Upcoming SBS drama Our Beloved Summer has released a new teaser featuring its two main leads, Choi Woo-shik (Parasite) and Kim Da-mi (Itaewon Class). The drama is an opposites-attract romance that begins when the two are in high school. The poster above shows their uniforms hanging on a clothesline together, with the caption reading: “That early summer, when I fell for you.”
During high school, Kim Da-mi and Choi Woo-shik are forced to participate in a documentary together, despite their avid dislike of each other. Choi Woo-shik’s character is a student who doesn’t have any particular ambitions and hides that insecurity in front everyone, while Kim Da-mi’s character is the number one student at school. Somehow, they fall for each other, but their relationship ends with both agreeing to this sentiment: “I’m disgusted that we were ever together.”
Ten years later, Choi Woo-shik is a free-spirited artist who illustrates buildings for a living. Kim Da-mi has become a marketing expert who does whatever it takes to find success. When they meet again because of work, more bickering ensues, masking the emotions that threaten to well up again.
Supporting actors Kim Sung-chul (Sweet Home) and Noh Jung-eui (Eighteen Again) play a documentary director and a top idol star, respectively.
The teaser begins with the two high school students in chairs far apart. Choi Woo-shik asks the director, “What was the question?” Annoyed, Kim Da-mi tells him to focus. He replies, “Are you done talking?” She quips back, “No. Can’t you see my lips moving?”
The following scenes show all the shenanigans they enact against each other, building that animosity. The first shows Kim Da-mi as she runs away from him in the school hallways, as he shouts after her. During a school dodgeball game, she uses his head to block the ball. When he’s peacefully napping underneath a tree, she takes the book he was using as a pillow. Having had enough, he approaches her with a broom. When she turns around, he nonchalantly puts the broom down, as if he hadn’t meant to hit her on the head. He gets his revenge when he splashes water from the fountain on her uniform.
The camera pans back to the interview, and Kim Da-mi asks, “Is this a program where the first ranked student helps improve the last ranked student at school?” Choi Woo-shik finds this insulting and absurd, and pointing to her, asks the director, “Are you testing how long a kid without any social skills will survive?”
There’s a time skip, and both have become adults who do adult things like shop for groceries. They run into each other at the supermarket, and cuts of them both yelling in rage are shown. Voiceovers from their high school days confidently say: “In any case, I’m sure ten years later, I won’t be seeing this frustrating kid anymore.”
Years later, they’re back on the couch for the documentary as adults. The teaser closes out with Kim Da-mi saying in disgust, “Ugh, do we really have to do this?”
Our Beloved Summer is the not the first time Kim Da-mi and Choi Woo-shik have worked together — he played her rival in her breakout movie, The Witch: Part 1. I enjoyed that film, so it’ll be interesting to see how their dynamic plays out in this drama.
Simultaneous to the live broadcast on SBS, a serial webtoon prequel of Our Beloved Summer (showing the main characters’ high school days) will be released on Naver. Directed by Kim Yoon-jin and written by Lee Na-eun, Monday-Tuesday drama Our Beloved Summer will begin airing on December 6, after Lovers of the Red Sky finishes its run.
