Tags
Her Private Life, Kdrama, Kim Jae Wook, korean actors, Korean drama, Korean Movie, Park Min young, tvN
Her Private Life is all about hearts, kisses, hugs and sweet candies. More than anything, it is witnessing the journey of two people falling in love and surmounting the complications on the way with their thoughtfulness and maturity. And yes, there is fangirling — so gloriously relatable! Plus, Kim Jae Wook 💖
The world of Her Private Life revolves around art. Park Min Young plays a curator Sung Duk Mi at an art gallery with Kim Jae Wook as her new boss Ryan Gold. She is an efficient employee who is secretly a fangirl of an idol Cha Shi Ahn. This fangirling is not exactly a secret as her close friends know about it. Somehow Ryan finds out about this and his fascination slowly turns into love.
What I love the most in this show is how mature the two main characters are. They do start off on slightly wrong foot but their relationship never goes into full on bickering mode. They remain cordial and respectful. Ryan Gold is pure gold — his curiosity and respect towards Duk Mi’s fangirling is amazing to see, as is his kind heart and compassion and understanding. He also has a subtle mischievousness which makes him perfect! Duk Mi is also a very understanding and mature character, but she has this playful side to her as well which becomes more prominent with her fangirling. She adores her idol but she knows how to separate adoration from obsession.
The path of romance between the two main leads is colorful and beautiful like a rainbow. The meet-cute, the growing mutual attraction, the romantic shenanigans bringing them together — every bit is fun and giddy. And when they finally start a relationship, it is full of maturity, respect and scorching chemistry.
That brings me to points that failed to impress. Once our main love story completes, there is little left in name of plot point or conflict. The one which is there doesn’t hold much weight. The whole childhood connection made me roll my eyes (why dramaland loves it so much!.) The hero’s backstory wasn’t much interesting and felt more like something to mark the final arc. I’m just glad these angles didn’t take a lot of space (well, the abundance of paintings arc did make me annoyed sometimes). I’m happy that the drama resolved every issue quickly.
Also, the other characters are mostly lacklustre. They are okay on the surface level but more or less, I just wanted to skip all the scenes not involving the main leads together. I did get extra irritated by our heroine’s best friend Sun Joo. I do appreciate that none went into crazy negative path and almost all were understanding and mature, or became that by the end. I also think the drama missed an opportunity to address the issues related to excessive fangirling. It didn’t dig deeper into the topic.
Kim Jae Wook shines and is pure gold. I think he should be cast in every romance project now! And he is so natural and subtle and hot and handsome (I know! I can go on and on). Park Min Young again proves her mettle in rom-coms. She is immensely charming and gives another delightful performance. Jung Jae Won is cute as the idol whom our heroine loves, and Ahn Bo Hyun also gives a good performance as the caring second lead.
All said and done, Her Private Life is a very easy, cute and feel-good show having a thankfully mature treatment of relationships. The pièce de résistance is, of course, the amazing chemistry between Park Min Young and Kim Jae Wook and their characters.
My Rating: 7.5 out of 10
The Drama Corner 
It is utterly charming, refreshing and relaxing. I highly recommend
Yes! So charming and relaxing with no dull moments!
This was such a fun drama with a wonderful couple that had sizzling chemistry. Glad you enjoyed it for the most part too 🙂
The chemistry was off the charts in this one! Yay that you liked it too 🙂
This such a spot on review! You more or less voiced my thoughts on the drama.
Only it was a bit too fluffy for my taste and I wouldn’t probably have taken Drama on if I’d had something more substantial to fill in the “romantic spot” on my drama roster at that time. 😛 I’m not a big fan of Korean romcoms as it is and they seldom manage to make me care enough to finish them. My interest usually just slowly peters out until I drop the drama in question. I generally find too much lovey dovey boring as heck, ha.
Hehe…there is a reason why stories end after HEA! Too much lovey dovey gets too much after a point 😀
Yes, this show was mostly fluff…didn’t feel any warmth or depth but it was enjoyable for most of the part when the leads filled up the screen.
I’m not very choosy in case of my romcoms in dramaland but my enjoyment level and rewatch level definitely changes from one to the other. Of course, the last few episodes do become a chore in many cases after the couple gets together.