10 Thoughts: When Life Gives You Tangerines

Title: When Life Gives You Tangerines (폭싹 속았수다, lit. Thanks for all your Hard Work (in Jeju dialect)

Network: Netflix (2025)

Length: 1 season (16 episodes, approx. 50-90 min each)

Director: Kim Won-seok

Writer: Lim Sang-choon

Cast: IU, Park B0-gum, Lee Joon-hyuk, Shin Hye-sun (Season 1), Yoo Jae-myung (Season 1); Jeon Hye-jin (Season 2)

Where to watch: Streaming (with English subtitles) Netflix 

Disclaimer: there will be all kinds of spoilers! Also, art being what it is, what I like and what you like will almost certainly be different, and that's ok. I would love to hear your take on my take, so please leave comments !

1. When Life Gives You Tangerines is the latest in a series of prestige dramas produced by Netflix and intended for simultaneous consumption in South Korea and the rest of the world. While not quite the runaway blockbuster that Squid Game was back in 2021, the show is a big hit. As of this writing, it's the biggest kdrama of 2025, was briefly in the Top 10 Netflix shows globally and is still in the Top 10 of Netflix rankings for non-English shows. Like most kdrama produced for OTT streaming, Tangerines was fully pre-produced with an eye-popping budget of $41 million. The decision to drop four episodes at a time was a bit of a departure for Netflix, but kept levels of fan anticipation high and probably contributed to the show's success.

It's now common for kdrama fans to complaint about slumps, dry spells where no drama really captures the imagination the way their favorite drama(s) did years ago. In particular, for at least a few years now, fans have lamented the absence of the transformative romantic melodrama that moves them enough to become part of their fan DNA. Objectively, I think most fans only have one drama that can fill that slot, and in my view, Tangerines is unlikely to displace that "인생 드라마." But it does seem to have scratched an itch at just the right time and may signal the return of the sort of big budget drama that really gets fans talking.

2. Allegedly inspired by a true story, the central plot of Tangerines tracks a 50-year span in the life of Oh Ae-sun (IU), a woman who grows up in rural Jeju Island and finds ultimate joy and fulfillment despite the many obstacles and challenges she faces along the way. Underlining her journey through life is her relationship with Yang Gwang-sik (Park Bo-gum), almost literally the boy the next door.

The two characters are a study in contrasts. Ae-sun is a talented student and an overachiever in a world where women are expected to be neither. She's also feisty and constantly pushing back against the tide, but none of that would be possible without the calm and steady support of Gwang-sik, a man who never aspires to be more than Ae-sun's rock and lives his life exactly that way. In a drama largely about strong women who stand up to misogyny, Gwang-sik's quiet confidence and constancy is balm to the soul.

But make no mistake, Tangerines is Ae-sun's story. Born the daughter of a haenyeo, one of Jeju's famous diving fisherwomen, Ae-sun is raised in a small village in abject poverty. But her ambitions are bigger than Jeju itself. A talented poet, she weaves her dreams into words, winning a couple of local competitions that she hopes will get her off the island. But her mother's untimely death and her feckless stepfather's remarriage doom those aspirations. Determined to make it to the mainland, she tries to elope to Busan with Gwang-sik and when that fails, she seriously considers marrying a local fishing trawler captain. But the man disgusts her, and in one of the show's most dramatic sequences, Ae-sun races to the docks in her wedding suit in a driving rain to confess her feelings to the mainland-bound Gwang-sik. With an unexpected flair for the dramatic, he immediately jumps off the ship and swims to her, cementing their bond forever.

The rest of the drama has Ae-sun and Gwang-sik navigating the many joys and challenges life throws at them. The title of the drama in Korean translates to "thank you for all your hard work" in the Jeju dialect. There's a vague irony there, because life in the drama is mostly a thankless journey where hard work is unavoidable, but the characters live in hope and with the knowledge that each will always be there for the other.

3. Tangerines does not mine any particularly new territory. Nostalgia is a common trope in kdrama, after all. Whether it's the warmth of community and adolescent friendship that Reply 1988 mined so effectively, or the multigenerational trauma of dramas like Youth of May and Pachinko, reaching into the past to explain the present has been done before. So why does Tangerines stand out?

4. Well, for starters, it's a legitimately well-made drama. The acting is excellent. While IU and Park Bo-gum are the big stars who get top billing and most of the promotional attention, it is the older actors in Tangerines who really stand out. Moon So-ri and Park Hae-joon play the middle-aged Ae-sun and Gwang-sik, respectively. Their characters are more complex and layered than the younger versions and Moon and Park inhabit their roles so well I forgot I was watching actors playing a part. Others in the cast deserve attention too, including Yeom Hye-ran as Ae-sun's mother, the veteran Na Moon-hee as Ae-sun's grandmother, and in a much hyped special role, Kim Seon-ho as Ae-sun's ultimate son-in-law.

Shot on location in Jeju, each frame is sumptuously constructed and gorgeously lit. A significant portion of the budget was used to make the sets look and feel as authentic as possible. The director, Kim Won-seok (Misaeng, My Mister) is an award-winning veteran of the slice-of-life genre and his deft touch is all over Tangerines too. If you have seen his other work, you will recognize the quiet and lingering moments that made those dramas so profound.

The writing is also excellent. The screenplay is from acclaimed writer Lim Sang-choon (When the Camellia Blooms) and he brings to Tangerines the same lyrical but gentle storytelling that marked his other work. But Tangerines doesn’t immediately bring to mind any of these dramas.

5. I think this is because--for all its art--Tangerines is not particularly subtle. It’s a bit ham-handed and unsubtle with its allusions. For example, a movie theater about to shut down shows Cinema Paradiso as its final feature; you don’t have to hit viewers over the head with symbolism! You can instead credit them with the emotional intelligence to understand what you are laying down.

I often joke that I'm dead inside, so a lot of dramas known for their Very Big Feelings don't touch me. But the truth is, I sobbed through parts of Tangerines, and mostly because the drama sometimes reflected my life as a daughter and mother back at me.

Tangerines deserves a world of credit for building its narrative around women, and specifically around mothers and daughters. This is relatively uncharted territory for kdrama, and in making all its female characters friends and well wishers rather than competitors or antagonists, the drama crafts an enduring sisterhood of shared pain and joy, a common thread that unites its variations generations, each woman reaching into the past and helping to pull others into the future.

I don't doubt that others are taking home similar feelings from watching this drama. Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to anoint this one of the best dramas ever, I don't think the entirety of Tangerines rises above an extremely well-executed nostalgia trip, and so the whole felt considerably less than the sum of its parts to me.

6. Tangerines gives us a Forrest Gump-like run through modern Korean history. Over the course of the drama, South Korea goes from a land of desperate poverty and tragedy caused by war and partition, to a developing country of hope and the happiness that comes from growth and relative prosperity. Inevitably, it grows into a wealthy nation of materialistic success and the loss of innocence and deprivation of community that comes with that. Finally, it comes into its own and becomes an example and beacon for the rest of the world. This is very much in line with South Korea's image of itself, and I can see why the drama would hit just right for an audience already primed for this narrative.

Just as the passage of time dulls the sharpest and most painful memories, so it is that Koreans today have only a remote sense of the old country, a thing to be bathed in the golden light of memory and presented on a platter to a generation raised on candy and comfort.

At the end of it all, the drama feels like a wish for an eternal spring of joy and dreams, an ode to eternal nostalgia.

7. Unlike Tom Hanks' eponymous character in Forrest Gump though, Ae-sun isn't just an impartial and mostly indifferent observer of Korea. Tangerines' conceit is that Ae-sun IS Korea.

Like Korea itself, Ae-sun is a tragic orphan made by war and privation who fights against the unfairness of it all and then grows into a hopeful adult who makes her own choices. She lives with the consequences, always grateful for every step she takes forward and more than willing to invest in the generation that comes next. Through Ae-sun, that Korea gives birth to a generation that is in a state of perpetual adolescent whining, wanting always to move ahead, rebellious but unable to achieve what it wants because it’s held back by the past that it loves and respects but doesn’t quite understand. Ironically, of course, it will be this generation of perennial adolescents who will craft their parents’ memories into the softly filtered stuff of kdrama.

8. There’s a moment in the drama where an SNU student—one from a privileged background—says that empathy comes with development. And so it is that Ae-sun's daughter, Geum-myeong, the petulant teen Korea, comes face-to-face with the class struggle that defines the materialistic adult that Korea will become. Of course, there's the inevitable virtue signaling from the wealthy about compassion in an evolved society, about unsafe neighborhoods that look like Harlem in the 1980s. But underneath it all, there is a deep current of unfairness. The child Korea once successfully fought against it, but the adult Korea can’t do anything about. That child Korea gets left behind, a house to be mortgaged for the regretful but needy adolescent, only the shiny candy of nostalgia left behind to mark it.

Ae-sun's surviving son Eun-myeong represents the other end of the adolescent Korean spectrum. The inexorable move towards economic progress also leaves some young people behind, and those who can't get by with hard work and book smarts alone have to use ingenuity and flexibility instead. This generation will take short cuts to get ahead and maybe end up breaking the law. This is the generation that will plunge Korea into debt and then pull it out, one fried chicken (or, as in this drama, squid) restaurant or at a time.

Ae-sun’s most prized possession is a mother-of-pearl inlaid wardrobe. In the move to away from their rural Jeju home to a modern apartment, the wardrobe takes some damage and ultimately feels out of place in their cramped dwelling, a relic of an older and more traditional past. This mirrors how old bonds of community and family have been sidelined in a modern Korea where everyone is struggling for time, money, and space.

Ae-sun’s toddler grandchildren will be the ones who grow up on TikTok, a generation of digital natives so removed from community that pointing at a hospital sign will be all the empathy it can muster for Ae-sun’s generation, for the Korea that once was.

9. Tangerines is not easily slotted into a single genre, oscillating between slice-of-life and melodrama and romance, never lingering in any spot too long but combining them altogether in a pastiche of memories and emotions.

It’s a drama that has something for everyone, but also feels like it's trying just a bit too hard to be everything to everyone. There is an enduring, if slightly syrupy, central love story. There is the inevitable struggle of parents and the push-pull they have with their children, there is both loss and triumph in equal parts, a vaguely old-timey OST, and finally, some stellar acting that deserves widespread recognition.

In summary, Tangerines is eminently watchable and will probably win a boatload of awards. I don't know if it is the best drama ever, however, and maybe that is not even a category that should exist.

10. Finally, a word about the OST.

The soundtrack includes a number of original compositions written specifically for Tangerines, many of them meant to reflect Ae-sun's particular journey. But for once, none of these really stood out to me with one notable exception. The title track, Spring, is a re-release of a 1973 album from 1970s rock star Kim Jung-mi. The song combines Korean folk with a bossa nova beat, some jazz stylings, and Kim Jung-mi's own psychedelic pop-rock and is just magical. (Kim Jung-mi's story including her fall from grace and ultimate disappearance from the music scene would make a great kdrama all its own, but that's a nostalgia trip for another day!)