A woman still mourning her deceased boyfriend receives an anonymous gift that sends her back in time to inhabit the body of her doppelgänger, a high school girl living in the year 1998. In the past, she meets a high school boy who looks exactly like her lost love, and so begins a tragic and fated love story that spans decades and defies all logic.
EPISODES 1-12
Long before A Time Called You was announced, I was raving about and recommending Someday or One Day to @missvictrix. So, yeah, it would be a massive understatement to say that I’ve been waiting for this Netflix drama-drop for a long time — and I eagerly binge-watched all twelve episodes so I could write this fairly spoilerific (you’ve been warned!) series review. As always, though, I’ll do my best not to make any unfair comparisons and treat this K-drama as its own separate entity.
Our story begins in the year 1998 and almost immediately drops a nostalgia bomb on us in the form of a music store selling CDs and cassette tapes. Outside 27 Record, a high school boy (Ahn Hyo-seop) wears an amused expression as he watches his best friend JUNG IN-KYU (Kang Hoon) gaze — with obvious hearts in his eyes — through the shop window at the girl (Jeon Yeo-bin) behind the counter.
In-kyu, we quickly learn, is painfully shy around his crush, but his extroverted friend — and quite possibly the best wingman ever — drags In-kyu into the store. He does his damnedest to get In-kyu to strike up a conversation with the even more introverted girl, who stumbles over her words and struggles to make eye contact with either boy. Unfortunately, neither the timid girl nor her tongue-tied suitor can hold a conversation, so our extrovert does most of the talking. (*whomp, whomp*)
Our story then skips ahead to the present, where we’re introduced to HAN JOON-HEE (also played by Jeon Yeo-bin). Given that she shares the same face (and actress) as the girl from 1998, we’re led to believe they are the same person — except Joon-hee is a lot more social. She holds her head high, smiles, and jokes with her coworkers about her hot date later that evening, but her “hot date” is really a memorial service for her boyfriend GU YEON-JOON (also played by Ahn Hyo-seop), who died in a plane crash a year ago.
Although she puts on a good front, inside she’s still mourning and clinging to the tiny bit of hope that maybe Yeon-joon, whose body was never found, is still alive. Little things, like his toothbrush that she still keeps by the sink, trigger vivid memories of her past, and she breaks down in tears on her way to work when she sees the news reporting on the anniversary of Yeon-joon’s plane crash. Everyone connected to him seems to have accepted his death and started to move on, but while his family officially registers his death, Joon-hee feels stuck in the past and unable to let him go.
So when an anonymous Instagram account sends her a picture of three high school students — and among them she recognizes Yeon-joon giving bunny ears to a girl who looks exactly like her — she feels mixed emotions. But along with the confusion and jealousy, there’s a part of her hoping that the love Yeon-joon had for her was actually displaced feelings for her high school doppelgänger. If Yeon-joon’s love had been founded on her resemblance to the other mystery girl, then maybe — just maybe — Joon-hee has found a reason to move on with her life.
After a lot of internet sleuthing, Joon-hee and her bestie SEO NA-EUN (Seo Ye-hwa) track down the owner of the music store in the background of the photograph. BAE CHI-WON (Park Hyuk-kwon) is now running a cafe in Seoul, and he tells Na-eun that the girl in the photograph is his niece, KWON MIN-JOO. And, most importantly, that Min-joo was murdered in 1998 shortly after the photograph in question was taken. Joon-hee does the math, and there’s no way Yeon-joon could be the boy in the photograph because he was only eleven years old in 1998.
Instead, standing on either side of Min-joo in the photograph are NAM SHI-HEON and In-kyu. Turns out — if the vast personality differences between Joon-hee and Min-joo didn’t already clue you in — our drama didn’t spend the first episode flashing back to Joon-hee’s past like our writers would initially trick us into believing.
As our story progresses, we learn more about our 1998 doppelgängers. Shi-heo — In-kyu’s extroverted friend — is naturally charming and charismatic, and he works his magic to befriend Min-joo with the intention of bringing her closer to In-kyu. Unfortunately, Shi-heon’s matchmaking attempts backfire spectacularly because he’s the embodiment of every school girl’s daydream, and Min-joo is not immune to his perfection. (I mean, can you blame her? Five minutes into this drama and I was giggling and crushing like I was reliving my preteen years in the 1990s, but maybe that’s just my inner Ahn Hyo-seop fangirl swooning.)
Min-joo confesses her feelings, but she’s rejected for a number of reasons. One, he’s just never thought of her as more than a friend. Two, he’s rooting for her to be with In-kyu, and three, even if he’d had feelings for her, he’s going to emigrate to the United States soon — which has to remain a secret between them, BTW, because he doesn’t want In-kyu to be sad.
After the rejection, Min-joo returns home to find her house in a disarray and her parents and brother nowhere to be found. Fearing that she’s been abandoned because she recently overheard her parents fighting over who would keep her brother — and only her brother — if they divorced, she runs out in search of her family. As she darts through the streets, trying desperately to hail a cab, a car comes barreling towards her, and she stands immobile and frightened in its bright headlights. (So, in case you were wondering, the Sedan of Doom was the leading cause of injury for K-drama leading ladies in the 1990s.)
Back in the present, Joon-hee rides the bus home after meeting with Chi-won and opens the anonymous gift she’d received earlier that day. Inside the box, she finds a walkman and — unbeknownst to her — the cassette tape that Min-joo once gifted to Shi-heon in 1998. She reads Min-joo’s handwritten inscription, “I hope the music takes you to your happiest moment” and then falls asleep listening to Seo Ji-won’s “With My Tears.” When Joon-hee wakes up, she’s in the hospital and — more importantly — occupying Min-joo’s body. The year is 1998.
With the time travel element now introduced to the plot, what follows is — in my opinion — one of the best fictional love stories of all time, and the moment Joon-hee opens her eyes and sees Shi-heon is the pivotal scene that truly kicks off this unforgettable romance. As expected, Joon-hee mistakes Shi-heon for Yeon-joon, and she’s immediately overwhelmed by her emotions. She cries and clings desperately to him.
Prior to this moment, I wasn’t fully sold on Jeon Yeo-bin’s portrayal of Joon-hee, as it felt like she was channeling a toned down version of her character from Vincenzo, but she won me over as her character dropped the facade masking her grief, letting her sadness and hopefulness collide in this one moment. Ahn Hyo-seop did well in this scene, too, freezing awkwardly and letting his hands hover near Joon-hee/Min-joo, clearly unsure if it was appropriate to comfort her with a hug.
After her initial confusion, Min-joo’s memories almost immediately return and mix with Joon-hee’s. Although her life in 2024 feels more real than the experiences written in Min-joo’s diary, Joon-hee can’t ignore the present world around her. Slowly she accepts that her time in 2024 was merely an extremely vivid dream that she had while she was unconscious in the hospital, but even with Min-joo’s soul and memories sharing a space inside her head, Joon-hee’s personality shines through.
Even though the age math ain’t mathing right, a brief return trip to 2024 gives her hope that she can reunite with Yeon-joon in 1998. Unfortunately, her theory that Yeon-joo, like her, traveled to the past and inhabited Shi-heon’s body doesn’t prove true. While there are some uncanny resemblances between the two men, Shi-heon clearly has no overlapping memories with Yeon-joo, so Joon-hee refocuses her attention on trying to prevent Min-joo’s murder.
Working under the assumption that Min-joo’s killer is the same person who attacked Min-joo the night she was almost run over, Joon-hee flies her extrovert flag high, hoping Min-joo’s new, unpredictable behavior will lure her attacker out of hiding. The more she acts like herself, though, the more she unintentionally makes Shi-heon fall in love with her, creating even more tension between him in In-kyu, who loved Min-joo before she was cool.
Joon-hee and Shi-heon grow closer until one day she finds a sketch of the watercolor painting that Yeon-joon treasured. Instantly, she’s transported back to 2024 and confirms that she’s not the only body-jumping time traveler.
The Yeon-joon she fell in love with in college is, in fact, Shi-heon, who time-traveled from 2002 to 2007 via the same magical walkman and cassette tape. Once he arrived in the future and realized Min-joo’s crazy story about being a woman named Joon-hee from the year 2024 was true, he tracks her down and inserts himself into her life, doggedly pursuing her — respectfully, of course — until he eventually wins her heart. (Sidenote: Shi-heon is so stinkin’ sweet that Netflix should be held accountable for my dental bill.)
A large part of this romance’s appeal, for me, is being able to watch this pairing be reunited and fall in love multiple times — but along with the fantastical destiny there is also an unavoidable impending doom. Their romance is rooted in a time loop in which Yeon-joon must die in a plane crash in order for Joon-hee to travel to 1998, where Shi-heon meets and falls in love with her in the first place. There’s an overwhelming need and urgency for this couple to have a happily ever after, but there are forces working against them, including Min-joo.
Even though the OTP romance is the glue that holds everything together, this drama is equally about Min-joo’s personal journey. In contrast to Joon-hee’s cheerfulness and assertiveness, Min-joo was depressed, lonely, and struggled to connect with people around her, including her own family. What she wanted most was to be loved and seen, and when she finally learns to love herself and recognize the love others have for her, her tragic fate is changed. She lives, and the time-traveling cycle is broken.
Although I wasn’t initially sold on Jeon Yeo-bin’s portrayal of Joon-hee, I will say that I was — and continued to be throughout the course of the drama — blown away by her ability to portray both Joon-hee and Min-joo and make them feel as though they were two entirely different people. Like, there were times when I literally had to remind myself that there wasn’t another actress portraying Min-joo, especially in the last quarter of the drama when Min-joo regains control of her body and tries to mimic Joon-hee’s behaviors so she can step in and be the woman Shi-heon loves. Bangs can only do so much to change a person’s appearance, so I can only give credit to Jeon Yeo-bin’s acting.
Overall, I adored this drama, and if I ever find the time, I will definitely rewatch it. But, I have one complaint — a complaint I also had with Someday or One day — and it’s that I want to know so, so much more about our characters’ lives now that the cycle has been broken. Yes, we already saw Joon-hee and Shi-heon fall in love twice, but I want to see how the pieces fall into place now that they’ve met in a new year, under new circumstances, and with both of them completely in the dark about their history. Not to mention, what happened to In-kyu and Min-joo? They were just as important to this story as Shi-heon and Joon-hee, but we get zero insight into what the future held for them. The climax of the story literally hinged on Min-joo living and learning to love herself, so it’s unfortunate that we don’t get to see how much she’s grown since 1998.
So while I felt a little cheated that we didn’t get a (significantly) longer epilogue, other than that, you’ll hear no complaints from me. I loved this version as much — if not more — than the original, and I’m actually a bit envious of the people who watched A Time Called You without any prior knowledge of the source material. Obviously, I still enjoyed my binge watch and found myself anticipating all my favorite scenes, but there’s something special about discovering a K-drama that hits all the right marks for you and leaves you feeling the same emotional high as if you were the one who fell in love. This drama still made me feel that way, but it would have been great to have experienced all the surprises and twists again for the first time again. Too bad listening to Seo Ji-won’s “With My Tears” only gives me Hospital Playlist flashbacks instead of the ability to travel back to 2019 and delay myself from watching Someday or One Day.