K-drama ● Review: Our Unwritten Seoul
- Very Average Joe
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
English Title: Our Unwritten Seoul
Korean Title: 미지의 서울 [lit. unknown Seoul or Mi-ji’s Seoul]
Director(s): Park Shin-woo
Screenwriter(s): Lee Kang
Studio: Monster Union, Higround, Next Scene
Released: 2025
Runtime: 12 episodes, ~1h 20m each.
Starring: Park Bo-young, Park Jin-young, Ryu Kyung-soo, Jang Young-nam, Kim Sun-young, Lee Jae-in, Park Yoon-ho
My Verdict: Twins swap places in a story about survival and finding one’s direction. Solid performances all around. Shot conventionally but nicely edited. Simple plot but the characters, relationships and themes make it more complex than it appears.
● The plot follows identical twins Yoo Mi-rae and Yoo Mi-ji (Park Bo-young), about 30 years of age, who have drastically different personalities as they navigate life’s difficulties.
● Mi-rae (lit. future) is the older one and has had health issues from birth through childhood. As such, she ended up being more academically inclined and works in finance in Seoul. Mi-ji (lit. not yet known or unknown) was born healthy and a gifted runner before injury ended that. She remains living in their home village, working part-time and looking after their grandmother.
● Due to Mi-rae having trouble at her office, the twins secretly swap places to give Mi-rae a chance to rest at home and ponder her next move.
● Of course, as part of the drama, Mi-ji doesn’t adequately prepare for the role. Mi-rae instructs her to remain “invisible” but she draws attention to herself and ends up with a difficult project. To complicate matters, the twins’ childhood friend Lee Ho-su (Park Jin-young) also works and lives in Seoul as a lawyer.
● Meanwhile, at home, Mi-rae gets a job working on a strawberry farm run by Han Se-jin (Ryu Kyung-soo).
● The series uses the common template of two lead female characters and two lead male characters with their respective pairings. This is fine as one pair provides some relief from the other.
● Thankfully, there is no cheesy love triangle between Mi-rae, Mi-ji and Ho-su in the present even if there was some degree of that during high school.
● Whilst the narrative follows both sisters, Mi-ji is mostly the main viewpoint character as the title suggests. The narrative does shift to give Mi-rae more focus in a few episodes.
● There are flashbacks of the twins (Lee Jae-in) and Ho-su (Park Yoon-ho) of their high school days. Both give solid performances and whilst Park Yoon-ho’s appearance can vaguely pass off as a younger version of Park Jin-young, Lee Jae-in looks too different from Park Bo-young.
● The story is more character-driven rather than plot-driven, but this is not to state that there is no plot. Ultimately, Mi-rae’s workplace issue is the primary “problem” that initiates the switch and the plot is directed towards resolving that, so that is there as a frame for the characters, their relationships and themes.
● As the story is character-driven, it is also relationship-driven as well as theme-driven. Whilst the sisters have very different personalities, both have a tendency to “run away” from their problems. The story is an exploration of survival and finding one’s direction as well as empathy and sympathy, to “put yourself in the other person’s shoes”, in this case using two people who are the same in many respects.
● Ho-su has his own arc in finding his direction, and Park Jin-young’s performance as the quiet and awkwardly cool guy is consistent.
● These themes are explored in the other relationships as well. For example, between Mi-ji and Ho-su: just as Ho-su deals with health issues after having survived a bad car accident when he was young, Mi-ji had to live through her injury that ended her running career as it barely got started.
● Of course, empathy (or the apparent lack of it) is also an issue between parents and children, particularly between Kim Ok-hui (Jang Young-nam) and the twins, and Yeom Bun-hong (Kim Sun-young) and Ho-su. One could simplistically describe it as stereotypical Asian parenting, but that’s how it is.
● Jang Young-nam does a brilliant job with that Asian mother’s angst.
● Kim Sun-young does very well too as the mother who is proud of her lawyer son but who also tries to keep some of her feelings to herself. The awkwardness between mother and son is amusing as it is disheartening, ironically more so because both sincerely mean well. Kim Sun-young has so many nuances, and she and Park Jin-young consistently match each other.
● Also amusing are these two mother’s interactions as they, in a manner, have a love-hate relationship. They work together and are neighbors and have been for years, their opinions differ markedly and they bicker, but there is love between them.
● Park Bo-young, as expected, convincingly plays two or, in some ways, four roles. Mi-rae and Mi-ji initially are made to look very different and they, as already mentioned, have different personalities. That is perhaps relatively easy to write and perform. However, after the switch, Mi-ji pretends to be Mi-rae whilst Mi-rae barely pretends to be Mi-ji, and both grow in the process.
● The series is women-centric. It’s not a bad thing and it’s not woke, it’s not as if the male characters are made to look bad and/weak. Every character has their strengths and flaws, and all are at least mildly interesting. More importantly, they are relatable.
● Visually, it is shot more-or-less conventionally, which is what one expects given the non-fantastical genre. Nonetheless, it could be more stylized. For example, in longer dialogue, there is the usual one-shot, one-shot, two-shot when it could mix it up more. It gets away with it to some extent because of the seamless editing.
● There are limited shots of both sisters with their faces shown in the same frame. These shots mostly look good, although the edges and layering can be seen in a few instances.
● The pacing for each episode can be a little quicker, at between 1h 10m to 1h 20m, the episodes can be tighter. But, on balance, the pacing across the series is steady and ultimately gives a complete enough conclusion even if some elements are a little convenient.
● It is a decent series with a simple premise and plot, but because of the characters, relationships and themes, it is more complex and interesting than it appears on the surface.
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