K-Drama: Taking Us Back to Good Old 2010 Rom-Coms

King the Land | 킹더랜드 (2023)

JTBC | King the Land

When Netflix made an announcement to have 34 new Korean titles, I was thinking “where are they?!.” The k-dramas that I have been patiently waiting for just so happened to be ones’ that Netflix decided to release in the second half of the year 😅One of them is King the Land, starring Lee Junho and Im Yoon-ah. They’ve been teasing their chemistry since 2021 with their hot MBC Music Festival performance. Seemed like a dream when a 3 minute performance would turn into an entire k-drama and a rom-com genre at that!

JTBC | King the Land

After watching Yoona in the dark k-drama Big Mouth, which you can read all about here, it was refreshing to see her play a character who could not be more opposite. Cheon Sa-rang is optimistic, positive and outgoing that even her name, Sa-rang, literally translates to ‘love’ in English. The k-drama starts in 2015 where Sa-rang is applying for an internship at the most luxurious hotel, King Hotel. One of the most sought out job positions that she clearly is not qualified for. But her bright personality and smile wins the interviewers’ over. Wind to the present, and Sa-rang is now a hotelier who’s won “Best Talent” two years in a row with her smile and radiating positive energy. 

JTBC | King the Land

It’s easy to say Goo Won’s personality is the complete opposite to Sa-rang. He’s expressionless, cold-hearted and never smiles. It just so happens that he’s the heir to King Hotel and has just been promoted to head manager after coming back from London. Won and Sa-rang run into each other and let’s just say their first impressions of each other can’t get any worse. In fact, they actually met in 2015 and even then, didn’t end on the greatest terms. So meeting again with another incident caused them to have even more misunderstandings. Being the cold-hearted person that Goo Won is, he tells Sa-rang that he never wants to see her again. They soon realise that Goo Won’s wish is merely impossible as they work in the same hotel 🤭

JTBC | King the Land

For Goo Won to despise fake smiles and to meet Sa-rang who forcefully smiles to please customers, their clash in personality MAKES the k-drama! You can imagine how this k-drama will go, right? Seems like your typical rom-com chemistry but for someone that isn’t usually a big rom-com genre watcher, it’s hard to say that it’s not a good one when their chemistry is that good 🔥I also like how there’s a little more ‘drama’ thrown in King the Land. It deals with Goo Won’s trauma and the cause behind why he hates people smiling. Each episode is a slow burn to open up more on his childhood trauma making the k-drama more the reason to keep watching. If you’re an avid k-drama watcher, I’m sure we can all predict that Sa-rang will be the one to heal the trauma. But even already knowing that, I’m sure later on there are going to be very emotional scenes where boxes of tissues will be needed 🤧 If that isn’t enough, there’s the battle between Goo Won and his sister over who inherits the King Hotel conglomerate. See and be guaranteed to fall into their chemistry with the trailer and you’ll probably want this link to watch sooner than later so here you go 👉🏻 click here to watch King the Land!