#no choi ung hate allowed

[euyrdice]

interesting to me that people are like choi woong FINALLY said i love you. but he’s being saying it this whole time.

#our beloved summer #choi ung #choi woong #i get that she wanted to literally hear it. but it always seemed so loud #everything he did felt like a confession #anyways i love him sm #no choi ung hate allowed #🍓.txt

[offbeatcappuccino]

all the things I hate about you ~ our beloved summer episode 3 recap+ analysis

If I had to choose a favorite episode of Our Beloved Summer, I would say it's a tie between Episode 3 and Episode 6. One of the biggest challenges with the screenplay is trying to seamlessly interweave the past and present to create an engaging narrative. The creators of Our Beloved Summer do this effortlessly in conjunction with character narration. In this episode, the narration allows us to examine Choi Ung's perspective of Kook Yeon Soo.

The episode starts off with Choi Ung narrating everything he hates about Yeon Soo.

She's too selfish, he says and we witness Yeon Soo refusing to share her notes with a fellow classmate. Instead, she rips apart her notes.

She's too competitive, Choi Ung complains and we see a college-aged Ung and Yeon Soo at a bar, where he lets her know that she can drink as much as she wants because he'll take her home. The comment irks Yeon Soo and sparks her competitive spirit. Ung is forced to partake in an intense soju shot battle with Yeon Soo that leaves him intoxicated and nauseous.

She's too aggressive. Ung is trying to de-escalate a fight that Yeon Soo appears to be picking with senior college students

She always prioritizes her work over me. A college-aged Ung asks Yeon Soo to come with him to see the last day of cherry blossoms. Yeon Soo swiftly refuses to take a day off from her part-time job at the library.

As this montage ends, Choi Ung's classmate remarks to Ung that his girlfriend has a terrible personality and Ung swiftly comes to her defense. This is when Ung narrates perhaps his least favorite thing about Yeon Soo, which is that he's the only person who has seen a side to Yeon Soo that no one else has seen. Then, there are these beautiful moments of tenderness that follow.

Yeon Soo tapes her notes back up for Ung to study for the quiz.

Yeon Soo carries Ung on her back when he's too intoxicated to walk back home.

Yeon Soo shares a laugh with him and his mother as they clean bean sprouts together

Yeon Soo stands up to Choi Ung's bullies and threatens them when they try to haze Ung

Yeon Soo makes up for not being able to see the cherry blossoms with Ung. She gathers the fallen petals by hand and showers them on Ung while he waits for her outside of the convenience store.

For a boy who voluntarily closed himself off from the miseries of reality and chose to instead live in a constructed world of afternoon naps and sunny daydreams, Yeon Soo showed him that reality could be beautiful. She brought an unquantifiable amount of joy and light into Ung's life. The five years that Ung spent with Yeon Soo were his happiest. When Yeon Soo unexpectedly breaks up with Ung, he's left mourning all the special and unique memories he's had with her. He knows aside from Yeon Soo that is non-existent for others, which is why he can't simply brush her off by saying he deserves better. For Ung, Yeon Soo was flawed yet perfect. Cold yet warm. Stubborn yet yielding. Selfish yet generous. Apathetic yet compassionate. Ung's first love was a beautiful enigma of haphazardly tangled contradictions.

Ung's response to the breakup is like a helicopter crashing into a multiple vehicle car collision on the I-10 with a growing wildfire razing the California palm trees in the background. Ung becomes unhinged as he sets off on a mission to do everything possible to spite Yeon Soo. He starts to get obnoxiously drunk because Yeon Soo hates drunk people. He splurges on convenience food snacks because Yeon Soo hates people who waste money. His friends try to pull his life back together by signing him up for spin classes and encouraging him to work part-time jobs and study the stock market, Ung's depression and heartbreak, cumulate in him locking himself up in his room for days. His parents and friends are frantically worried and just when they're ready to break open the door, they find Ung's soulless eyes overlooking a multitude of drawings- Ung has been spending his self-imposed exclusion doing nothing but drawing constantly.

A recurring motif throughout the show is Ung's hyper-focused state of productivity. With most other shows, such as Run On, where Mi Joo pulls all-nighters to translate English films, we see passion and joy. The scenery is bright and we see Mi Joo at her most content. On the other hand, in Our Beloved Summer, Ung works in his basement with mellow music playing in the background. He's buried in his work and we see passion, but there are hints of melancholy. Ung isolates himself from the rest of the world as his way of expressing his discontent with reality. As an audience, we are proud of him, but there's an understated and palpable pain present in Ung's art. It's disheartening to see a boy, who wanted nothing more than a restful peaceful life battling chronic insomnia. Ung has always valued the simple things in life. Even his name, "Ung" (monosyllabic) is uncomplicated in comparison to most Korean first names, which are bisyllabic ( e.g. Yeon Soo, Ji Woong, Sol Yi). Yet, his art is painstakingly and paradoxically intricate Baroque-esque drawings of lofty buildings. Ung has the classic underdog story, but his professional success does little to conceal the fact that his life has strayed far from his humble ambitions.

Considering his complicated past with Yeon Soo, Choi Ung is quick to decline Ji Woong's request to reshoot the documentary with Yeon Soo. As he starts to encounter Yeon Soo more frequently throughout his everyday life, he's left frustrated and annoyed that Yeon Soo doesn't seem to be affected at all by their breakup. Choi Ung is petty and he realizes that making Yeon Soo participate in the documentary, is an excellent opportunity for him to relish Yeon Soo's misery, even though he will be equally as miserable. Knowing that Yeon Soo is desperate to sign him as an artist for her company partner's event, Ung takes advantage of the situation, setting into motion the reshooting of the very documentary that brought them together nearly a decade ago.

It's easy to dismiss Ung as the immature goofy high school boyfriend with anxious attachment issues. However, through his portrayal, Choi Woo Shik paints hues to the multidimensional character of Choi Ung. Woo Shik excels in acting cute and innocent when necessary ( remember Hogu's Love), but he's shown time and time again that he's one of Korea's finest actors. No wonder that he has won accolades for his acting in some of Korea's most beloved works- Train to Busan, Parasite, The Witcher Part I- Subversion, and an unforgettable cameo in Okja. The lingering subtle sadness and frustration of Ung are expressed beautifully through Woo Shik's expressive eyes. Dialogues that matter are given the attention they deserve. Each syllable feels like an arrow piercing the center of a dartboard. There are so many moments in this show, where Ung pushes us to be more than an indifferent spectators. We start to see ourselves and our lives collide with the lives of Kook Yeon Soo and Choi Ung.

#choi ung #kdrama #kook yeon soo #kook yeon su #kdrama reviews #korean drama #our beloved summer #sbs #netflix #enemies to lovers to enemies #kim da mi #choi woo shik #episode 3 #webtoon