This review may contain spoilers
A Psychological Tragedy About Survival, Control, and Obsession
A deep dive into Dear X, where loyalty, usefulness, and ambition collide in a story that feels less like a twist and more like a tragic inevitability.
Disclaimer: This review is 100% my opinion — I’m not here to hate, just to share my thoughts! Also, SPOILERS AHEAD, so proceed with caution if you haven’t watched yet. Watch it, come back and let’s see if you agree. Let’s keep the discussion respectful and fun! 💕
**Quick heads-up: I want to make it clear that I’m not a psychologist and I’m not trying to force a diagnosis onto these characters. Everything I’ve written comes from my own interpretation through research, and I could very well be wrong. My goal isn’t to excuse their actions, but to explore the psychological roots behind them in a way that makes their stories easier to understand.**
~~
Baek Ah Jin: Why “Selfishness” Was Survival
Baek Ah Jin is one of those characters who looks cruel on the surface but starts to make sense once you look at the world she grew up in. From the start, her life taught her that love was dangerous and trust was a trap. An alcoholic mother who beat her, a father who killed that mother in front of her eyes, and a stepmother who plotted to exploit her—none of the adults in her life ever offered safety. When you grow up in a house where affection is always conditional and betrayal is inevitable, you don’t learn how to be vulnerable. You learn how to survive.
When she later manipulated Jun Seo as a child, it wasn’t because she enjoyed hurting him. It was because she understood that being needed, believed, and protected was the only way she wouldn’t be discarded. Ah Jin didn’t see manipulation as immoral. She saw it as necessary. She grew up viewing people less as emotional connections and more as variables: who is safe, who is useful, who is a threat. She avoided attachment not because she felt nothing, but because feeling something always ended badly.
Ah Jin wasn’t driven by ambition or malice as much as she was by a deep belief that closeness led to harm and that the only way to stay standing was to stay ahead.
Yun Jun Seo: Devotion Without a Self
Yun Jun Seo’s devotion felt extreme until you realise his entire sense of self was built around guilt and moral splitting. From childhood, he learned that love meant responsibility and that protection meant sacrifice. When Ah Jin entered his life, she didn’t just need help, she gave him clarity. By framing herself as the only one who cared and his mother as the threat, she offered a simple moral map to a child who desperately needed one. Watching his mother try to drown her didn’t just traumatise him, it locked that map in place.
That’s why her manipulation worked so well: his childhood had already primed him to believe that his mother was “bad” and Ah Jin was “good,” and once that split took hold, it never left. What complicated Jun Seo was that even as he grew older and became aware of Ah Jin’s manipulation, that moral framework never fully dissolved. He could recognise her actions as wrong without being able to reclassify her as bad because doing so would collapse the meaning of his entire childhood. So he separated the two: Ah Jin does terrible things, but Ah Jin herself is still good and needs protection. That was why her manipulation continued to work into adulthood. It didn’t rely on deception anymore, it relied on identity.
Jun Seo fused himself to Ah Jin so completely that without her, he had no sense of self. That’s why he carried guilt for not protecting her, why he wrote a book about her life, and why he kept orbiting her even when she didn’t need him anymore. His obsession wasn’t something he wanted or enjoyed, it was something he felt trapped inside. By the time Jun Seo reached adulthood, his life was no longer about wanting Ah Jin in a romantic sense, but about not knowing who he was without her. That’s why leaving was never an option, and why exposing her became the final, desperate attempt to resolve an impossible conflict. If he couldn’t save her and he couldn’t detach from her, then ending everything became the only way to remain consistent with the person he believed himself to be. His loyalty was suffocating, but it was also the only thing keeping him alive. Betraying Ah Jin was the last thing he ever allowed himself to do, and only because he didn’t plan to survive it.
Jun Seo wasn’t tragic because he loved too much. He was tragic because he was taught too young that loyalty was the only way to survive.
Kim Jae Oh: A Life Defined by Usefulness
Jae Oh’s loyalty may look noble but it’s really the product of emptiness. Growing up under an abusive father who seemed lost in delusion, he never learned to see himself as valuable. He wasn’t protected, praised, or guided, only tolerated. In that kind of environment, you don’t grow up wondering who you are, you grow up wondering what use you serve. So when Ah Jin told him he had “use,” he mistook that for validation. It didn’t matter that she meant it in the coldest, most transactional way, he heard it as proof that he mattered. He wasn’t looking for love or belonging, he was looking for permission to exist. That single moment rewired his sense of identity, and from then on, his life revolved around being useful to her.
What made Jae Oh different from Jun Seo was that his loyalty didn’t come from guilt or moral duty, but from validation. He never needed Ah Jin to be good. He only needed her to need him. That’s why her manipulation worked so easily and why it never truly stopped. He didn’t need promises or affection, he needed to believe he had a role. When Ah Jin begged for help, sacrificing himself felt like the ultimate fulfillment of his identity. Dying for her wasn’t tragic in his mind, it was the perfect ending. It was proof that his existence had meaning. His loyalty wasn’t driven by cruelty or romance, but by a lifetime of emptiness that convinced him that being used was the closest thing to being loved.
Unlike Jun Seo, who collapsed under the weight of obsession, Jae Oh’s ending was almost serene. Jae Oh died because he wanted to. Jun Seo died because he could no longer endure living. Jae Oh erased himself completely, leaving nothing behind but the certainty that he had been useful.
Jae Oh wasn’t tragic because he gave his life away. He was tragic because no one ever taught him that his life was his to keep.
The Triangle of Survival
What binds Ah Jin, Jun Seo, and Jae Oh together is not circumstance, but compatibility at the level of survival psychology. Each of them learned how to exist in a hostile world in a different way. Ah Jin survived by using people, Jun Seo survived by enduring people, and Jae Oh survived by erasing himself for people.
Understanding them doesn’t mean defending their choices. It means recognising that their actions didn’t appear out of nowhere. For Ah Jin, the world was cruel, weakness was unforgivable, and survival meant control. She didn’t experience events as choices she made, but as inevitabilities forced on her. Jun Seo, bonded to her through shared terror and loyalty. His identity fused around staying, protecting, and remaining faithful, because loyalty felt like morality to him. Jae Oh, bonded through usefulness, erasing himself in service. He believed, “If I’m useful, I deserve to exist.” Both looked to Ah Jin not for love, but for meaning — Jun Seo needed her to mean something, and Jae Oh needed her to assign meaning.
Trauma doesn’t justify harm, but it does explain why certain choices feel inevitable to the people making them. Ah Jin’s detachment, Jun Seo’s obsession, and Jae Oh’s self-erasure weren’t random dramatics; they’re the inevitable outcomes of lives built on abuse, abandonment, and the desperate need to matter. Their triangle doesn’t exist because Ah Jin is evil or because Jun Seo and Jae Oh are weak, but because each of them learned a different answer to the same question: how do you survive a world that never taught you how to be safe?
~~
The full version of this is on my blog if you want to go more in-depth!
And if you want to know how their mindsets affected their actions (Like Ah Jin’s cruelty to In Gang) and led to Jun Seo and Jae Oh’s eventual death (I break down the months prior and the thought processes in the moment), check out my blog (in my bio)!
Disclaimer: This review is 100% my opinion — I’m not here to hate, just to share my thoughts! Also, SPOILERS AHEAD, so proceed with caution if you haven’t watched yet. Watch it, come back and let’s see if you agree. Let’s keep the discussion respectful and fun! 💕
**Quick heads-up: I want to make it clear that I’m not a psychologist and I’m not trying to force a diagnosis onto these characters. Everything I’ve written comes from my own interpretation through research, and I could very well be wrong. My goal isn’t to excuse their actions, but to explore the psychological roots behind them in a way that makes their stories easier to understand.**
~~
Baek Ah Jin: Why “Selfishness” Was Survival
Baek Ah Jin is one of those characters who looks cruel on the surface but starts to make sense once you look at the world she grew up in. From the start, her life taught her that love was dangerous and trust was a trap. An alcoholic mother who beat her, a father who killed that mother in front of her eyes, and a stepmother who plotted to exploit her—none of the adults in her life ever offered safety. When you grow up in a house where affection is always conditional and betrayal is inevitable, you don’t learn how to be vulnerable. You learn how to survive.
When she later manipulated Jun Seo as a child, it wasn’t because she enjoyed hurting him. It was because she understood that being needed, believed, and protected was the only way she wouldn’t be discarded. Ah Jin didn’t see manipulation as immoral. She saw it as necessary. She grew up viewing people less as emotional connections and more as variables: who is safe, who is useful, who is a threat. She avoided attachment not because she felt nothing, but because feeling something always ended badly.
Ah Jin wasn’t driven by ambition or malice as much as she was by a deep belief that closeness led to harm and that the only way to stay standing was to stay ahead.
Yun Jun Seo: Devotion Without a Self
Yun Jun Seo’s devotion felt extreme until you realise his entire sense of self was built around guilt and moral splitting. From childhood, he learned that love meant responsibility and that protection meant sacrifice. When Ah Jin entered his life, she didn’t just need help, she gave him clarity. By framing herself as the only one who cared and his mother as the threat, she offered a simple moral map to a child who desperately needed one. Watching his mother try to drown her didn’t just traumatise him, it locked that map in place.
That’s why her manipulation worked so well: his childhood had already primed him to believe that his mother was “bad” and Ah Jin was “good,” and once that split took hold, it never left. What complicated Jun Seo was that even as he grew older and became aware of Ah Jin’s manipulation, that moral framework never fully dissolved. He could recognise her actions as wrong without being able to reclassify her as bad because doing so would collapse the meaning of his entire childhood. So he separated the two: Ah Jin does terrible things, but Ah Jin herself is still good and needs protection. That was why her manipulation continued to work into adulthood. It didn’t rely on deception anymore, it relied on identity.
Jun Seo fused himself to Ah Jin so completely that without her, he had no sense of self. That’s why he carried guilt for not protecting her, why he wrote a book about her life, and why he kept orbiting her even when she didn’t need him anymore. His obsession wasn’t something he wanted or enjoyed, it was something he felt trapped inside. By the time Jun Seo reached adulthood, his life was no longer about wanting Ah Jin in a romantic sense, but about not knowing who he was without her. That’s why leaving was never an option, and why exposing her became the final, desperate attempt to resolve an impossible conflict. If he couldn’t save her and he couldn’t detach from her, then ending everything became the only way to remain consistent with the person he believed himself to be. His loyalty was suffocating, but it was also the only thing keeping him alive. Betraying Ah Jin was the last thing he ever allowed himself to do, and only because he didn’t plan to survive it.
Jun Seo wasn’t tragic because he loved too much. He was tragic because he was taught too young that loyalty was the only way to survive.
Kim Jae Oh: A Life Defined by Usefulness
Jae Oh’s loyalty may look noble but it’s really the product of emptiness. Growing up under an abusive father who seemed lost in delusion, he never learned to see himself as valuable. He wasn’t protected, praised, or guided, only tolerated. In that kind of environment, you don’t grow up wondering who you are, you grow up wondering what use you serve. So when Ah Jin told him he had “use,” he mistook that for validation. It didn’t matter that she meant it in the coldest, most transactional way, he heard it as proof that he mattered. He wasn’t looking for love or belonging, he was looking for permission to exist. That single moment rewired his sense of identity, and from then on, his life revolved around being useful to her.
What made Jae Oh different from Jun Seo was that his loyalty didn’t come from guilt or moral duty, but from validation. He never needed Ah Jin to be good. He only needed her to need him. That’s why her manipulation worked so easily and why it never truly stopped. He didn’t need promises or affection, he needed to believe he had a role. When Ah Jin begged for help, sacrificing himself felt like the ultimate fulfillment of his identity. Dying for her wasn’t tragic in his mind, it was the perfect ending. It was proof that his existence had meaning. His loyalty wasn’t driven by cruelty or romance, but by a lifetime of emptiness that convinced him that being used was the closest thing to being loved.
Unlike Jun Seo, who collapsed under the weight of obsession, Jae Oh’s ending was almost serene. Jae Oh died because he wanted to. Jun Seo died because he could no longer endure living. Jae Oh erased himself completely, leaving nothing behind but the certainty that he had been useful.
Jae Oh wasn’t tragic because he gave his life away. He was tragic because no one ever taught him that his life was his to keep.
The Triangle of Survival
What binds Ah Jin, Jun Seo, and Jae Oh together is not circumstance, but compatibility at the level of survival psychology. Each of them learned how to exist in a hostile world in a different way. Ah Jin survived by using people, Jun Seo survived by enduring people, and Jae Oh survived by erasing himself for people.
Understanding them doesn’t mean defending their choices. It means recognising that their actions didn’t appear out of nowhere. For Ah Jin, the world was cruel, weakness was unforgivable, and survival meant control. She didn’t experience events as choices she made, but as inevitabilities forced on her. Jun Seo, bonded to her through shared terror and loyalty. His identity fused around staying, protecting, and remaining faithful, because loyalty felt like morality to him. Jae Oh, bonded through usefulness, erasing himself in service. He believed, “If I’m useful, I deserve to exist.” Both looked to Ah Jin not for love, but for meaning — Jun Seo needed her to mean something, and Jae Oh needed her to assign meaning.
Trauma doesn’t justify harm, but it does explain why certain choices feel inevitable to the people making them. Ah Jin’s detachment, Jun Seo’s obsession, and Jae Oh’s self-erasure weren’t random dramatics; they’re the inevitable outcomes of lives built on abuse, abandonment, and the desperate need to matter. Their triangle doesn’t exist because Ah Jin is evil or because Jun Seo and Jae Oh are weak, but because each of them learned a different answer to the same question: how do you survive a world that never taught you how to be safe?
~~
The full version of this is on my blog if you want to go more in-depth!
And if you want to know how their mindsets affected their actions (Like Ah Jin’s cruelty to In Gang) and led to Jun Seo and Jae Oh’s eventual death (I break down the months prior and the thought processes in the moment), check out my blog (in my bio)!
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