Kim Jojo does not download the app. That is the whole engine of Love Alarm, and it is worth holding onto through all fourteen episodes. In a world where a phone can tell you whether someone within 10 meters has a crush on you, the one girl who refuses the download becomes the most interesting person in the room. Created by Yu Bo-ra and based on Chon Kye-young’s Daum webtoon, Love Alarm ran two seasons on Netflix, from August 22, 2019 to March 12, 2021. It is a romance drama that keeps asking what happens when love becomes a notification.
Trailer, via Netflix Malaysia.
The 10-Meter Radius
The premise is simple and merciless. Love Alarm pings when someone in your vicinity has romantic feelings for you. Not when you like them back. Not when it is convenient. Just when the feeling exists, at a distance of 10 meters, whether you asked or not. The app becomes a social phenomenon almost immediately, and the show treats it the way we treat every platform that promises to sort our lives: everyone talks about it, everyone uses it to test their love and popularity, and almost no one stops to ask what the test is actually measuring.
Jojo is one of the few people who have yet to download it. That refusal makes her a target and a mystery. It also makes her the only character who has to find out how she feels the old way, by sitting with it.
Sun-oh, Hye-young, and the Triangle
The love triangle is the show’s second engine. Jojo starts to have feelings for Hwang Sun-oh, played by Song Kang, a handsome model. Lee Hye-yeong, played by Jung Ga-ram, has had a huge crush on Jojo for a long time. Hye-young is a fun, outgoing material artist, and his feelings predate the app, which is the point. The technology arrives and turns something private into something measurable, and the people caught inside it have to live with the readout.
Kim So-hyun plays Kim Jojo, and the series leans on her restraint. Jojo is described as a vibrant and enthusiastic high schooler, but what Kim So-hyun actually plays is someone guarding a lot. The triangle works because both boys are legible and neither is a villain. Sun-oh is the one she starts to have feelings for. Hye-young is the one who has been waiting. The app, meanwhile, keeps offering answers neither of them asked for.
Park Gul-mi and the Rest of the Ensemble
The supporting cast does real work. Go Min-si plays Park Gul-mi. Lee Jae-eung plays Chon Duk-gu. Park Ji-hoon plays Ji-Hoon. Kim Si-eun plays Yuk-jo. Ki Do-hun plays Brian Chon. Bae Da-bin plays Mon-sun. Song Seon-mi plays Jeong Mi-mi. Shim Yi-young plays Bae Gyeong-hee. Kim Young-pil plays Hwang Jae-cheol. That is a full ensemble for fourteen episodes across two seasons, and the show uses them to build a world where the app has already reshaped how teenagers rank each other.
The genre label matters here. Netflix files Love Alarm under Drama and Sci-Fi & Fantasy. The fantasy is thin but real: the app does not exist, and the show never pretends to explain how it works. It is a single speculative device dropped into an otherwise ordinary high school, and the drama comes from the fallout, not the mechanism.
What Netflix Got, and What It Cost
Love Alarm is the first Korean drama series confirmed for pick-up by Netflix. That is the fact that matters most in the show’s history, more than any plot turn. The first season was released on Netflix on August 22, 2019. It ranked as one of Netflix’s top releases and was renewed for a second season in October 2019. Season 2 was released on March 12, 2021.
The numbers after that are the interesting part. In 2021, the series ranked as the 6th most watched K-dramas worldwide on the platform. In 2022, it was the ninth most searched Korean drama worldwide. Those are two different measurements, and they tell two different stories. The 2021 figure is about people pressing play. The 2022 figure is about people still looking it up a year after it ended. A show that holds search interest after it stops releasing episodes is doing something right, or at least doing something that stuck.
The Numbers on Love Alarm
The hard figures behind the series, collected in one place.
- Created by: Yu Bo-ra
- Based on: Chon Kye-young’s Daum webtoon
- Network: Netflix
- Seasons: 2
- Episodes: 14
- First aired: August 22, 2019
- Last aired: March 12, 2021
- Renewed: October 2019
- Genres: Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
- TMDB audience score: 8.2/10 (2,046 votes)
How the Two Seasons Compare
| Season 1 | Season 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Release date | August 22, 2019 | March 12, 2021 |
| Netflix status | First Korean drama confirmed for pick-up | Follow-up to a top release |
| Renewal | Renewed October 2019 | — |
| World ranking | Ranked among Netflix’s top releases | 6th most watched K-dramas worldwide in 2021; 9th most searched Korean drama worldwide in 2022 |
That table is the cleanest way to see the shape of Love Alarm. Season 1 arrived with no template, because there was no template. It was the first Korean drama Netflix confirmed for pick-up, which means every K-drama that followed it on the platform owes it something, whether or not anyone says so. Season 2 arrived two years later into a landscape the first season helped build.
Where Love Alarm Lands
Love Alarm earns its 8.2. The app is a gimmick, and the show knows it. What saves the series is that it never treats the gimmick as the answer. The 10-meter radius is a premise, not a theme. The theme is Jojo standing outside the system while everyone around her uses it to rank themselves and each other, and the show is smart enough to let that position cost her something.
The weakness is the same as the strength. Fourteen episodes across two seasons is not a lot of room for a love triangle, a speculative device, and an ensemble of eleven named characters. Some of the supporting cast get a scene where they deserved an arc. The second season has to close a story that the first season left deliberately open, and it does so with less patience than the first season showed.
But the thing that lasts is the refusal. Jojo does not download the app. In a series about a technology that claims to remove doubt from love, the most romantic act in the whole run is a girl deciding she would rather not know. That is the idea Love Alarm is built on, and it is why the show was still being searched for in 2022, a year after it ended. The app tells you someone within 10 meters has a crush on you. It cannot tell you what to do about it. Love Alarm understands that the second part is the entire problem, and it spends fourteen episodes refusing to pretend otherwise.
Score: 8.2 of 10.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.