irmar

I mostly agree with you. But it must be said that the SML has been dealt a rough hand. He was to marry a girl who was pretty, sweet, kind and looked forward to a sweet and affectionate marriage. And then his whole plans were thwarted cruelly. He's been searching for her (the added attraction of "where on earth did she vanish to?") for years. And now he's found her, he's about to lose her to his best friend. It's human that he's bitter and disappointed, and that there's a small flicker of hope in him yet. He thinks they were "destined" - apparently this is a thing in Asia, they put great value to it - and that's why he doesn't take no for an answer. We know he's foolish, of course, and that she's never felt that way about him.
All the characters are very human, with flaws (the FL paying people to give wrong info wasn't exactly honest), but all in all they're decent people.
And ... the robe... He did all he could to avoid fighting, the king insisted, remember? He tried to only avoid, and just defend himself from his rage, and by mistake he cut a small piece of the robe. Could have been much much worse.
All this would have been clarified if he just told the king that this was his erstwhile fiancée from day one, from the first moment he suspected it. Maybe the king wouldn't have let himself develop feelings for her.

Tomorrow, tomorrow,
I love you tomorrow,
you're only a day away!

Waaaay better than any Chinese drama. For starters, the heroine is not bubbly/idiotic/impulsive/"cute/adorable"(UGH!) and doesn't have a baby voice. This alone would make anyone take a sigh of relief.
There are two minor characters, two bachelor guys who dream of getting married, who are slapstick and NOT funny at all, but they have very few scenes, so one can easily fast forward them.

The choices in most categories are of only 4 dramas and I haven't even watched most of them.

Google translate is getting better and better, I must say. If you didn't re-touch it, it was pretty good and made perfect sense.

At the time of the marriage, what you say was indeed her motivation. But since she did the first step (killing the other girl, or so she thought, and substituting her daughter for her at the marriage ceremony), she started having big dreams for her own daughter: she thought "uhm, she wasn't able to marry a nobleman, why don't we substitute her for good so that she can become queen?"
Because, as NilYeol rightly said, as a concubine's daughter, she wouldn't been able to apply.

Yes, and one cannot say she hasn't been crystal-clear about it! No ifs and buts.

I wasn't talking of making out or anything. We could see him lean over for a kiss and then the camera could zoom out so that we would see that from afar. That would give the idea without having to show every minute detail. Something like that.

You'd have to, because there's many people who just found it from meh to bad. Not just here. Dramabeans gave it 5.1/10 and many Viki comments were lukewarm too.
But actually no, don't bother to explain. First of all what one likes and dislikes cannot change because of someone else's opinion, and secondly I'm sure we all have something better to do, i.e. embark on another k-drama for this new year! :)

Chill? Yes, the vibe there was "chilly" all right! Creepy stuff happening all the time.

Oh yes, Hometown Cha Cha Cha was the sweetest, and Our Blues is awesomely written and acted, on a whole different level than this shipwreck.

Why would one call it "calm"? There's literally everything there (apart from the obvious bigggie). Greed, jealousy, pettiness, violence, suppressed anger, toxic families, you name it.

I wouldn't call the life in that place simple and less complicated. Lots of drama and lots of complicated relationships, interactions, festering feelings.

Chemistry? You saw chemistry? I saw two good friends who liked each other a lot.

You will probably be infuriated by the ending.

Not much romance at all. Veeeery understated, no chemistry. The teenage couple has a bit more passion than the main couple, but she's so dismissive of him that you never believe she's actually in love. Everything here is lukewarm and meh (apart from the parts when it's infuriating, you want to smack the female lead with a pan on the head, and also some of the villagers are just ... ugh!)

Your "past romances". If you mean of when you were a teenager, then yes, rightly so, that's what we did back then (today's teenagers are not like that anymore). But for two adults to have this kind of relationship until the very end, it's a bit...

So you have understood what was actually going on in this drama? You must be smarter than me, I thought it was confusing as hell.

Sometimes when episodes are short they stitch them together so that you don't have to interrupt your viewing.

I watched it on YouTube, it was two 1-hour episodes = 120 minutes. 6 episodes of 20 minutes 6X10 = 120. Same thing.
It depends on how they stitch them together.
But I don't know where you found that it's nine one-hour episodes. Unless they made a longer version? But what else could they put, there was nothing more to say for an additional 7 hours, LOL!