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Pierce Conran

This article contains mild spoilers.
3.5/5 stars
Lead cast: Jung Yu-mi, Ju Ji-hoon
Last Nielsen rating: 6.47 per cent
Korean dramas are not generally known for sprawling stories in which characters venture into unknown worlds where anything can happen. Some may threaten to explore broad territory at first, but give them time and they invariably fall back in on themselves.
This is not meant as a criticism. In fact, it is one of the chief reasons K-dramas have been embraced the world over as televisual comfort food. Why? Because home is where the heart is.


Characters often begin stories away from home, either for career reasons, family feuds or a mix of both. The stories then follow them back home, where, over time and through various obstacles, they reconcile with their pasts.
Usually, the story ends with them deciding to stay home, as happens in Welcome to Samdal-ri and Love Next Door, two recent examples.
A romcom set in a school, Love Your Enemy unapologetically follows this formula to a T. Forget hometown – the protagonists, played by Jung Yu-mi (The School Nurse Files) and Ju Ji-hoon (Light Shop), cannot even get away from their high school as adults.
The fact that Seok Ji-won (Ju), a businessman working overseas, will return home and fall in love with Yoon Ji-won (Jung), now a teacher at the same school they attended, isn’t meant to be a surprise. These shows even lean into the fact that we know what’s going on and where things are heading.

Just like Welcome to Samdal-ri and The Good Bad Mother, these characters were born on the same day and here they even share the same given name.
The forces of destiny have made themselves clear – no matter how much they bicker and no matter what tragic backstories bubble up to the surface, nothing is keeping these two fated lovebirds apart.
We do not even need to see the flashbacks of their time in high school to know that they were already a couple back then. We do not need to, but we want to. We want to see what drove them apart, but most importantly we want the show to remind us that whatever has happened can be undone and that there is always a path home.
Love Your Enemy begins with Yoon Ji-won dreaming about the night she went to Namsan mountain in Central Seoul in her youth. She was waiting for Seok Ji-won because they had promised to meet there during the first snow if anything happened – but he never showed up.

Naturally, the show has to end with the leads finally fulfilling that promise as adults. The scene appears in the coda and it does not matter that it does not make sense.
The pair are already happily married and Seok Ji-won is off on a business trip in New Zealand. Yoon Ji-won notices the first snow from her window and impulsively goes to Namsan, and Seok Ji-won turns up there as well.
The power of fate overrides any need for logic in this scene – this is simply where the story was destined to end.
Dokmok High School is a symbol of home and as such it is unimpeachable. The story begins with Seok Ji-won’s father, Seok Kyung-tae (Lee Byung-joon), taking control of the school, a major victory in his long feud with Yoon Ji-won’s grandfather Yoon Jae-ho (Kim Kap-soo).

Kyung-tae wants to turn the school into a golf course and he installs his son as the school’s chairman to hasten that plan.
Seok Ji-won may seem a touch aloof when he arrives to assume the post, but at no point does it seem like he will carry out his father’s wishes. The school and what it represents is simply too important to him and to the love of his life.
Meanwhile, all of Yoon Ji-won’s trauma is compressed into a couple of brief flashbacks detailing her bad but brief experience working in an office.
This is the only time that something really bad happens to her and it’s no accident that this is the only time in the series that she is not studying or working in Dokmok, her sanctuary. The home she shares with her father even feels as though it is part of the grounds.

Love Your Enemy provides us with nothing new, but slyly offers up a soothing menu of familiar fare designed to remind us that everything is going to be OK.
It certainly does not hurt that this pleasing package is led by the ever watchable Jung and Ju.
Love Your Enemy is streaming on Disney+.


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The strict adherence to the genre blueprint in this romcom starring Ju Ji-hoon and Jung Yu-mi makes this Korean drama easy to watch


The strict adherence to the genre blueprint in this romcom starring Ju Ji-hoon and Jung Yu-mi makes this Korean drama easy to watch.


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An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The strict adherence to the genre blueprint in this romcom starring Ju Ji-hoon and Jung Yu-mi makes this Korean drama easy to watch

The strict adherence to the genre blueprint in this romcom starring Ju Ji-hoon and Jung Yu-mi makes this Korean drama easy to watch