). All in all, I really liked the acting in this, it was very natural and real. I loved getting to know more actors and seeing some familiar faces portray a role I hadn’t seen of them before.

First of all, Lee Na Yeong. I’d only seen her before in Romance is a Bonus Book, one of my alltime favorites. Apparently, this was the next thing she did after Bonus Book, four years later. I really loved her performance in this. She exuded such serenity and calm throughout, like she fully grasped her character even when we never learn the full picture about her. I imagine it can be quite challenging to fully flesh out a character without having all the information to build her up emotionally as well as physically. Her iconic bob hairstyle and unique fashion style only added to Ha Gyung’s subtle quirkiness – I never realized how tall Lee Na Young actually was! Ha Gyung’s tendency to go with the flow really suited her. I’m glad I got to see her in this.

Sunwoo Jung Ah, also known as ‘sunwoojunga’ or ‘swja’ is a singer and songwriter. I just listened to a couple of her songs on YouTube and she’s really good, she has an amazing voice. In hindsight, it’s kind of funny that they stopped her from using her voice in the episode, lol. The fact that she stood out to me so much when she only uttered a single sentence says enough. I really liked her subtle acting and the way she showed Ha Gyung to appreciate all the other elements and senses was really striking. It was nice to get introduced to her in this way.

I was so happy to see Han Ye Ri again! I’ve only seen her in Age of Youth before, but she made such an impression on me that I started following her on Instagram (she’s so gorgeous ugh). After getting used to her stoic character in Age of Youth, it was fun seeing her so expressive and quirky as Yeon Joo. I really want to see more of her acting, more of her variety. I know she does more movies than series, so it felt like a treat to see her appear in this. I loved the way she portrayed the contrast between Yeon Joo’s strong-willed desire to become an artist and her ongoing desperation for others’ (mostly Ha Gyung’s) approval. It’s like she broke out from the norm to become an independent artist, but still couldn’t fully let go of the struggles that brought with it, and I think she did an excellent job at portraying someone who looked confident on the outside but still dealt with a lot of anxieties on the inside. She gave so much, just in one episode. I loved her performance.

Apparently, Goo Gyo Hwan is more active as a screenwriter and director than an actor. I’ve only seen him before in an episode of Extraordinary Attorney Woo (I remember him for his character’s funny name). There’s one more show with him on my list, so I’ll be looking forward to that. As I said, I thought Lee Chang Jin was a very enigmatic character. I can’t deny that it annoyed me a little bit, the way he just ghosted Ha Gyung and then was like “maybe we’ll meet again”. In real life I’d be like “nah bro you let your chance slide”, but in the case of this series, where it wasn’t supposed to be that deep in the first place, I think he could get away with it. He still managed to portray a very interesting and unique character, as mysterious as he remained. His chemistry with Lee Na Young was fun to watch, for as long as it lasted. If anything, I’m curious to see more of his acting now.

As familiar as Park In Hwan looks, I’ve actually never seen him in anything else before. I did see he’s the main lead in Navillera, which I’ve been debating about. I might give it a chance someday. Type-wise, he was the best possible casting choice for the stuck-up elderly man, but I also appreciate that they showed him out of context as a doting grandfather. It just puts things into perspective – you don’t know someone from one argument alone. As I mentioned, his episode made a big impression on me because as much as his character’s statements frustrated me, I found myself letting it slide along with Ha Gyung because it just wasn’t worth the aggravation. Some people are stuck in their ways, and we need to respect everyone’s life experiences, for better or for worse. I guess his character just threw me off because in the little preview part at the end of episode four he’d looked like such a sweet old man, lol. Anyways, it was nice getting introduced to him throught this. Hopefully I’ll get to see him again sometime.

I was really glad to see Gil Hae Yeon in this! I’ve seen her before in several series, like Sassy Go Go!, Something in the Rain, What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim?, Encounter, Melting Me Softly, The Silent Sea and Strangers Again, and there’s plenty of shows with her on my list. What I love about Gil Hae Yeon is that I’ve both loved and hated her characters, which means that she can really go either way. In this case, luckily, I loved her character. This is the kind of role that I prefer to see her in, warm and caring. It was so nice seeing her in these settings, from the restaurant and her studio to the museum and the dance group. She exuded such liveliness while remaining humble opposed to an unexpected fan. She was just enjoying her life while continuing to create stories, and didn’t get hung up on the fact that her old works were generally considered to be out of date. It only made her appreciate Ha Gyung’s respect for it even more. I loved seeing her in this, however short it was.

I was wondering what I knew Jo Hyun Chul from, but he was Sanchez in Hotel Del Luna! He’s working as a director now as well. I really liked his acting. I remember the scene where Ha Gyung and him where sitting on a bench together outside the museum and she told him about her routine to take one-day trips. The way he responded to her with the awkward laughs in-between was almost too realistic, like it didn’t even look like acting. He was also a character that we’d briefly seen before in the background, in episodes two and five, so it was nice to finally get introduced to him properly. I don’t know if his full name was ever mentioned – I think Ha Gyung only referred to him as Teacher Lee at some point – but I just referred to him as ‘the art teacher’. I liked that, within the short span of the episode, he still got a bit of personality through Ha Gyung’s explanation that he was such a dedicated teacher to take his students on field trips every week. I kind of wondered if they would become friends at some point, but the series didn’t really elaborate on that. They did have lunch together in episode seven, because that’s when Ha Gyung told him about her ‘obsession’ for bread. The way he brought up Ha Gyung’s food habits – whether she preferred to eat her favorite parts first or save them for last – reminded me of the Tsukimi Soba episode from One Night/Morning, lol. Anyways, I thought he was a nice supporting character.

Kim Min Chae was the cutest little girl, and her performance as Yool Ah was really endearing to watch. Honestly, Korean child actors are on a different level. Seeing how happy she skipped through the streets while visiting one bakery after another, you would’ve never thought it had anything to do with her mother’s passing. Her energy was contagious, and I really hope she’ll get more and more acting jobs.

Seeing Kang Ae Shim again also felt like a major throwback. I’ve mostly seen her as guest appearances in series, like Move to Heaven, You Are My Spring and Extraordinary Attorney Woo, but she always makes a good impression. The way she revealed herself to be Yool Ah’s grandma, how she hugged and kissed her and complimented her for being so brave on her own was really heartwarming. It was such a short but sweet little depiction of a family, and when they revealed the underlying situation of Yool Ah’s mother’s passing, it made it all the more meaningful. I loved seeing her as such a doting grandma here.

I hadn’t seen Shim Eun Kyung in anything before, but there are a couple of dramas with her on my list. She has such an expressive face and it was nice to see her chemistry with both versions of Ha Gyung. The contrast between their attitudes was really fun, and I specifically liked the flashback of them in the car in the dark, scared out of their minds. Although it remained a bit abstract whether the Jin Sol that we saw was actually a ghost or a figment of Ha Gyung’s imagination, I liked that she became her companion during the Gyeongju trip. I wish we could’ve learned a bit more about her and how she died, even if that information wasn’t relevant to the story. She’d been Ha Gyung’s best and only friend, so I can’t help but be a little sad that we only got to meet her properly in the final episode. At least we got the fun flashbacks, which clearly established the long-running friendship between them. It was cool to get to know her through this. I hope to see more of her in future watches!

I don’t know why it took me so long to recognize Park Se Wan as the young Ha Gyung. Maybe I just didn’t expect her to be in this, as I associate her with a different type of series. I’ve seen her before in Goblin, School 2017, I’m Not a Robot and Doona!, and she’s always such a nice and familiar face. I liked that we got at least a full flashback of her in the final episode, it was nice to see what Ha Gyung was like as a teenager and young adult. Park Se Wan always has this chipper and sassy energy about her, so I liked getting to see her in a more lethargic and annoyed role for a change. I hope I’ll get to see more of her, still!

All in all, I really appreciated the representation of a single woman who made the best of her life as it was without expecting more from it. As a chronically single thirtysomething myself, I loved getting this kind of insight. It almost felt a kind of validation for being able to fill in and appreciate my life on my own and being completely satisfied with that. Even if she wasn’t fully fleshed out from head to toe, I still really respected Ha Gyung for who she was and how she chose to live her life. In fact, it actually made me contemplate going on more solo trips within my country myself.
I mentioned this in one of my previous reviews, but this series also managed to touch on a topic that I’ve recently become aware of myself, which made it feel kind of ‘meant to be’. When I went on holiday last month, I remember waiting on the train platform and realizing that, in reality, you can actually just go on a trip whenever you want to. You can just decide to go the train station and hop on a train somewhere. It just suddenly struck me how crazy it is that we impose on ourselves all these rules that obstruct us from leaving, like ‘work’ and ‘no time’, when in fact it can be that simple to just take a bus or a train somewhere, even just for one day. I personally know people who go on trips by themselves, either within or outside of the country. They find a cheap ride or flight and they just go, sometimes not even with a specific goal in mind. I really admire that, but I haven’t been able to push myself out of my comfort zone like that yet. That’s why this series felt almost like an encouragement to me, especially with Ha Gyung’s ending statement that wraps it all up.

“I still believe that traveling is a fool’s statement. It’s not all that fun or meaningful. After wandering without a purpose, there are only fleeting moments of clarity. But that’s what makes it fun. So, if you feel like disappearing, take yourself out. If you’re all alone, in a strange place, and you don’t feel brave enough, then make it last just one day.
If you can walk, eat and let your mind wander, you’ll be fine anywhere.”

With this statement, I would like to end this review and pass on that encouragement. I knew this wasn’t going to be a long one since the series was so short and straightforward. I really enjoyed it for what it was and I hope there will be more shows in the future that focus on this type of unbound and independent simple happiness. I think what touched me so much about this show was that it never pretended to be more than it was. It may have given the impression of being something really deep and insightful and healing, following shows like Summer Strike or Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha where the main character travels to the countryside or the ocean to get a new perspective on life. But it didn’t. It showed the simplicity of taking yourself out to clear your head, without expecting more. Just a change of scenery for one day to recharge before going back, not to escape from anything. It was also refreshing to finally see a story of a main character who didn’t need a partner, who was content with herself and made the most of what she had. If I had to think of any qualm with it, it would be that I personally just prefer things and people to be a little more fleshed out and contextualized. It’s just a matter of personal preference. What matters is that I was able to look past that and appreciate this for what it was, even if it didn’t tick all of my personal boxes. It’s a precious little gem, this one.

I’ll be moving on with my list as usual, and I’m more curious than ever to see what I’ll be watching next, and if my ‘wholesome’ streak will continue. Hopefully I can share another review before the end of the month, but we’ll see. In any case, thank you for reading all the way if you did, and until next time!

Bye-bee! x