When Life Gives You Tangerines (폭싹 속았수다, 2025) Review

A seventy-year-old woman in a nursing home sits at a table and looks at a blank sheet of paper. Once she was a poet, but now… now she only wants to write a single word. A word to which no one will respond anymore.  

“Mother....” 

This story began more than sixty years earlier, on Jeju Island, when a little girl stood on the shore of a restless sea, waiting for the head of the only person close to her to appear on the surface. The daughter of an exhausted diver working herself to the bone does not yet know how her life will turn out, while a neighbor boy watches her, ready to share the last thing he has…

"When Life Gives You Tangerines” is a drama that is deep and at the same time simple, just like its main characters. It is wise. Thoughtful. Touching. It strikes straight to the heart—draining you with the pain of loss and the complexity of life’s trials that the characters go through. This is a story of modest, poor, yet dignified people with their own dreams, not all of which are destined to come true… but does that really matter at the end of the journey?

The series has two narrators and a delightful nonlinear narrative: the past influences the future, and the future contextualizes the past. The threads of fate turn out to be intertwined far more than a simple chain of coincidences, and you only see the full picture closer to the finale—sad, heartbreaking, and at the same time… strangely peaceful.

“When Life Gives You Tangerines” is a very sincere, nostalgic, and heartfelt work. Perhaps it is the most Korean of Korean series: a quiet epic spanning three generations of one family and changing eras—from the poor 60s to the somewhat more confident 70s, from the dictatorship of the 80s to the financial crisis of the 90s—and so on, up to 2025. It is a large-scale story of alternating growth, decline, and painful recovery of a tiny family that began with two people who simply loved and supported each other no matter what.

And so they grew old together.

By the way, the title of the story is no coincidence: it’s not just a play on the famous saying “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” The original Korean title is a folk expression from that very island of Jeju, meaning “thank you for your hard work.” If you’ve already watched the series, those words will definitely make you tear up (again).

About tears—I’m not exaggerating. Be prepared that even restrained viewers will have watery eyes EVERY episode—and more than once. Some plot twists can make you cry for real: without spoilers, the weather on the island is not always cloudless, and all paths eventually come to an end.

The series is beautifully shot, excellently directed, and the script is crafted with incredible precision. The music is chosen as well as it possibly could be. But above all, the actors deserve mention: some of them play more than one role, emphasizing the motif of interconnected times and the cyclical nature of history (there’s also a cultural, if not religious, subtext here). The main roles in their younger versions are portrayed by singer IU (Lee Ji-eun) and Park Bo-gum; the same characters at a more mature age are played by Moon So-ri and Park Hae-joon, and one of the important (conditionally) supporting characters is played by Yum Hye-ran—a name worth remembering: she often appears in the background of popular films and series, but this particular role is pure gold. You won’t be able to see her face in other projects without recalling “When Life Gives You Tangerines”.

So the main advice: definitely watch it, but not in one go. Netflix has accustomed us to binge-watching culture, but series are divided into episodes for a reason. Don’t torture yourself—savor the story slowly (you’ll save on tissues and therapy).

“None of us grew up completely. But every time our hearts felt the pain of growing, we all grew a little…”

A wonderful series, an instant classic. A thoughtful Korean drama of the highest class: the truth of life, gentle sadness, and reflections on the nature of life and the complexity of family relationships, where everyone somehow hurts everyone else, yet mistakes are unavoidable… You’ll want to return to it after some time—if you can overcome the intense pain (which is unlikely). On the other hand, isn’t our whole life made up of pain and inevitable regrets? An endless cycle of mistakes and wounds—in which, nevertheless, there is something bright.

Life is divided into spring, summer, autumn, and winter… but after winter, spring may come again.

“...When it becomes hard to breathe in dark waters, you need to stay closer to others to survive. Otherwise, fear will squeeze your heart, and you won’t manage. Go together with others. If you do, 100 miles will feel like ten. No one can live alone…”

😓

Rating: 10/10, a legend. Definitely watch it if you’re ready to feel vulnerable and open yourself to conversations about things we usually don’t want to think about. It will hurt—but in pain, we grow.

An endless rapeseed field—forever in the heart.

P.S. The music in the opening song is the beginning of Kim Jung Mi’s song “Spring,” 1973:

Where the crimson flowers bloom,
When the spring breeze blows,
Yellow butterflies flutter freely
And soar upward,
When the branches of deep blue trees,
Yellow birds sing
And play by the water’s edge…”