Alone in Love

If someone asked me, what is your all-time favorite K-drama, I would gladly tell ‘em, Alone in Love (연애시대). People around me know that I am madly in love with quiet drama. I don’t like a hustle bustle capital city setting. I like it quiet and focus on the cast’s acting and story. Alone in Love is the only K-drama that got me thinking too hard. Though this drama was premiered in 2006, I watched it in 2009, at my high school sophomore days. The story based on the Japanese novel called Renai Jidai by Hisahi Nozawa.

The story tells you about a divorced couple. No, they were not a Cinderella type of story who perhaps got divorced because of their family disapproval or something. Simply to put it, the story was decent. Eunho is an ex-swimming athlete who worked at sport complex as a gym trainer. While Dongjin, the guy, worked as a manager at a bookstore. They met at Donjin’s book store back then. They fell in love shortly after. They got married and got a divorce 2 years later. But even after the divorce their life still stumbled upon each other as Eunho and Donjin still ate breakfast at the same restaurant, they both still hanged out at their usual beer place. 4 of them, Eunho, Dongjin, Junpyo, Dongjin’s best friend since childhood, and Jiho, Eunho’s sister. Somehow it doesn’t take any geniuses to know that Eunho and Dongjin were still tied up to each other. Only they didn’t know, or they were just too afraid.

During 16 episodes you could find the emotion and the sentiment between Eunho and Dongjin, the acted like they don’t care about each other, but deeply they cannot ignore each other. Especially when one decided to help the other to find love in their life. Upon seeing this drama, you need to pay attention to the monologue both had. This drama have the most beautiful monologue ever. It contains each other minds and their real feelings, mostly their hesitation and their interpretation of love. This drama succeed at making me cry all the time. It was hard at first to understand a slow pace and quiet drama like Alone in Love. But to be honest, the story was that simple.

There are 5 highlight scenes that could make me cry over and over again:

• Episode 7, when Yuri confronted Dongjin about his relationship with Miyeon and spilled the beans about Eunho’s plan to not to have kids after losing her baby years ago.
• Episode 13 when Eunho visited Dongjin’s apartment, she used to live there as well and she scanned and reminisced every room to their beautiful past.
• Episode 14, the most painful 4 minutes time in this drama where Eunho sang a “Thank You” song for Dongjin at his wedding after Eunho finds out about the truth about her ex-husband whereabouts the day they lost the baby.
• Episode 15, Eunho’s damaged behavior after Dongjin’s got married. At the end of the episode, Dongjin realized all his feelings and chased Eunho after Jiho lied to him about her suicide plan. 
• Episode 16, Eunho frequently called her dad to seek some advice through his radio show as a anonymous caller, mostly talking about her relationship with Dongjin, and at the end, Eunho’s father recognize his daughter voice all this time. And Eunho’s last monologue was so imaginable.

Alone in Love represented a very ordinary life of a Korean couple. Son Yejin casted as Yoo Eunho and Kam Woosung as Kim Dongjin, they both have an ordinary job. The drama doubted and critically acclaimed as the most realistic drama ever. Despite their low ratings, they have a small dedicated fan base.

I am crazy about this drama, every time I felt down, I will look for this drama and watch the episode 15 and 16 in particular. The drama brought me back to South Korea the second time, because the first time I visited Korea, I didn’t get a chance to visit the drama set. Funny that I circled around Bundang to find the Dunkin’ Donuts they used to eat for breakfast, and it was vanished years ago. But I can still gazed over Tancheon stream, Eunho’s bicycle track that she took every morning.

Up until now, I haven’t found any other romantic melo-drama with a simple story and a great cast like this drama. I still adoring its quietness.