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Pierce Conran

This article contains spoilers.
3/5 stars
Lead cast: Lee Se-young, Kentaro Sakaguchi
In the slow-burning romantic drama What Comes After Love, based on the novel Things That Come After Love co-written by Gong Ji-yeong and Hitonari Tsuji, the question that its title asks is repeatedly pondered.
So, in the end, what does come after love?
For the protagonists of this series, played by Lee Se-young (The Law Cafe) and Kentaro Sakaguchi, star of the Japanese adaptation of the Korean drama Signal, the answer is: more love.


This begs the question of whether things could have turned out any other way. And if this was indeed an inevitable conclusion, was the journey towards the answer more important than the answer itself?
The show began by asking another question: “Do you believe that there is a love that doesn’t change?”
This question answers itself pretty quickly for Korean student Choi Hong (Lee) and budding Japanese writer Aoki Jungo (Sakaguchi), whose hazy youthful romance comes to an abrupt end when Hong disappears in the middle of the night and returns to Korea.
Episode two begins with Hong opining, through her farewell note to Jungo, that the love that never changes “never existed between us”. But she also says that “we knew it didn’t exist anywhere in the world”.
This is the right answer, as only those with the most naive views on romance could expect love to be a constant that never changes, but it is an odd point to note in a break-up letter.

Five years pass and these rosy-cheeked 20-somethings move into more adult seasons of their lives. Back in Korea, Hong works for her father’s publishing company, while Jungo has become a successful author.
Hong is also engaged to be married to Song Min-joon (Hong Jong-hyun, Race), one of her friends who welcomed her when she returned heartbroken from Japan.
Meanwhile, book editor Kanna Kobayashi (Anne Nakamura) has been openly interested in Jungo for years.
The press tour for Jungo’s book What Comes After Love?, which anonymously chronicles his relationship with Hong, brings him to Korea, where his publisher turns out to be Hong’s father.
The former lovers meet again but, as author and interpreter, the professional setting compels them to hide the fact that they know each other.

The show visually contrasts these two periods by having the earlier romance in Tokyo take place in the soft sun of spring, while their adult reunion in Seoul occurs under the cold light of winter.
Their natural youthful smiles have been replaced by cold expressions and even Hong’s bouncy curls have been flattened out into listless straight hair.
Given how uninterested the leads seem in other partners – Hong does not betray the least romantic affection for her fiancé – the pair seem destined to get back together.
Jungo is angling for this but Hong is more cagey. In fact, it is hard to get any inkling about what Hong wants.
Hong finally recognises the mechanical nature of her life and decides to break up with Min-joon, who earlier in the same episode confronted Jungo at his book signing in an awkward English exchange.

Hong decides to go to Jungo at his hotel but gets the wrong idea when she sees him with Kanna at the bar and gets cold feet again.
This misunderstanding is a miniature repeat of how she broke up with Jungo in the first place. They were having some problems in their relationship as she, as a young expat in Japan, was lonely and afraid, and Jungo, at the start of his career, was not always able to be there for her.
But Hong did not leave because of Jungo. She left because her father’s business had gone bankrupt and she was scared of her overseas tuition costs being a burden on her family. Then, just as now, she uses a pretext to escape the relationship, because she is afraid of being alone.
Finally they do meet, by chance wearing matching outfits of brown polo necks and black jackets, but rather than the reunion we anticipate, she once again rebuffs him.
It is only when he misses his flight and shows up running alongside Hong by the lake that the relationship can begin anew.

Hong earlier revealed that her running habit in Japan was born out of a desire to push away her loneliness. Finally having Jungo run by her side gives her the confidence to carry on with the relationship.
The visual contrast of the timelines is brought in sharp relief in the show’s closing sentence on screen: “Spring blossoms are the answer to the snowflakes of winter.” Like the seasons, love ebbs and flows, withers and blossoms, never quite staying the same.
But let us be honest: with its languid pacing and repetitive themes, What Comes After Love might have been more effective as a film.
What Comes After Love is streaming on Viu.


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Starring Lee Se-young and Kentaro Sakaguchi, this Korean romantic drama isn’t terrible but suffers from languid pacing and repetitive themes


Starring Lee Se-young and Kentaro Sakaguchi, this Korean romantic drama isn’t terrible but suffers from languid pacing and repetitive themes.


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Review | K-drama What Comes After Love review: cross-cultural romance is too slow to be special

Starring Lee Se-young and Kentaro Sakaguchi, this Korean romantic drama isn’t terrible but suffers from languid pacing and repetitive themes