“A Love So Beautiful” runs 24 episodes across one season, premiering on KakaoTV on December 28, 2020, and closing on February 20, 2021. It drew 37.3 million cumulative views over that run, and it streams worldwide on Netflix. Those numbers describe a show that found its audience fast. The better question is whether it earns them.
Trailer, via Netflix K-Content.
Shin Sol-i and the Neighbor Next Door
The series follows five high school friends from youth into adulthood. At the center is Shin Sol-i (So Joo-yeon), a cheerful seventeen-year-old at Chun Ji High School. She has a crush on her classmate and neighbor Cha Heon (Kim Yo-han). She confesses her love to him repeatedly.
Cha Heon appears distant. He is not cold — he is awkward when it comes to expressing his feelings. That gap between how he seems and what he actually feels is the engine of the whole show.
It is a familiar engine. “A Love So Beautiful” is a South Korean web series based on the 2017 Chinese series of the same name. That version came from the novel To Our Pure Little Beauty by Zhao Qianqian, which aired on Tencent Video. So this is a remake of a remake’s source material, and it carries the shape of one.
Woo Dae-seong Transfers In
Yeo Hoe-hyun plays Woo Dae-seong, a national swimmer who transfers to Chun Ji High School and falls in love with Shin Sol-i. That arrival sets the triangle in motion: the girl who confesses and gets nothing back, the boy who cannot say what he means, and the newcomer who says it plainly.
The cast fills out the friend group and the adults around it:
- Jo Hye-joo as Kang Ha-Young
- Jung Jae-Oh as Jung Jin-hwan
- Park Ji-won as Oh Hee-Ji
- Kim Dong-Kyu as Wang Se-Hyeong
- Choi Bo-min as Na Mi Nyeo
- Yoo Ji-yeon as Lee Su-Jin
- Ji Hwa-seop as Lee Joo Hwan
- Seong Hye-Min as Moon Sook Hee
- Kim Sung-gon as Teacher Cho
Seo Min-jeong directed. Choi Yu-jeong and Jang Yu-yeon wrote it. Kakao M confirmed the leads — So Joo-yeon, Kim Yo-han and Yeo Hoe-hyun — on July 27, 2020, after reports on July 6 that Kim and So were considering the roles. Jo Hye-joo joined in August as the protagonist’s best friend.
Five Friends, One Long Growing Up
The premise is stated plainly in the show’s own synopsis: love is as tough as it is sweet for a lovestruck teenager, whose relationship with her next-door neighbor transforms as they grow into adulthood.
That word — transforms — is doing the work. The series is not really about whether Shin Sol-i wins Cha Heon. It is about the years it takes for two people to become capable of each other. High school is the setting. Adulthood is the point.
This is where the 24-episode order matters. A story about slow change needs room to be slow. The show airs new episodes every Monday, Thursday and Saturday at 17:00 KST, which is a three-times-a-week rhythm — fast enough to keep momentum, spaced enough to let each stage of the friendship land.
What the Score Says
The published audience score for “A Love So Beautiful” sits at 8.3/10 across 619 votes on TMDB. That is a real signal, and it matches what the show is: a well-liked, well-made version of a story people already loved once.
It is not a high-wire act. The Korean series inherits its plot, its love triangle and its central character from the Chinese original, and it does not pretend otherwise. What it brings is execution — a lead pair whose dynamic depends on restraint rather than declaration, and a supporting cast large enough to make the five-friend premise feel populated rather than theoretical.
Love is as tough as it is sweet for a lovestruck teenager, whose relationship with her next-door neighbor transforms as they grow into adulthood.
That is the show’s own logline, and it is honest about the size of the thing.
Where the Show Actually Lives
The strongest choice here is Cha Heon. A distant love interest is easy to write badly — he becomes a wall the heroine bounces off. Making him awkward instead of indifferent changes the math. Shin Sol-i’s repeated confessions are not pitched at a boy who does not care. They are pitched at a boy who cannot answer. That is a harder scene to write, and it is the reason the central relationship holds up across a full season.
Woo Dae-seong works for the same reason. He is a national swimmer, which gives him a life outside the classroom, and he falls for Shin Sol-i without the hesitation that defines Cha Heon. He is the version of the story where someone just says it. The show is smart enough to know that is not automatically the better version.
The weakness is the same one that dogs every remake of a beloved original: familiarity. If you have seen the 2017 Chinese series, you know where this goes. The Korean version does not reinvent the arc. It re-performs it, with a cast that was assembled carefully — Kim Yo-han and So Joo-yeon were in talks in early July 2020, confirmed by the end of the month — and a production that clearly understood the assignment.
37.3 Million Views and What They Mean
The 37.3 million cumulative views across 24 episodes is the number that matters most here. That is not a niche result. A web series that premieres on KakaoTV and lands worldwide on Netflix, then holds an audience for two months of thrice-weekly drops, has done something right.
The 8.3/10 score across 619 votes is a smaller sample, and it should be read as one. It reflects the people who sought the show out and rated it, not the whole streaming audience. It is a good sign, not a verdict from the culture at large.
What it does confirm is that the material travels. A 2017 Chinese series, itself built from Zhao Qianqian’s novel, became a 2020 Korean series with a Korean cast, Korean writers and a Korean director — and the emotional core survived the trip intact. That is the actual achievement of “A Love So Beautiful.”
The Verdict on A Love So Beautiful
This is a show that knows exactly what it is and does it well. It is a coming-of-age drama about five high school students moving from youth to adulthood, and it never tries to be more than that. The restraint in Cha Heon, the steadiness of Shin Sol-i, the clean counterweight of Woo Dae-seong — those are the parts that carry it.
It will not surprise anyone who knows the original. It will not break new ground in the genre. What it will do is deliver 24 episodes of a love story that takes its time and trusts its audience to wait.
That is worth 8.3.
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