Korean romantic dramedies have used some outlandish premises to get the members of the show’s main couple together. But we haven’t seen one quite as outlandish as the one used in See You In My 19th Life. The even stranger thing, though, is that it actually works.
Opening Shot: A woman stands at the opening of a cave facing the ocean. “Normally, I start to remember my past lives between the ages of 8 and 12,” she says in voice over.
The Gist: For Ban Ji-eum (Shin Hye-sun), she realized she was living her 19th life at the age of 9, when the memories of all those lives hit her young self (Park So-yi) on a stormy night. She especially remembered Mun Seo-ha (Jung Hyeon-jun), and how, in her 18th life as Yoon Ju-won (Kim Si-a), said she would never leave his side. She wants to know if he’s still alive.
But she lives in poverty, with an abusive, gambling-addicted father. So she goes on TV talent shows to display the knowledge she learned over all of her previous lives, like flamenco dancing and Japanese history. She got appearance fees, but her father took all the money. She runs away and finds Kim Ae-kyung (Cha Chung-hwa), a restaurant owner; she convinces her that she’s her uncle Kim Jung-ho (Lee Jae-kyoon), and that she remembers her past lives. She then launches into her story.
She met Seo-ha in 1997, when she was 12-year-old Ju-won, and she was the most intriguing person she had met in a hundred years. When they first meet, Ju-won calls him “kid,” much to his annoyance, but at this point Ju-won has remembered her previous 17 lives and doesn’t act like a kid; her mother tells Seo-ha’s mother, Lee Sang-a (Lee Bo-young), that the kids at school treat her like a teacher.
But the more they know each other the more Ju-won likes him. Sang-a’s mother is also getting sicker. At the pool behind the mansion where Seo-ha lives — his mother is CEO of a hotel in the corporation owned by her husband — he tells her he was a turtle in a past life, based on ones he saw in a fish tank at the hotel. She tells him she’ll always be with him.
But that doesn’t work out. The two are involved in a violent auto accident shortly after Sang-a’s death; Seo-ha’s hearing is damaged, and Ju-won suffers fatal injuries. But before she collapses, she mouths a prayer that she’ll come back in her 19th life to find him; previously, she would pray right before death that this would be the last life she lived.
Now Ji-eum, the reincarnation of Ju-won, is determined to find Seo-ha. In 2007, she finds him on the way to his high school and continues to track him, until she finds out that he left the country. As the years pass, Ju-won becomes a high-achieving student (of course) and purposely joins the company Seo-ha’s family owns, working in its auto division. She finds out that Seo-ha, now in his 30s, is working for the company in Germany, and wants to get a transfer there.
But before she can accomplish that, he comes back to Korea, vowing to bring the hotel his mother once ran back to the luxury spot it once was. Of course, she applies for a transfer to work at the hotel.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? See You In My 19th Life has the same romantic K-drama feel as Business Proposal or Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha.
Our Take: See You In My 19th Life is based on a webtoon of the same name, and it’s pretty typical of the webtoon-based series from Korea to have a supernatural or fanciful theme. Sure, there’s the meet-cutes, the conflicts, and the romance, but the reasons that the main characters come together in the first place can often be outlandish.
What’s interesting here is that writer Choi Young-lim doesn’t try to lard down the reincarnation premise with rules or anything like that. It’s a pretty straightforward premise: Ji-eun remembers her past lives, making her not only preternaturally intelligent but having to carry the emotions of lives both great and terrible. And, for some reason or another, Seo-ha saved her from the boredom of being reincarnated over hundreds of years.
We see glimpses of her previous lives, like when she’s Jung-ho, a male acrobat that died relatively young, as well. It’s a good way to remember that she gets her wealth of knowledge from having lived during those times, not out of a book off a website.
Of course, now that Ji-eun has firmly ensconced herself into Seo-ha’s life, how she uses that knowledge of his childhood and the connection they had when she was Ju-won, will drive the drama here. It could just fade into normal K-romcom territory, where the two of them are slowly drawn to each other, or it could go into an intriguing direction, as she slowly tries to convince Seo-ha that she was the girl who vowed to never leave his side after his mother died.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: During her interview with Seo-ha, Ji-eun suggests that the two of them should date, mainly to just get a reaction out of him.
Sleeper Star: Lee Bo-young puts in a poignant performance as Sang-a, whom Seo-ha cherished as a child. It’s why he wanted to come back and take over the hotel she once ran.
Most Pilot-y Line: Ji-eun follows Seo-ha to the hotel pool he and his mother spent time at. When she says the same line she did to him when she was Ju-won, the only response to her is to say unauthorized people aren’t allowed there. He sounds fun.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We have a good feeling about See You In My 19th Life, mainly because of the past-lives premise of the story. How effective it is will really depend on how well it’s used in the episodes going forward.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.