Review of When the Weather is Fine / 날씨가 좋으면 찾아가겠어요

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

About a year ago (at the time of typing this) I quit my job as a professional film critic to explore what was out there in the world when it came to publishing about the movies and books I wanted to see, not just what was popular in the moment. Digital media and working within it can be fun and all, but it can be grinding when you’re just chasing after all the latest trends and clicks for SEO.

I started this blog four years ago, during the pandemic, but never really took it seriously beyond the occasional post here and there about what I was up to. In 2023 I began to realize the impact this blog was having on me, and other people were reaching out about reading it, so I expanded. Once I quit my job, I decided to focus on the blog more while job hunting, as I do make a few pennies here and there from the display ads on the screen.

I’ve been typing this out a lot lately, as I got through a good handful of shows and movies during this time, but basically I spent a lot of my free time catching up on movies, books, and television shows. I also traveled a little bit because I had the finances to do so (and family all over the world, which helps in some ways), so I was living my best life despite trying to figure out when my next big paycheck was going to come my way.

Not only have I been catching up on my usual Korean drama circuit, but I’ve also been watching more Turkish, Arabic, and American television shows as of late. The world is my oyster when we have access to the entire world’s catalogue of movies and shows (albeit limited because of subtitles). This blog post is dedicated to a Korean drama though: When the Weather is Fine.

I had low expectations going into this show, but was blown away by what I saw. Let’s get into the review, as this is a fun one!

After returning to her snowy hometown, a woman finds solace in an old male friend running a quaint bookshop.

Our female lead is who we first meet in this drama: Mok Hae-won. She lives in Seoul, is a cellist, and works there, even though she’s not from the area, but when things go awry in her personal and professional lives, she decides to quit her job and head back to her home in Gangwon Province.

She’s not originally from the town of Hyecheon, where aunt, an inn owner, currently lives, but it’s the closest place to home she can call right now. So Hae-won returns back to Hyecheon, where the winter season is slowly picking up and the snowflakes are coming down hard.

It’s when she comes across an old classmate, Eun-seob, that the Hae-won begins picking the pieces of her life back together. All of her old friends, who are seen in the B plot, tend to get together to go eating and drinking, but it’s with Eun-seob that a spark seems to emerge from within Hae-won.

He runs a small bookstore next door, and while he has his own trauma to sort through over the course of the series, we see him writing blog entries on his website. Hae-won does eventually find this out and has some time to discover when and where he’s been putting these thought dumps on the Internet, but there’s a lot to get through before that point.

As Eun-seob and Hae-won continue interacting with each other, slowly dancing through that typical Korean drama fashion of “are they together? they obviously having feelings for each other,” the snowy weather and winter continues to pick up. There are other points of conflict and tension, especially when we learn there’s an entire murder subplot going on towards the end up the show that is kind of just thrown in there.

This is a fairly slow drama, especially considering the rural setting—I’ve watched other shows in similar settings, but this one felt very intentional and slow in a way that was productive. There’s little sprinkles of literature and poetry put into this as well, which might be why I loved this show so much. It felt like visual poetry at so many points throughout, and the cinematography is gorgeous.

One of the other main highlights that’s so mundane, but works well for this show specifically, is the book club. The characters would all gather for a book club in some of the episodes, which to me was so cute and added to the realistic layer created by this world. These characters genuinely felt like people we could and would encounter in the real world, which is an indicator of good writing.

Overall Thoughts

I legitimately was not expecting to like this drama as much as I did, as I didn’t know much about it going into it. I find Park Min-young dramas are hit or miss for me, and while she was the weaker link in this show (although the male lead is more stoic, which is easier to act out), I thought she did a great job.

I also really liked both of the leads, even though the male lead felt a little bit like a unicorn in how gentle he was. He has his moments where he unravels and has his vulnerable periods, which I could appreciate for more characterization. He definitely fits the bill as someone who owns a bookstore—which reminds me, I wish we could see more of Hae-won and her cello.

All of this is to say: I really recommend this show if it seems like something that’s interesting to you from the synopsis. I was really inspired after watching it for my own creative writing, as it reminded me of the power of simple, but effective storytelling throughout its run time. The biggest critique I have is that murder subplot, as it feels kind of thrown in there and a slightly random way to end the series.

I have a U.S. Netflix account, so I was able to watch this show on Netflix if you’re looking for where to watch it!

Follow me below on Instagram, Letterboxd, and Goodreads for more.