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Pierce Conran

This article contains mild spoilers.
Lead cast: Park Bo-young, Park Jin-young, Ryu Kyung-soo
Latest Nielsen rating: 7.4 per cent
Twins trading places and attempting to navigate their sibling’s lives is hardly a new concept, but the K-drama Our Unwritten Seoul – currently airing – feeds into a particular fear that pervades social rank and appearance-obsessed Korean society: “Can people see me for who I am?”


For the longest time, the answer to that question appears to be no for Mi-ji and Mi-rae, the show’s protagonists played by Park Bo-young (Daily Dose of Sunshine).
The livelier Mi-ji relocates from the countryside and assumes the desk job of the more reserved Mi-rae, who suddenly finds herself trading spreadsheets for spades on a strawberry farm.
Mi-rae has been struggling with her stressful work life, and Mi-ji, though not very close to Mi-rae these days, recognises her sister’s pain and suggests they swap places, just as they used to do as children.
Improbable though it may seem, the ruse works, and it is to the show’s credit that we can believe this, since the reasons for the plan’s success are rooted in the show’s themes.

As already shown during flashbacks to their youth, the twins’ mother Kim Ok-hui (Jang Young-nam, Love Next Door) has always struggled to tell them apart, so she is none the wiser.
Relocated to the countryside, Mi-rae acts a little differently to Mi-ji for a while, but then she shuts herself in her room for several days, recalling a years-long period that Mi-ji went through as a teenager.
As Park showed us before in Daily Dose of Sunshine, depression is a sometimes quiet but always very real and present danger in modern society. Mi-ji is not unique in her desire to withdraw from society, something that her mother is unable to recognise.
One would imagine that Mi-ji would struggle with Mi-rae’s work obligations, especially given how her smart sister has always excelled academically and professionally. Once again, this proves not to be an impediment.

Though Mi-ji is saddled with plenty of busy work, Mi-rae was so ostracised in her workplace that her colleagues aren’t able to register any change in work output when Mi-ji arrives. Furthermore, her unusual behaviour only reinforces their dislike of her.
While Mi-ji gets more screen time, we do get plenty of insight into Mi-rae, even though she hides crucial information from Mi-ji and, by extension, the viewer.
These details, which involve a work colleague who looks like their father and who took advantage of her, aren’t necessary for us to empathise with her pain and her need to get away.
However, they do serve as dramatic punctuation when they are eventually revealed, while also helping the twin sisters to understand each other and hopefully reclaim the close relationship they enjoyed as children.

The same dynamic does not apply to the male leads, who admittedly do not share any direct connection with each other.
Here it is Lee Ho-su (Park Jin-young, The Devil Judge) who is naturally granted most of the screen time as he grew up with the twins and maintains separate relationships with both of them in his adulthood, though Mi-ji is the one he has always had eyes for.
By contrast, Mi-rae’s love interest Han Se-jin (Ryu Kyung-soo, The Bequeathed) gets the short end of the stick.
Se-jin is a former hedge fund manager who now owns a strawberry farm and desperately needs local help to run it. He hires Mi-ji to help him, not realising that he is getting Mi-rae, a city slicker who does not possess her sister’s green fingers.
Se-jin quickly puts his trust in his cagey new employee, presumably because he has no one else to rely on and because he seems fond of her.

Mi-rae suddenly quits after rumours spread about the nature of their relationship, but this does not have much of an impact on the narrative.
Also lacking impact is the tired reveal that Se-jin is the heir of a major corporation who has taken over the farm out of guilt following his grandfather’s death. Ultimately, it’s difficult for us to care about what will happen between Mi-rae and Se-jin.
But we do care about what will happen to Mi-ji and Mi-rae. They are about to switch back, but more people are starting to catch on to their ruse.
The question is not whether they can make the switch cleanly, but rather how this experience will compel them to reinvent themselves and strive for something new.
Our Unwritten Seoul is streaming on Netflix.


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Park Bo-young plays twins who change places in this Korean drama that looks at issues of identity, depression and reinvention


Park Bo-young plays twins who change places in this Korean drama that looks at issues of identity, depression and reinvention.


Netflix K-drama Our Unwritten Seoul midseason recap: subtle drama about being visible

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Park Bo-young plays twins who change places in this Korean drama that looks at issues of identity, depression and reinvention

Park Bo-young plays twins who change places in this Korean drama that looks at issues of identity, depression and reinvention