Memories of a love affair in Japan from both ex-lovers. 6eps at 1hr ea. Meditative and beautiful, not for those who need action and a fast-moving plot. It is a story about writers and about storytelling as a way of understanding personal experience.

In Japan, sublety in small spaces, a soundtrack devoid of balladry, mostly piano. Nice contrasts in perceptions of the past. In Korea, in the present tense of the drama, more open views, bigger spaces because the two ex-lovers are now successful grownups and have a better perspective.

Lee Se Young is more beautiful than I have ever seen her -- I think the director let the individual beauty of each actor shine through by releasing the cinematographer of the iron chains of kdrama beauty standards. Her voice-overs give her character more interiority than she normally projects. Via voice-overs, both actors 'author' the narrative in turns as it moves along.

I am glad I watched this on air. The experience depends so much on one's own sometimes slow realizations, understandings and intellectual or emotional resolutions of the events. One episode a week was hard to wait for, though. My advice would be to pace your viewing on your own and savor it.

ps.I am not sure how the cinematographer did it but while in Japan, I felt I was seeing visually what a Korean woman looks like in that setting, and while in the Korean setting, the same thing occurred with Mr. Sakaguchi's visuals (in RL he has attracted a lot of attention in Korea).

Their miscommunications were represented as being due to their youth, but also the two characters participated in intra-culturally-specific stereotypical behavior which in each case produces miscommunication: the strong and soulfully silent Japanese guy who cannot articulate feelings and the soulful, dramatic Korean woman who talks around the salient point as if she is silently expressing her real true feelings by that empty space in the middle of her discourse.

double-posted on viki at time of writing