"Our Beloved Summer" – A Recommended Korean Drama on Netflix

 

“Our Beloved Summer” — Love, as the Act of Recalling a Season Long Gone

I like taking out old photo albums. In those yellowed pages are faces caught in laughter, and behind them, faint glimpses of a forgotten season—perhaps spring, or summer, or somewhere in between. It might have been a dazzling day, or a very cloudy one. And as I hold on to such memories, I feel myself slowly walking backward through the time I’ve lived.

Watching the drama Our Beloved Summer, I was reminded of a poem I once read. “Every moment with you was beautiful.” Such a simple line. This drama, like that poem, is about looking at simple things for a long time, waiting, and then pulling them out again—tenderly.

They first met as high school students, documented in a film. No one expected they’d remain in each other’s lives for so long. Top student and the lowest-ranked. Cold logic and free-spirited sensibility. Two people who seemed mismatched endured many seasons together, loving, breaking apart, and finding each other again. And as I watched, it wasn’t just the time they spent that lingered with me, but the feelings that accumulated during those years.

Love is strange. Often, it reappears from a corner of time we thought we had forgotten, like a notebook found under dust. Yeon-su (played by Kim Da-mi) appears cold, but harbors warmth. Ung (played by Choi Woo-shik) is slow and clumsy, but full of sincerity. Their relationship was far from perfect—perhaps that's why it felt real. They hurt each other because they loved too deeply, and despite the pain, they couldn’t let go.

What sets Our Beloved Summer apart is that it doesn’t merely recount love as an event—it tells love as memory. What we once cherished, what once hurt us, and what still gently remains in our hearts. These particles of emotion quietly fill every scene.

I especially liked the scenes where Ung draws alone at night. His artwork conveyed more than his words ever could. In that silence, in that stillness, his feelings arose. Truth unspoken, but deeply understood. Isn’t that what love is? And over time, that love returns to us in another form—as a drawing, as a song, as a scent from an old memory.

There is a scene where Yeon-su holds back tears while thinking of Ung. Her loneliness fluttered like a leaf trembling in the wind. Though she seemed strong, she was carrying her most vulnerable self. Aren’t we all like that? So, as people watch Yeon-su and Ung, they find themselves reflected. They remember someone from back then, or perhaps, the person they once were.

Even after the drama ends, its aftertaste lingers. Like a letter you’ve finished reading but can’t fold just yet. And within that quiet echo, I thought: perhaps love is the act of looking back. To pause in the stream of time, and breathe life once more into an old feeling. That is why this drama isn’t just about reunion—it’s about memory.

Sometimes, I think love is when we show our most honest self. That’s what Ung did, and Yeon-su too. Yeon-su could finally be vulnerable with Ung, and Ung, in front of Yeon-su, found the courage to face the world. That is the power of love. Though life wears us down, a single glance from someone we cherish gives us the will to move forward again.

Our Beloved Summer doesn’t shout its love—it whispers it gently, like an old song heard faintly through an open window. And that kind of love becomes the warm light that helps us endure life. Time changes many things, but some feelings remain. In fact, it is only after time passes that we see their true worth.

We were all Ung or Yeon-su once. Clumsy, hurt, regretful, and yet—still in love with someone. This drama gently invites us to take that time out of the drawer again. And in its soft voice, it tells us:
“You, back then—you were beautiful, too.”

After finishing the series, I found myself wanting to write a letter to someone. Or to take out an old memory and look at it slowly. That is the magic of this story—the kind that stirs forgotten feelings and makes them bloom again.