Lovestruck in the City (2020) [/]
May 07 2025
Lovestruck in the City is South Korean romance-drama of 17 half-hour episodes.
At a beach vacation architect Park Jae-won (Ji Chang-wook, male lead in Backstreet Rookie) meets and falls in love with "Yoon Seon-ah" (Kim Ji-won, female lead in Queen of Tears) and for two months they have the happiest time until he has to return to Seoul for work. Although she agrees to contact him when she also gets back to Seoul she never does and he's been looking for her for a year not realizing that his cousin Choi Kyeong-jun (Kim Min-seok) and Kyeong-jun's friends know "Seon-ah".
But she's not really Seon-ah, she is Lee Eun-oh who runs a one-woman marketing company. The old Eun-oh lost both her boyfriend (he was cheating on her) and her new job on the same day and hopeless wandered to the beach and got a job at a seaside Ramyeon shop and there she renamed herself to Yoon Seon-ah and tried to be an open, positive, experience-everything person that she never was. It was that person that feel in love with Jae-won but once she returned to Seoul it was back to Eun-oh, though an Eun-oh that want's the be more confident and assertive than the old one.
And because she was embarrassed about being a different persona she tried to cut off ties with Jae-won. Unfortunately he does find her and now she has to deal with it…
There's a framing story in that there is a documentary being filmed about relationships and the subjects turn out to be Eun-oh's friends:
The main characters talk to each other on an anonymous chat (and there are other chatters, maybe part of the documentary) but they don't know who is talking and they don't know the others are in the documentary. I guess it allows the characters to say what they were thinking at the time without having to film and act it out.
Since this is a half hour show the main plot gets almost all the story time and at least that plot has a happy ending though it seems quick to resolve (episode 17 is almost a new story about an actress not wanting her first kiss to be on-screen). Unfortunately the other two couples don't end well which is unusual for K-romance drama.
Overall not the best series. Not sure I liked the framing as it was sometimes a bit confusing if they really know who was messaging or not. The whole reason for Eun-oh to ghost Jae-won is explained eventually but not convincingly. And the other couples ending badly leaves me with mixed feelings.
At a beach vacation architect Park Jae-won (Ji Chang-wook, male lead in Backstreet Rookie) meets and falls in love with "Yoon Seon-ah" (Kim Ji-won, female lead in Queen of Tears) and for two months they have the happiest time until he has to return to Seoul for work. Although she agrees to contact him when she also gets back to Seoul she never does and he's been looking for her for a year not realizing that his cousin Choi Kyeong-jun (Kim Min-seok) and Kyeong-jun's friends know "Seon-ah".
But she's not really Seon-ah, she is Lee Eun-oh who runs a one-woman marketing company. The old Eun-oh lost both her boyfriend (he was cheating on her) and her new job on the same day and hopeless wandered to the beach and got a job at a seaside Ramyeon shop and there she renamed herself to Yoon Seon-ah and tried to be an open, positive, experience-everything person that she never was. It was that person that feel in love with Jae-won but once she returned to Seoul it was back to Eun-oh, though an Eun-oh that want's the be more confident and assertive than the old one.
And because she was embarrassed about being a different persona she tried to cut off ties with Jae-won. Unfortunately he does find her and now she has to deal with it…
There's a framing story in that there is a documentary being filmed about relationships and the subjects turn out to be Eun-oh's friends:
- Park Jae-won
- Choi Kyeong-jun
- Rini Seo (So Joo-yeon) - Eun-oh's childhood friend and Kyeong-jun's 5-year girlfriend
- Kang Geon (Ryu Kyung-soo) - Eun-oh's and Rini's childhood friend and Eun-oh's roommate
- Oh Seon-yeong (Han Ji-eun) - high school gym teacher, serial dater, Geon's ex-girlfriend
The main characters talk to each other on an anonymous chat (and there are other chatters, maybe part of the documentary) but they don't know who is talking and they don't know the others are in the documentary. I guess it allows the characters to say what they were thinking at the time without having to film and act it out.
Since this is a half hour show the main plot gets almost all the story time and at least that plot has a happy ending though it seems quick to resolve (episode 17 is almost a new story about an actress not wanting her first kiss to be on-screen). Unfortunately the other two couples don't end well which is unusual for K-romance drama.
Overall not the best series. Not sure I liked the framing as it was sometimes a bit confusing if they really know who was messaging or not. The whole reason for Eun-oh to ghost Jae-won is explained eventually but not convincingly. And the other couples ending badly leaves me with mixed feelings.