SongofSixpence

I'm not surprised you find the arguments lackluster because they aren't arguments, they're final impressions - I didn't go into detail so as not to have to spoiler tag (which you should probably do for your comment). People have different opinions and these are mine - as you've said, you have yours. I don't think you'll convince me any more than I'll convince you, but:

1. The hyper fixation of every villain trying to ruin FL's career at once was what I had in mind with "a group of individuals over involved in each other's lives for contrived reasons". The melodrama in the second half was too makjang for me - I found the circumstances, the build up and the resolution wildly unrealistic.

2. Meeting once a year for a few hours isn't a substantive relationship. Nor is FL going from micromanaging ML's life to kissing him in the space of maybe a few weeks believable relationship development - especially as former teacher/student and current co-workers. Ditto for working through those issues and confirming said relationship in two episodes.

3. We must have watched with different subs (VIU for me) because I recall ML saying that they both had feelings in the past and FL doesn't deny it before they kiss. Their current relationship is also viewed through the lens of their past by them and the story - I don't recall them even having a single conversation with each other that isn't about the past or the hagwon until after they kiss.

4. The writer explicitly sets up authority (there's more than one monologue about it), people who say they desire authority (The Witch, Pyo and the Vice Director) and specifically the authority represented by standardized education (quote FL "You use the authority of school to rule by fear") as "bad" - Pyo is only redeemed when he lets go of that authority to be a "good" teacher. I genuinely don't see any nuance in how the others are presented - they're villains meant to represent an ideology in contrast to the leads and the story never develops them or their viewpoints as more than that.

5. This is a Kdrama. The setting might be realistic, the plot and the characters aren't - it shouldn't be considered an accurate representation of the hagwon industry or education in South Korea. It's at best an allegory which IMO is exactly how the writer used it.

I'm not trying to hate on the drama or anyone that enjoyed it. I thought I had a lot of promise in the beginning, but too much of it fell flat for me by the end and I'm far from alone in that opinion.

I think my feelings about this drama can be summed up as - unconvinced.

Unconvinced by the romance, which in typical Kdrama fashion relies on an idealized first love and past connection while ignoring the issues of the relationship in the present or even allowing the leads time to get to know each other before the "Wuv, Twu Wuv" phase. Sure, they were in love ten years ago - but any romance that doesn't acknowledge people grow and change in ten years isn't realistic.

Unconvinced by the critique, which is overwhelmingly an appeal to sentiment over substance. If a writer has nothing to say but "teachers should be good teachers", provides an arbitrarily narrow view of what that looks like and sets up "good" and "bad" options you've got a morality play, not a critique.

Unconvinced by the story, which again in typical Kdrama fashion is about a group of individuals over-involved in each other's lives for contrived reasons. The gallery of ever escalating 2D villains got a wee bit ridiculous with their battle royale tactics in the face of normal professional conflict, while another's jump from crisis to opportunity to redemption felt out of proportion to the circumstances.

I liked the playful directorial style (though not the twee, repetitive OST), the acting and a few memorable scenes - but none of that can save a bad script. Clearly the success of Ahn Pan Seok's past dramas stands on their writers and not him.

Yeah, it's honestly kinda ridiculous. South Korea has some of the strongest anti-defamation laws in the world. It's made international news multiple times - even online gamers can accuse each other just for smack talking. And it's a criminal (not civil) offense unlike most countries so if the accused doesn't settle or provide proof it's a prison sentence.

It's looked down on because of patriarchal Confucian tradition. In South Korean culture there's a mindset that the man has to be the older, richer, higher status partner because they're the head of the household and a woman becomes part of his family upon marriage. Literally - a woman's name is removed from their family register and added to the man's. This system used to be even more restrictive under hoju but was reformed in the 2000s.

(Side Note: That's why in contract marriage Kdramas you'll hear leads say "we won't register the marriage". They're basically getting common law married and skipping the paperwork for a traditional marriage, it's easier to divorce that way.)

So there's an idea that if you're giving up your family to join another it should be a step up, not a step down - a younger man is by default lower status. With that dynamic in mind, the tension in a noona romance is usually a triangle or conflict between a culturally acceptable SML and an unacceptable ML that FL chooses out of love. Secondarily, it's the fact FL may spend years waiting for ML to become a suitable partner for them to marry.

Shout outs to Romance is a Bonus Book for flipping the triangle formula with an even younger SML suitor, I Hear Your Voice for having ML recognize and struggle with the fact he's not an acceptable partner for FL instead of ignoring it and Search:WWW for making marriage considerations the main issue in two of the FL's relationships.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoju
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_Korea

He's one of those actors that have no middle gears - he's either stoic or over-emoting with nothing in between. He was the same in Come and Hug Me and Search: WWW.

Kdramas don't often create continuity like that because years can pass between writers/PDs getting another drama greenlit, which makes the impact iffy unless the OG was a big hit. The only writer I know of that did is Park Hye Ryun - I Hear Your Voice, While You Were Sleeping and Castaway Diva all take place in the same universe and reference each other.

You could maybe count Strong Woman Do Bong Soon and Strong Girl Namsoon but that's more like a duology.

A minimum of white collar crime and psychological thriller but a maximum of melodrama with little to no character development for anyone involved, which failed to invest me in the plot or the relationships. Maybe a fun one time watch if you're looking for a more classy makjang melo but I expected better from the reviews and didn't get it. Some interesting discourse around money and materialism doesn't make up for a lack of substance elsewhere.

PS: Let's not forget the double standard of a cheating husband being vilified and the cheating FL and ML treated as a transformative act of love. Kdrama gonna Kdrama.

FL's exs in SITR and OSN weren't in unrequited love either - they saw FL as someone they were entitled to regardless of her feelings and were willing to go to extremes when they were rebuffed. This is the same dynamic, just without a past relationship - as I noted. I also never assigned blame, just said didn't like the trope - which I don't.

The Forbes article has nothing to do with South Korea's social hierarchy, which is so rigid it's attributed to causing a plane crash because a junior didn't feel comfortable correcting a senior. Some major companies have even instituted an English name policy to try to do away with honorific hierarchy entirely, with mixed results.

If hierarchy didn't matter, then the vice director wouldn't care about her demoted position and wouldn't be vying for control of the hagwon. Neither would the senior teachers have been annoyed that ML was given his own class as a junior teacher. Hierarchy is office politics in South Korea.

https://www.voanews.com/a/aviation-experts-question-whether-culture-had-role-in-asiana-crash/1730757.html
https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20231218000596

Only for official documents because it caused confusion during Covid over who was eligible for vaccination. The age system is still in cultural use - China, Taiwan and Singapore have similar systems with a traditional and official age.

One of the aspects I loathed about SITR and OSN was how over the top psycho FL's exs became to provide both an unsympathetic villain and a foil for how laudable the societally unsuitable ML was in comparison. I was hoping the story wouldn't go that route since this is a different writer, but nope - possessive psycho pseudo ex it is. Tied for my least favorite melodrama trope along with the final quarter break up and last minute get back together, so I'm not loving this development. Same with the makjang office politics.

As for the relationship issues, I think it's partly due to the fact workplace dating is taboo in South Korea because it affects the office hierarchy. But there's also a cultural Confucian reverence for educators with a sense of "once a teacher, always a teacher". It's similar to when characters refer to each other as sunbae/hoobae (or ML calling FL saem) even if that relationship was in the past - the social dynamics of it are expected to persist. Not to mention the rumor that a teacher (or any authority figure) dating a minor would be a criminal offense.

Before anyone asks: the age of majority in South Korea is Korean age 20 or 19 international age. South Korea uses a traditional age system where you're 1 year old at birth and everyone gets one year older at the new year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning

Wed-Thurs is the lowest ratings time slot for dramas because it's the same time slot other channels air their reality/variety shows. I think the network channels have stopped airing Wed-Thurs dramas because they can't get the advertising money for them.

It's worse than stalking. He pretends to be FL's mom for 10+ years then forcibly inserts himself in her life and experiences zero repercussions. It's one in a long list of questionable behaviors from MLs in this drama that aren't addressed with emotional authenticity.

Which are your favorite noona romances? I like the general idea of a romance genre breaking cultural norms but I have trouble finding good ones.

ETA: What I don't enjoy about many noona romances is that ML is a "perfect" guy who doesn't have a character arc beyond loving FL. I prefer romances where both ML and FL have agency, growth and issues they help each other with.

I feel that most commenters don't understand the South Korean system or education policy. Yes, they teach to the tests and there's a reason for that - the ranking exams and CSAT determine a student's future. Do educators wish it were different? I'm sure they do. But upending a system isn't the way effect change, nor is vilifying teachers that teach in that system. It's just feel-good fluff presented as "realistic" drama.

There have been numerous attempts to reform education in South Korea, including removing ranking exams from primary ed, funding vocational schools, quotas on degrees, programs for studying abroad, revamping the CSAT and regulating hagwons. All have failed. It's a deeply entrenched cultural and economic issue tied to other even more serious issues like fertility decline and lack of employment.

"Good" teachers aren't going to fix anything and hagwons (private, expensive and the top tier out of reach for lower and middle class families) are not the answer to a structural failure to educate - they just make socioeconomic stratification worse.

If the script had developed the story and leads as introduced - ML quitting a dead end job to try to make it big in a risky industry and FL caught in a career/life crisis as a top tutor - I probably would have loved it! But they both ended up two dimensional: the the leads love each other and they want to be good teachers. Neither is compelling enough as written to fill 16 episodes.

It's clear that the writer is a newbie and this is their first drama. They had the foundation for something good, they just failed to build it up properly.

A lot of people think FL is in school in the flashbacks but she's not, she's an athlete on South Korea's national handball team. They don't give her exact age but you can be a national athlete into your 30s - the oldest player on the team right now is 34.

Here we have exhibit A: the quintessential noona romance manic pixie dream boy ML. It's his role to teach FL the True Meaning of Education - even though he's only been a tutor for three months and she's spent 10+ years in the industry - and help her discover her inner ideal self while he experiences minimal growth of his own.

It's baffling some viewers see this as a realistic Kdrama. The tone and setting may be slightly more realistic than usual but the actual events, message and characters are unrealistic as heck. Which I don't usually mind - it's Kdrama, after all - but this is overwhemingly an appeal to sentiment, not substance.

Lol, if you want the opposite try romance anime. Majority male audience, same dynamics in reverse - there's a childhood friend FL always waiting on the ML. Though interestingly the virgin ML is still a popular trope, they're just surrounded by a harem of way out of their league FLs who inexplicably fall in love with them.

IHYV doesn't just do a good job of critiquing what love is, it shows love doesn't magically fix anything and it doesn't make life easier. The easiest thing would be for ML and FL to forget each other and move on. That they don't, that they chose to love each other and they BOTH put in the effort is what makes the romance so good. Eleison said it really well in an earlier comment - the story is about love empowering people's choices.

The importance of choice and agency is also on point. Usually leads deal with obstacles and circumstances that have nothing to actually do with them. But in IHYV it's ML's, FL's and the rest of the characters' choices - good and bad - shaping the story and relationships.

I think that sort of complexity is exactly what's missing in 2024. You can see from the recent MDL comments the demand is for simple stories, relationships or conflicts, and simplicity feels cozy but trite - complexity is what makes stories unique and memorable.

PS: I love every trope deconstruction in this drama but I especially love that ML is the opposite of the Manic Pixie Dream Boy ML that we usually get in noona dramas - his character arc is learning how to love and value himself and FL is his support system.

I appreciate what you're trying to say but the law in South Korea says non-consensual sex isn't r*pe. Only sex under the threat of violence such that a victim is physically unable to resit is r*pe. That's a pretty shit law by modern standards.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/01/south-korea-cancels-plans-update-definition-rape