Light and fluffy, unlike the Chinese version...

This drama is ideal for those who want to de-stress by watching some light romance with a happy ending.

Unlike the Chinese version, the male lead is soft and smiles all the time and the female lead does not bury herself in her insecurities. In the Chinese version, the male lead has to overcome the flaws of his personality and his essentially unsociable nature, plus embrace his feelings for the girl and grow to the point of expressing them. He even has to accept that his own unwillingness to face his feelings comes from his loneliness and sense of abandonment. He always expected, in the back of his mind, that she would leave him once she really knew him and so, in that sense, he was not surprised when they broke up.

Similarly the girl in the Chinese version suffers a lot more and we see more of his story being shared with her, especially related to his work and ambitions; we also see a lot more of her influence on his decisions, something I felt was not that clear in the Korean adaptation. Neither of them seemed to change much from school to adulthood in the Korean version and I felt that nothing very significant occurred in their growth arc from episode to episode. Whereas the couple in the Chinese version changes a lot from teenage to adulthood.

That said, the Korean version is pretty sweet. Unlike others I did not think the girl looked too old. She was cute and so was he - even with all that powder on his face - and they did a pretty okay job of the roles they were assigned. If you like angst and melodrama, I recommend the Chinese version. No tissues needed for the Korean one.

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