Yoo Eun-mi/Netflix
When Life Gives You Tangerines, turn on Netflix and get ready to cry—a lot.
The series that the internet can’t stop talking about is the streamer’s new K-drama, a 16-episode slice-of-life series. It’s split into four volumes that delve into love, loss, and everything in between. Set in Korea’s Jeju Island, the show follows childhood sweethearts Oh Ae-sun and Yang Gwan-sik over the course of 50 years. It’s raw, it’s real, and yes, it will probably make you cry harder than you ever thought possible.
Created by Lim Sang-choon and directed by Kim Won-seok, the show stars popular actress and singer IU as Ae-sun and Park Bo-Gum as Gwan-sik.
The show hit Netflix on Mar. 7, and since then, it has rocketed to global success. According to Entertainment Weekly, the series currently sits in the top 10 most viewed shows on Netflix in over 40 countries.
What is perhaps most indicative of the show’s success, beyond its viewing numbers, is the amount of discourse it has drummed up online, with viewers flooding Reddit threads and social media platforms to share how the series “broke” them.
“Did I finish When Life Gives You Tangerines, or did it finish me?” an X user asked.
“It finished me. It FINISHED ME,” a user responded.
Park Bo-gum as Yang Gwan-sik, IU as Oh Ae-sun / Yoo Eun-mi/Netflix
One person chose to express their emotions throughout their viewing journey by posting a series of crying emojis—the more emojis, the more time they spent crying.
Meanwhile, other fans have simply posted gifs of people sobbing, finding it a better expression of how they feel watching the show.
In a conversation with Forbes, IU and Bo-Gum shared their thoughts on why the relationship between their two characters, Ae-sun and Gwan-sik, resonates so strongly with audiences.
“While there’s that romantic love aspect to it, there’s also that strong undying love that happens between human to human as just human beings sharing their lives together,” IU said. “They rely on each other and depend on each other, and they’re each other’s biggest support. We all dream of love like that, where it’s undying. It’s hard to find that in real life.”
If you decide to give it a watch, make sure to have a box of Kleenex on hand. You’re going to need it.
