Youth of May: A K-drama review

Youth of May is a period/melodrama that aired from the 3rd of May to the 8th of June 2021. It stars the actress Go Min-si who plays Kim Myung-Hee. You might know her from the shows 'Sweet home' and 'Love alarm'. Lee Do-Hyun plays the role of Hwang Hee-tae. His previous works include 'Sweet Home' and 'Hotel Del Luna'.

I don't think anyone could've played these roles as well as they did. The main character needed to have all that emotion and vulnerability that we could see in Lee Do-Hyun. He was unapologetically in love, and I loved that he cried so freely, the situations hopeless enough that crying felt like the only rationale thing to do.

A dozen roses to Go Min-si, I practically fell in love with Myung-hee alongside Hee-tae. Go Min-si is absolutely beautiful and talented, her acting was able to capture the small emotional nuances and she conveyed her emotions so well. The chemistry with Lee Do-Hyun was so effortless.

This was such a good drama, very reminiscent of everything that makes kdrama’s unique. It gave me all the feelings but at the same time, there was so much underlying sadness. There were some lessons to be learned too. Like with Myeong-soo's first race where he lost his shoe but kept on running, and the policeman who let the people go when he knew that he would get badly beat up.

The soundtrack was so unbelievably sad and perfectly suited for every scene. I felt so many emotions; anxiety because I knew what was coming, sadness because I knew someone would die, and happiness because this drama made me fall in love with K-dramas all over again. It had all the little tropes, the comedy, and the emotion.

Two episodes that I wanna talk about are 7 and 12.

Episode 7: That was a whole journey wasn’t it? I was frozen throughout and I had to remind myself to move or I’d cramp. The last scene was so well planned. There was the scene a few episodes ago where Hee Tae had been waiting for Myeong Hee’s answer on whether she would date him, and then as they separated, we could hear his inner voice saying ‘turn back’ continuously, which I loved because whenever I watch scenes like that my thoughts are exactly the same and so it was nice that they confirmed that the main character wants that as well, in that episode she did turn back. In this episode, they had to stop seeing each other and as she went into her house he willed for her to turn back again, but this time she didn’t and immediately she closed the gate behind her he just burst into tears, and I burst into tears right along with him because I was also willing her to turn back.

Episode 12: First of all, I think that the way Myeong hee and Hee Tae separated wasn’t executed well. Jung Tae had just been shot and then a few minutes later Myeong soo decides to walk to Naju? He had good rationale but I think it was out of place and rushed. I excepted that the thing that would bring everything to a head would be based on something that had already been brewing. I also wish we got to see Hwang Ki Nam suffer more, like yeah it’s nice that his family left him, but this man killed and tortured too many people for us not to get any type of gratification in his karma.

That aside, the last episode also had me in a ball of tears, it was sad that Hee Tae never got to know what happened to Myeong Soo for 40 years, and it’s sad that this is the reality for people in real life who had similar situations to him. Throughout the episode, I imagined a life where Hee-Tae had met Myeong-soo and Hwang Ki-nam didn’t exist or if it was another time period. It’s the ‘what could’ve beens’ that gets you.

The deaths were another thing that the show did well. The storyline about the policeman who died because he let the captured citizens go was one that added such a good layer to this story, he knew what was going to happen to him and that didn’t stop him. I also wish we had gotten more scenes with him and Soo-ryeon.

Myeong- hee’s father had such a heartbreaking story, and I loved the bond he had with his son. His character had a lot of complexity, it was impossible to hate him because he was just a man who had been through a lot. His storyline with Myeong Hee had such sad undertones because what he told her in the interrogation room wasn’t right, but at the same time, knowing that he had been through the same thing made the picture much clearer. We didn’t get a lot of scenes with Hye-gun, his death was really scarring and I’m glad he got to take Hwang Ki Nam down with him.

A very well-told story, it had me doing a lot of research on the Gwangju uprisings and I think it is a period in time that everyone should know about.

Rating: 9.7/10