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| Image of the drama’s promotional poster taken from the production company’s official Twitter account (Kidari Studio) and reproduced under Fair Dealing for educational purposes. |
I love it when a K-drama storyline makes me feel for the characters and think a lot about their situations. Sometimes I come across such a storyline in an unexpected place, like I did while watching recent Korean BL series Happy Merry Ending (해피메리엔딩, Kidari Studio, 2023). Based on a webtoon by Dorae, it tells the story of Seung-jun, a wedding singer and voice tutor who struggles with his mental health, and Jae-hyun, a piano accompanist who wants to get to know him better.
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| Happy Merry Ending’s main storyline is the romance between Seung-jun (played Lee Dong-won, left) and Jae-hyun (played by Byun Sung-tae, right), but Seung-jun’s mental health struggles and the related backstory were what grabbed me. Photo from Kidari Studio’s official Twitter account, reproduced under Fair Dealing for educational purposes. |
It is revealed early on that Seung-jun’s first romantic relationship ended badly, and that he experienced anxiety, panic attacks and depression as a result, which he has been managing with treatment and the support of his best friend. Although his condition has improved over the years, he still finds social situations difficult, and when events unexpectedly trigger memories of his ex, his symptoms worsen. Due to its short running time (eight 15-minute episodes), the series can’t explore the topic of mental health in any kind of detailed or nuanced way; its strength lies in the fact that it presents a compelling backstory for Seung-jun. We learn that he was a K-pop trainee and his ex was a producer at his company. Ex isn’t even the right word, because even though Seung-jun believed that he and the producer were in love, the relationship was clearly inappropriate and abusive. With so many stories coming out these days about K-pop trainees and idols being mistreated by their management, this storyline seemed plausible to me, and it infuriated me.
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| Kim Kyu-jong (right) plays the producer who groomed Seung-jun for an inappropriate and abusive relationship when Seung-jun was a trainee at his company. Photo from Kidari Studio’s official Twitter account, reproduced under Fair Dealing for educational purposes. |
The relationship ended and Seung-jun quit the K-pop industry when he discovered that the producer was also fooling around with another trainee. But that wasn’t the last he heard of him, because in the present-day timeline, the producer tracks Seung-jun down and starts harassing him again, threatening to torpedo the career of his current star trainee (a pupil Seung-jun has been tutoring) if Seung-jun doesn’t get back together with him. Seung-jun decides to stand up to the producer. This should have been his moment of triumph, but the writers’ misguided use of a time jump device cuts the story short just when the tension is at its highest. We don’t see what Seung-jun says and does to resolve the situation with the abusive producer. We don’t know what emotions he experiences or how the events affect his mental health. The story just skips ahead a year, revealing in passing that the producer’s bad acts came to light and he is no longer working in the industry. Seung-jun is now doing better, he is making his debut as a K-pop singer/songwriter, and he gets back in touch with Jae-hyun and begins a romantic relationship with him.
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| Seung-jun finds happiness with Jae-hyun at the end of the story. Photo from Kidari Studio’s official Twitter account, reproduced under Fair Dealing for educational purposes. |
This is supposed to be a happy and merry ending, but to me it was only mildly pleasant in an impersonal way. Although the lead actors gave sincere performances, the romance was never very well developed, and it didn’t draw me in the way the backstory with the producer who preyed on his trainees did. I was furious when that backstory was revealed, and I wanted to feel an equally strong sense of triumph when Seung-jun finally resolved it, but I couldn’t because the writers made ineffective choices about what parts of the story to show on screen. I understood that Seung-jun didn’t want Jae-hyun to see him struggling, but the viewers needed to see how he overcame adversity in order to engage emotionally with the ending.
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| At the end of the series, Seung-jun makes his debut as a K-pop singer/songwriter, but he still wears sunglasses like he did when he was a wedding singer because crowds of people staring at him make him uncomfortable. Other than this, the series does not give any indication of how he copes with his anxiety after the time jump. Photo from Kidari Studio’s official Twitter account, reproduced under Fair Dealing for educational purposes. |
The K-pop industry has been paying more attention to mental health in recent years, with many current and former idols and trainees openly sharing their struggles. Happy Merry Ending shows us that works of fiction can also bring attention to these types of issues. At one point, a character remarks that the producer’s downfall was warranted because “he shouldn’t have messed with kids.” Through the character of Seung-jun, the story imagines what might have happened to one of those kids, and how he might still be dealing with the effects of the abuse years later. Despite the flaws in execution, I’m glad that the screenwriters of Happy Merry Ending decided to tell that story.
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