When I was selecting my next drama to watch, I was looking for something about trying to grow your career in your 20s or early 30’s. And that’s when Record of Youth popped up on my radar. What also helped was that the drama was also about people trying to be successful in the acting industry — I’m currently taking acting classes myself.
Without giving anything else away, let’s jump into this Record of Youth review.
*** WARNINGS: SPOILER AHEAD ***
The quick synopsis
This drama primarily revolves around 3 young adults in their 20’s (presumably mid to late twenties) who are trying to build successful careers and achieve their personal dreams. It documents pretty much the daily life of the three leads. Two of them (Sa Hye Joon and Won Hae Hyo) are best friends in the acting industry and one is a make up artist (Ahn Jung Ha). Ahn Jung Ha is a big fan of Sa Hye Joon. All three of them meet when Ahn Jung Ha becomes Won Hae Hyo’s makeup artist.
If you haven’t watched this Korean drama yet, I would highly recommend you pause at this section, go and watch it, and then come back for my review. If you have watched it, then let’s jump into the meat of the review – the good and the bad.
The good
The music
Oh the music is good.
Now I normally have the music as its own separate section, but the music just really stuck with me with this kdrama. Most of the songs in this drama are either light or upbeat. The upbeat songs really just capture the “go go go lets make the most of our youth” theme in the kdrama. There are some somber slow songs but they aren’t depressing enough to make this a melodrama.
I picked out at least 3-4 songs that I put on my own personal kdrama playlist.
Bobby, the artist of the song “Spotlight” shares that his song is a song that conveys a message of hope. “When faced hard times, chaos that everyone experiences in life, one shouldn’t feel intimidated. Instead run hard towards the future and achieve your dreams.” What a way to connect to the core theme of this drama!
Here is my favorite song from the drama:
A balanced portrayal of fame
The drama did a great job portraying the positive and negative aspects of fame through each of the characters.
As soon as Hye Jun gets famous, we see him and everybody around him get better in some way. Hye Jun starts landing bigger roles; his manager starts making more money; his family gets some financial relief; his girlfriend’s career also takes off; his grandpa also starts to get his modeling career off the ground. Each character was affected differently by Hye Jun’s fame.
However, the drama also showed that fame can really stress personal relationships and expose a person’s past that can be an easy target for gossip. We see how Hye Jun’s past with Charlie Jung became a hot topic, which put so much stress and worry on his manager and family. Eventually, he gets caught with Jung Ha and she gets put in the spotlight, which made her feel uncomfortable.
As the drama progressed, their relationship got put to the test. Hye Jun started to fail as he apologized more and more (which he promised Jung Ha that he wouldn’t do that to her). He also spent less time with Jung Ha as his career took off.
Hye Jun and Hae Hyo’s friendship
As fictional as their friendship is, I felt like their friendship had some realism to it.
I thought their friendship was quite shallow in the very beginning. Although the drama showed that they knew each other for a long time, their friendship seemed to sum up to nothing more than “I see you at work and let’s joke around after work”. Their promise to join the military together and try to make each other happy were the only thing that added some depth to their friendship.
Their friendship dynamic changed significantly after Hye Jun’s overwhelming success as well as their mutual interest for Jung Ha. These two events really added much more depth and realism to their friendship.
Once Hye Jun found his overwhelming success, we start to see some weak links in their seemingly long formed friendship. You’d think they would tell each other everything but they don’t. Hae Hyo becomes jealous, disappointed, and distant in some way. Hye Jun also gets more distant from his friends due to his fame and work. The reactions and behaviors from each character felt relatable.
The same reactions come out when the love triangle forms. We see Hye Jun spend less time with Hae Hyo and at the same time, Hae Hyo becomes somewhat a little jealous of Hye Jun for having Jung Ha. Hae Hyo’s decision not to confess his feelings directly to Jung Ha also qualified his behavior of wanting to protect Hye Jun as a friend.
1st person narration of what goes on in their head
Including the actual thoughts of characters during conversation was a really nice touch to the drama. It definitely added that sense of comedic relief to the scene. More often than not, the inner thoughts that come out directly contrast the character’s behavior or words.
The bad
Hae Hyo’s character development
I thought Hae Hyo’s character was the hardest character to play in this drama. Aside from the main leads, I would dare say he goes through the most trials and tribulations in this drama. Unfortunately, I don’t think the show did a great job portraying his character development.
There was something lackluster about his character. Maybe it’s because of his personality and how he was raised, but some part of me thought – man, I think he really could’ve brought more emotion to his character. Whether it was fighting with his Mom when he found out the social media scandal or him defending Hye Jun from the gossip, his character felt kinda flat.
I think what really would’ve spiced up the drama was if he had confessed his feelings to Jung Ha. That would’ve stirred up the relationship dynamics between each of the main leads.
The romance between the main couple
Hurts me to say this but the romance in this drama was kind of weak. While the drama did have those lovey dovey moments between the main leads, the moments were either very short or shallow. There was also barely any fighting between the characters so the relationship was almost too perfect in some way.
The drama also kinda screwed itself over by having Jung Ha be a person who didn’t want to be in love. Her personality set up her relationship with Hye Jun to be strained from the very beginning.
If the relationship were made stronger in some way, I believe the impact of the breakup would’ve been so much more resonant for viewers.
The role of the ex-girlfriend
I felt like Ji Ah, Hye Jun’s ex-girlfriend, was a bit of a forced role in the drama, especially toward the end. When she first shows up in the drama, she takes on more an antagonist role because she cheats on Hye Jun, which hurts him. When she comes back in the middle of the drama, she portrays herself as a needy person – she wants to get back with Hye Jun. Then all of a sudden, she has a change of heart and helps him out as his lawyer.
It just felt like she was forced into the plot and didn’t have a good chance for either character development or impact to Hye Jun’s growth in the drama.
Providing TOO much pre-text
The show tends to portray a future event and then jump back into the past to explain the future scene. Most dramas I have watched use this technique of jumping between the past and the present, but I lost track of how many times the show does this. There were some cases where I lost interest in the pretext and distracted myself doing something else.
Life lessons
This drama has a basket full of life lessons. The importance of family, the dangers of fame, managing relationships and friendships, dealing with deception, keeping your integrity, etc…so many! Here are some life lessons that I thought were really well told in the drama:
Take risks when you are young
You don’t have that much to lose when you’re young because you don’t have as much responsibility to carry (like if you were raising a family or in a relationship) and you have time on your side. We see this time theme come up with Hye Jun was contemplating joining the military. Everybody told him no because if he came back, he would be too old to act. Hye Jun’s boss tells Hye Jun the same thing – to be stubborn and do the things you want.
So do as much as you can and fail as much as you can when you’re young.
Humanizing your family and friends
As you get older, you begin to humanize your family and friends more. You learn how hard and crazy life is, which makes you question and learn why your family raised you to who you are. You also realize that your parents are not perfect – they didn’t know how to raise us for success based our own standards. Our parents only knew how to raise us from how they were raised.
We see that in both Hye Jun’s and Hae Hyo’s family. Hye Jun’s Dad wasn’t treated the best by his Dad, which is why he didn’t support Hye Jun’s acting career. Hae Hyo’s Mom was controlled by her parents and therefore made her want to control Hae Hyo’s life. We see the characters struggle to understand the parents, but eventually they forgive their parents for what they did to them.
Hae Hyo and Hye Jun also grow closer together toward the end of the drama – they realized how their jealousy for each other stemmed from pride and insecurity.
It’s never too late to pursue your dreams
While it does get harder to pursue your dreams as you get older, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do so. You still have to put in the hard work, and if you believe that you can do it, you can achieve your dreams. I know it sounds cliché, but I’m finding it to be truer nowadays with the people I meet. The grandpa pretty much takes the spotlight for showing this life lesson as he was able to successfully become a model at his old age.
Quotes
This kdrama has a lot of fantastic and memorable quotes about living our life as meaningfully and truthfully as possible in our youth. Here are some of my favorites.
- When you have a lot on your mind, silence is the best companion – Kim Jin U
- Everyone ‘looks’ happy. I never said they’re actually happy – An Jeong Ha
- If you don’t change now, your future won’t change – Lee Min-jae
- Be stubborn. That’s the privilege of youth, after all – Sa Hye-Jun’s boss
- The most precious present in the world is living in the present, learning from your past, and planning you future – An Jeong Ha
- Living an honest life doesn’t mean I’ll be happy in life – An Jeong Ha
- Is she spending time or is she just bearing through it? – Sa Hye Jun
- I will reject the reality that won’t give me what I want – Sa Hye Jun
- I don’t hate the life I have now although I’m not thrilled about it – Sa Hye Jun
Should you watch it?
Yes.
This drama is definitely one that anybody can watch; however, based on the title name as well as the age at which the characters are at, the drama is focused more on viewers who are in their mid to late 20’s.
This is a very light hearted and slow drama. There’s really not all that much drama or intense moments in this drama. It also doesn’t have a defined plot because it’s more slice of life. It captures the moments of our main characters’ youths before they get older.
What I watched last
I watched Extraordinary Attorney Woo before this; however, I did not finish it because I felt like it was too slow for me and I wasn’t as interested in the law stuff as I was when I watched Suits. I recalled a friend recommending this drama back in 2020 when this drama came out and so I switched gears to this drama and luckily, the drama turned out to be great!
Overall Rating
8/10
I originally gave it a 7.9/10 but some part of me thought – would I really give this drama a C? I think it’s at least a B. While I thought some of the character development ended up being a little lacking, I thought the portrayals of the struggle for career growth and the struggle to deal with the consequences of career success were well done.
I don’t think I could re-watch this again unless I’m watching it with somebody else who has never seen it before. Nonetheless, I will re-watch some scenes from time to time just to get that heart warming feeling.
I hope you enjoyed this Record of Youth review.
