It's been over two weeks since When Life Gives You Tangerines concluded its 16-episode run on Netflix, yet the drama refuses to leave the hearts and timelines of viewers. Threads, reels and long-captioned posts are still flooding in - from young women dreaming of a love like Ae-sun's to older viewers seeing their own lives mirrored in Jeju's rocky shores. What is it about this seemingly simple story that has everyone clinging to it like a cherished memory? The answer lies in its gentle storytelling, its unabashed sentimentality and most of all in Yang Gwan-sik.
Set across six decades on Jeju Island, When Life Gives You Tangerines is a slow-burning, emotionally layered story of Oh Ae-sun (played by IU and later Moon So-ri) and Yang Gwan-sik (Park Bo-gum and Park Hae-joon), childhood sweethearts whose bond endures poverty, societal pressures, personal loss and the mundane challenges of everyday life. But to reduce this series to a love story would be to oversimplify it. This drama is a love poem written to life itself, to the quiet grit of women like Ae-sun and to the gentle strength of men like Gwan-sik.
Yang Gwan-sik, The Greenest FlagIn a sea of romantic leads who are either emotionally unavailable or unrealistically perfect, Gwan-sik stands out-not as a fantasy, but as the kind of man whose goodness feels attainable, because it's rooted in small, consistent acts of care. His love is not performative, it's not punctuated by grand gestures or fiery confessions. It's the kind of.
