Is ML showing autistic/ND traits?

 HalalTea:

He's clearly autistic TT I can't believe the show stated a bunch of autistic traits when yongju was making notes about his personality like "he doesn't like tags", "loud noises give him headaches", "he prefers to do things alone", and then she goes. he is....highly sensitive. I literally laughed, as an autistic person I'm literally him and the fact that hes so clearly autistic and they are just like yeah hes just highly sensitive, just kinda sucks, when i saw him cutting the tags of his clothes I literally scoffed, the autism is so clear TT

But not every person who is sensory sensitive is autistic. As I said to previous replies - the things she names while fitting autistic criteria are NOT autism specific which means they fit other diagnosis and even not specific medical diagnosis but overall ND people . He matches a lot of secondary diagnostic criteria, but he does not really matches the primary criteria and that's why I would hesitate saying he is autistic. Because by that logic majority of ND people would be autistic, and that's not the truth... 

 HalalTea:

He reminds me of myself and I resignated with him alot, especially that he was teased and segregated becuase of his sensitivity, I study psychology and he meets a few of the dsm criteria, enough for him to be diagnosed with at least level 1 autism, there is also a lot of masking we could be missing but they arent exploring that because they didn't label him. Also the top thing for a diagnosis is a fellow autistic recognising the autism in you XD i love this show and his character and I'm very confident with my speculations but at the end of the day he is just a character in a show and not an actual person haha.

I'm also talking about diagnostic criteria and have background in psychology (master with last 3 years being dedicated to neuropsychology and clinical psychology). If you want we can have more chats about it, but after you see more episodes, since I don't want to spoil anything hahahaha After first 1-3 episodes I also thought he might be on the spectrum, but the more context of his live and behavior I was given, the less it seemed he is. 

To be vague, he is extremely good with understanding even complex and subtle social interactions, he has no issue with social interactions whatsoever, no problem initiating social interactions, no issue with carrying any conversation. All the criteria related to social interactions that are needed for diagnosis, he does not have them. The 3 main criteria that someone has to have to be diagnosed are not there:

• Difficulties in social emotional reciprocity
• Difficulties in nonverbal communication
• Deficits in developing and maintaining relationships with other people 

Ps. damn the replies seem so dry without emojis hahaha MDL needs to do something about it. We can sue emojis everywhere, but forum T.T

 HalalTea:

I wish there was more autistic and mental health representation in kdramas besides like the "typical" idea of autism

Same. But I also understand how difficult it is to give a good representation without fearing backlash, especially with ASD when even among specialists and people on spectrum there is no real agreement about it... Every things like being called someone with autism, on spectrum or autistic - depending who you ask even in the community, they will give you a different answer. I feel like that's one of the reason the more "clear cut" portrayals are more often presented. The further into the spectrum someone is, the more homogeneous the symptoms are, while for people with level one, it's extremely diverse group. 

I watch it on website that requires a token to open, but I got the token like 2 years ago on reddit and it does not exist anymore T_T

Totally agree!! I was also diagnosed as level 2 for social aspects, I'm extremely sensitive to peoples emotions, I feel like autism in korean dramas and in general media is represented as "genius" and as you said savant, some of us aren't genius, just really sensitive and need our own adjustments :) Same as the ml, neurodivergent people who are sensitive have to usually work in an area not only they are very interested in but also they have control over, especially how he lives in the country side-esque area, basically he is living my and many other autistic individuals dream lifestyle lol. This character will always hold a special place because not only is he extremely handsome :3 he is probably the closest a kdrama character is to me characteristics wise TT