Tuesday, 12th October 2021

The Guilty Secret
Drama 다시 만난 너 / The Guilty Secret
Country South Korea
Director Wang Hye Ryung
Writer Choi Yoo Ji, Kim Jae Hyuk
Transmitted 8th September 2019 to 17th October 2019
Cast Kim Nu Ri, Kim Seo Yeon, Lee Jin Sol
Themes Romance, Drama, School
Details 12 10-minute episodes
Links Han Cinema

This is short and sweet, very sweet. The plot apparently is about a high school girl with a crush on her friend's boyfriend. She keeps this a secret, fearing it will spoil that friendship, but tells a girl she meets accidentally at a study academy as a kind of release from keeping that secret. One day the girl who knows this all important secret turns up in her classroom as a transfer student - will this secret be revealed?

But it's much deeper than that, and what the series is about only becomes clear by the end. This is about secrets, the reasons we feel we need to keep them secret, about hiding pain and guilt and fear inside us. And sometimes what hurts others more is that we keep secrets rather than what we are keeping secret in the first place.

The setting may be teenagers in a school (like many other TV series) but the subject matter applies to everyone. It's about assumptions we make, wrong assumptions and the damage they cause.

The series is nicely paced and acted. I felt for the characters who seemed believable to me rather than the histrionics in some series.

It ends on a positive note. There is hope.