Review on Dear X – Disney+ Korean Drama
The Korean drama Dear X is now streaming exclusively on Disney+.
Out of all the dramas that came out this year, Dear X was one I started with absolutely zero expectations. But the moment I hit play, it pulled me in like a black hole. It was powerful enough to drag me back to this blog, which I’d barely updated for the past two years.
In this post, I want to go over the story and my thoughts on episodes 1 to 8, and also share a few guesses about what might happen next.
There will be spoilers, so if you’d rather go in blind, please skip this one!
- 1. A show I couldn’t stop watching once I started
- 2. Is Ajin a villain or a victim?
- 3. Jaeo and Junseo – the two who devote themselves to protecting Ajin
- 4. The beginning of the downfall – episode 4
- 5. The reunited trio, and the deepening spiral
- 6. The man closing in on Ajin – and what to expect from the remaining episodes
1. A show I couldn’t stop watching once I started
Normally, before I watch something, I check the cast, skim the plot, and think, “Okay, this is what I’ll look forward to this time.” But for this one, all I really knew was that Kim Yoo-jung and Kim Do-hoon were in it. I only hit play because I was bored while working out.
To me, Kim Yoo-jung has always been the actress who left a bright, youthful impression – whether it was her performance as a child in The Moon Embracing the Sun or that soft, first-love vibe she showed in 20th Century Girl.
Kim Do-hoon stood out to me in Moving, where he played the quiet honor student with supernatural powers. He felt like someone with a wide acting range.
Kim Young-dae, on the other hand, was someone I supposedly had already seen many times – but honestly, I never realized it was the same actor. Later I understood why: depending on the role, his entire aura changes so much that I never connected the dots.
People say he became widely known through Penthouse. But I’m not good with shows that have the heavy, chaotic atmosphere of something like SKY Castle mixed with messy affairs, so I never watched it. That’s why Dear X ended up becoming the work that introduced him to me in a proper way.
And even though I usually avoid dark dramas or anything with blood and violence, I somehow found myself watching straight through episode 4 without hesitating. Even I was surprised.
2. Is Ajin a villain or a victim?
After watching up to episode 8, which aired last week, what struck me was how every character – not just Ajin, Junseo, and Jaeo – leaves such a strong impression. Even the people around Ajin feel layered and memorable.
The emotional lines among the three leads are so intricately intertwined that you don’t want to miss even the smallest shift of their facial expressions and tone of voices.
At the beginning, Ajin is introduced as “a girl with sociopathic tendencies.”
But as you watch, you find yourself thinking,
“I get why she’s like this…”
and
“She’s so pitiful…”
both at the same time.
Even though she uses people, calculates situations, and doesn’t hesitate to make cruel decisions, there are so many moments that make you question,
“Is she really a bad person?”
Her first “inhuman choice” was probably when she didn’t help her biological mother as she was taking her last breath.
But can anyone really condemn her as purely evil for that moment, when she had been abused by her mother since childhood?
A father who is only interested in using her appearance to make money and beat her daily to take that money away. A stepmother(Junseo’s mom) who allowed it all, and even beat Ajin because she thought Ajin exposed a secret to Junseo.
When you see all this, it’s hard not to want to save the child she used to be. Watching her outsmart adults feels more like a natural survival instinct than wrongdoing.
The same goes for the Xs whom she took her revenges.
A classmate who hated that Ajin, despite her poverty, became a top student – and even used her own parents to try to destroy Ajin’s path.
A senior actress who bullied her out of pure jealousy.
Is it truly “abnormal” to want to fight back or escape that situation? The drama makes you question that.
The classroom scene where a teacher says, “Just because someone is bad doesn’t mean they’ll live their whole life as a bad person.”
Those words drift in the background, but they stay lodged in your mind for many episodes.
3. Jaeo and Junseo – the two who devote themselves to protecting Ajin
Jaeo and Junseo’s emotional lines toward Ajin are drawn in opposite ways.
Jaeo, scarred from his own past, seems similar to Ajin on a deeper level.
He was physically abused by his father while trying desperately to protect his younger brother. That despair shaped his entire life.
And Ajin was the only one who ever said, “I understand you.”
That’s why he never judges her. Never blames her.
He wants to be useful to the one person who truly understood him. He wants her to need him.
There are moments that suggest he feels romantic affection, but more than love between equals, it feels like longing for someone he idolizes.
Junseo, meanwhile, is someone who has watched Ajin for most of her life.
Unlike his mother – who cared for him for the sake of money – Junseo shared his time and pain with Ajin and built a bond with her that was irreplaceable. Ajin once said, “You were the first person I ever chose to stay beside me,” which shows how special he is to her.
But the day Junseo’s mother pushed Ajin’s head into the bathtub when they were children became Junseo’s lifelong trauma. He still carries deep guilt for not being able to protect her.
He often thinks, “Why did I fall in love with someone like her…?”
But every time Ajin says, “Junseo, help me,” he becomes helpless.
“I’m always on your side. I’ll never let go of you.”
He genuinely wants her to have a normal life.
But because Junseo grew up sheltered, he can never fully grasp Ajin’s darkness and pain. His desire for her to “not do bad things” suffocates her, and Ajin pushes him away as his goodness becomes a hurdle for her plans.
What does Ajin feel toward them?
She seems to find Jaeo to be someone she can laugh with – someone who makes her a little more human. But she also uses his unwavering loyalty.
With Junseo, there are moments when she collapses emotionally in front of him, almost leaning on him.
But as the story progresses, you clearly see Ajin reading and exploiting each person’s desires with unsettling accuracy. It’s how she survived adults who treated her like an object.
Can she ever return Junseo or Jaeo’s love?
The drama is billed as a “story of doomed love,” so expectations should stay low…
4. The beginning of the downfall – episode 4
When Ajin’s father, newly released from prison, suddenly appeared at her door, Junseo said:
“Don’t worry. I’ll handle everything. I won’t be useless like I was back then.”
Junseo has lived with guilt for witnessing Ajin being abused as a child and doing nothing.
But because he’s never faced direct abuse himself, he cannot truly understand how persistent and suffocating “the curse of a parent” can be.
Ajin tells him:
“You’ll never understand. You didn’t live my life. Your kindness… it always puts me in danger.”
On the other hand, when Jaeo confronts his father to protect his brother, Ajin tells him:
“You finally broke the chain that held you down. Before you were ever a perpetrator, you were a victim.”
This line perfectly captures the difference between Ajin and Junseo’s perspectives.
Then comes graduation day after her father takes her money way given by Junseo’s grandfather for her university, and she was hospitalized due to the severe damage from his violence. She was in despair knowing that now she couldn’t go to university and nothing left for her. On that day, Ajin encounters her first truly “good adult.”
Desperate to cut ties with her abusive parents forever, she crosses a line she can never return from – manipulating that good adult and pushing him into a dangerous situation to seek revenge on her father.
She even frame Junseo as a stalker and make the police hold him at the station so she cannot ruin her plans as he would not agree with it. After the event, when suspicion turns toward Ajin, Junseo tries to protect her and even falsely confesses, “I did it.” He was willing to sacrifice his entire future for her.
But in the end, Ajin moves away from him wanting to become famous in the entertainment industry and cut ties with him. Junseo warns her that her way isn’t going to bring true happiness to her but Ajin’s not a type of person who would listen to him. From here, she begins her slow but unmistakable descent into ruin.
The visuals, colors, and music of episode 4 are stunning, and the core conversation that defines Ajin and Junseo’s relationship makes the episode unforgettable.
5. The reunited trio, and the deepening spiral
After episode 4, Junseo’s guilt and doubts start accumulating.
And when Ajin gains attention in the entertainment industry, the three of them cross paths again.
In episodes 5–6, Ajin is dragged into a trouble caused by a jealous senior actress.
Wanting to a revenge on her, she turns to Junseo who came back to her life again, and Jaeo also steps in to protect her.
But the “revenge” Ajin seeks now is no longer the small-scale revenge of her past.
She exposes the senior actress, then aims even higher.
She decides to use Ingang, a well-established actor, to climb further.
When they become lovers as she planed and Ingang’s grandmother treats Ajin with genuine warmth – telling her she considers Ajin “like family”, and she knows Ingang’s love for her – Ajin shows a flicker of confusion, maybe even the possibility of change.
But when the grandmother who forgave Ajin even after she knew Ajin planned to get close to Ingang to use his fame, dies in an accident, any hope of a “normal life” Ajin had begins to crumble.
From there Ajin seems to level up with her sociopathic tendencies. Even as Ingang falls into despair and makes a tragic choice, Ajin remains distant and cold, saying, “This isn’t my fault,” and even blaming Junseo. Her emotions seem to fade further away.
Meanwhile, Junseo, who had suspected Ajin’s involvement in the grandmother’s death, realizes she was innocent. His guilt and longing come flooding back.
Her earlier words echo in him:
“If you blame me, you’re blaming your past self. No matter how much you blame me, I’ll never blame you. If you want to leave me, that’s fine. You can run away like you did before.”
His inner conflict – between guilt, hope, and a refusal to let her go – was painful to watch.
6. The man closing in on Ajin – and what to expect from the remaining episodes
Up until episode 4, both Junseo and Jaeo seemed like they would stand by Ajin no matter what.
But after what he experienced, Junseo begins forming his own moral line.
Episodes 5–8 draw a clear contrast between his sense of right and wrong and Ajin’s.
Ajin tells him:
“It’s not my fault. When I was a kid, you didn’t do anything for me.”
She keeps planting guilt in him.
But who really made Ajin this way?
If we had lived her childhood, what kind of choices would we have made?
When someone deeply wounds you, wanting to return that pain is a natural emotion.
But most people don’t cross that line – perhaps because they know how much it hurts.
And maybe the people Ajin used for revenge were actually the very ones who could have saved her.
As Jung-ho said,
“If just one truly good adult had met her when she was still young…”
Would she have turned out differently?
Where will the thread between Junseo and Ajin finally snap, and where will it reconnect?
And who is this man who seems to be following around her and watching Junseo and Jaeo? Is he related to Ingang’s death?
The director mentioned that many adult-timeline scenes weren’t in the original work, especially the later parts, which makes episode 9 to episode 12 even more intriguing. I wonder how this new character might be impacting Amin’s life from here. Would it be the same as the original webtoon or will there be any changes and we might be able to see some lights?
For the first time in a couple of years, I felt compelled to write a Korean drama review again thanks to Dear X.
Kim Yoo-jung’s performance – switching between fiery intensity and icy detachment – is amazing, but what gets me every time are Kim Young-dae’s eyes, always on the verge of tears.
What part of the drama stands out most to you?
I can’t wait for Thursday, November 27 for the episode 9 and episode 10.
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