When Life Gives You Tangerines is a show where the only villain is life.

When Life Gives You Tangerines premiered on Netflix on March 7, 2025, and ended on March 28, 2025. The K-drama has 16 episodes, each about an hour long. The cast includes some of Korea’s biggest and best actors, such as IU and Park Bo-gum, who play the characters Oh Ae-sun and Yang Gwan-sik. 

The drama’s high anticipation came from IU being part of the show. Lee Ji-eun, who goes by the stage name of IU, is a South Korean actress, singer, and songwriter. She is a solo singer and is widely influential and loved by Korean and Western audiences. When she first debuted in 2008, she was only 15 years old and quickly gained popularity and praise for her vocals and her originality in songwriting. Her breakthrough single was “Good Day,” which was iconic, and since then, she has released multiple critically acclaimed albums, like Palette, Love, Poem, and Lilac. Her career as an actress has seen a lot of success, too. IU has starred in really popular shows like Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo, My Mister, and Hotel Del Luna. All the shows are so different from each other, and each of them tells a different story with a depth of emotion. This showcases her versatility in acting. There was high anticipation due to her because her last acting project was in 2019, which was Hotel Del Luna, and it would be her comeback with When Life Gives You Tangerines.

When Life Gives You Tangerines is a show that follows Oh Ae-sun and Oh Yang Gwan-sik on their life journey. The show is set in Jeju Island, South Korea, and it spans from the 1950s to the 2000s. Although Ae-sun was raised in poverty with no access to school, she is a strong-willed, rebellious young woman who aspires to be a poet one day. Yang Gwan-sik is a kind, loyal man who quietly supports Ae-sun through all of her hardships and all the different stages of life. The core plot of the show follows the lifelong love story of Ae-sun and Gwansik and how they face emotional, societal, and historical hardships and get through them together. It also highlights Korea’s evolving history, such as cultural, economic, and political changes.

Life is the biggest villain

The fact that When Life Gives You Tangerines does not rely on conventional antagonists is among its most remarkable features. There isn’t any corporate villain, a scheming rival, or a dangerous ex. The real villain, however, is something much more universal and relentless: life itself. From a very young age, Ae-sun was forced to be mature because her mother passed away and she had to be the one to take care of her step-siblings, and sell cabbages to make money. Ae-sun once aspired to be a poet, but she had to give it up due to expectations and poverty. As a girl, she was not provided the same opportunities as a male would have been. When she got married and had kids, her priorities changed, and she mainly focused on taking care of her family and Gwan-sik’s family, too. Her dreams were never shattered, but reality didn’t leave room for dreams. Similarly, Gwan-sik was a gifted runner with the potential to win a gold medal, but he sacrificed everything to support his family. He took grueling jobs, endured disrespect from his boss, and never fought back because putting food on the table for his family was more important than his dignity. He hid all his physical and mental pains from Ae-sun because he didn’t want to stress her since she was pregnant, and he knew she would never allow him to keep working, and he couldn’t afford to lose the job.

When Life Gives You Tangerines is a reminder that the biggest battles are not fought against enemies, but with time, sacrifices, and circumstances. When Life Gives You Tangerines is a story of love and resilience between two people who, despite all the hardships, never left each other alone, and got through all the hardships together.