[K-Movie Night] Single in Seoul
by Dramaddictally
Welcome to K-Movie Night — a once-a-month feature where we microwave some popcorn, put on a face mask, and get cozy with a Korean movie from yesteryear. With so many films finally streaming (with subs!), now is the time to get caught up on all those movies we missed featuring our favorite drama actors.
Each month, we’ll pick a flick, write a review, and meet you back here to discuss whether or not it’s worth a watch. Super simple. All you have to do is kick up your feet and join us in the comments!
Movie Review
This month’s movie pick, Single in Seoul, stars Lee Dong-wook – who is currently reprising his role in Shop for Killers with Season 2 airing now. And it also stars Im Soo-jung who, let’s be honest, we don’t see enough of. While I skipped her 2026 drama Mad Concrete Dreams in favor of reviewing her role in The Table for the March K-Movie Night, Search Query: WWW is still among my favorite dramas (because: girl power, but also, all those secret office kitchen kisses).
Single in Seoul (2023) is billed as a romance, despite the name, about a writer and editor working together on a book about being single in the city. I love stories about writers, books, and publishing – and I also love stories about cities – so this one seemed like a no-brainer. Let’s see how this rom-com deals with singledom, and if it gets a fair shake.
Well, speaking of shakes, this one gets off to a quaky start. We open in a publishing house that’s hit tough times with its writers backing out of deals for one reason or another. They’re set to publish a series, Single in the City, with writers across continents contributing books about their experience wherever they live. But, the writer for Seoul just got pregnant, so that puts the breaks on her edition. Where the heck can they get another single writer?
Enter YOUNG-HO (Lee Dong-wook), the good-looking college prep teacher who can tell his students all about writing essays, but hasn’t actually published himself. That’s his big dream, though, so when he’s scouted to write the essay collection Single in Seoul, he goes along with it, even though the editor, HYUN-JIN (Im Soo-jung), rubs him the wrong way.
In addition to the cardboard setup, the dynamic between Young-ho and Hyun-jin is strange from the start. They disagree about the book’s format and tone – he wants to promote being single as a lifestyle to be proud of and she wants to hedge with a more pitying tone – but Young-ho takes the disagreements to a personal place, criticizing Hyun-jin’s appearance with flat dialogue that feels thrown in to conjure a non-existent conflict.
Why is he talking to her like they know each other already? We’re told that they’ve met in the past, although he doesn’t remember, and then that thread goes nowhere. It’s all just to let us know that he can be jerky and she’s a pushover in matters of the heart – as we see her getting excited over possible suitors way before there’s any reason to think that they’re interested in her (it’s a good excuse to see Yoon Kye-sang show up, though).
But all this is just a crappy box for the themes of the movie, which – once we get into it – are actually pretty profound. Young-ho is staunchly and voluntarily single, living alone for many years, and finding happiness in doing things for himself instead of another person. Singlehood is where you get to be yourself, he writes in the book. It’s how you can step outside your social roles – and all those expectations. For him, it’s a mantra and a lifestyle, not something to get over or push past.
And yet, when Hyun-jin forces him to write about his first love as a part of the book, he tells a story of how he got to that point. Back in college, while studying Korean lit and working in a hotel laundry room, he met a woman named JOO-OK (Esom) who ended up breaking his heart. In his version of events, they get to know each other slowly and sweetly before moving in together, and then he stays attentive and in love, while her interests change and she disappears without a goodbye.
While it’s not evident at first, the movie is going to play with memory and how we are always the protagonists of our own stories – and not just the main characters, but the likable and relatable heroes. When Joo-ok makes an appearance later in the film, the cold characters that we’ve come to know are melted down into people we can empathize with. Ironically – and of course, this is why it works – it’s when we see Young-ho’s negative traits that he becomes likable.
The frame of the film continues to be a rom-com about the burgeoning attraction between Young-ho and Hyun-jin but it’s threadbare, hitting the classic beats on schedule with little logic or emotion to explain why. Outwardly, Young-ho’s conflict is about how he can like someone when he’s supposed to be committed to being single. But it’s boring, and the real conflict is exposed near the end, when he’s tested to figure out why he sees himself the way that he does.
My favorite part of the movie comes as a kind of thesis statement when a side character is explaining to Hyun-jin what it’s like to live with someone again after years of living alone. The woman says that being by herself she felt free and comfortable and Hyun-jin wants to know why she would give that up. The woman responds that she didn’t give it up. She found someone that she could be herself with, who accepts her as she is, so she can still be free and comfortable. This leaves the impression, then, that single is a state of mind.
Once we get near the close, there are more gems like this and I found the end truly touching. In a long list of side characters that are more interesting than the leads, a poet tells a story of how he wrote his first book for someone he loved, and no matter what happened between them, he doesn’t regret it – because the process of doing it was his happiest time.
As we see Young-ho’s growth as a character, he takes on facets of this idea, letting go of bitterness and regret – not so he can change his mind about being single – but so he can realize that we actually need other people if we’re going to stand on our own.
Join us in August for the next K-Movie Night and let’s make a party of it! We’ll be watching Pretty Crazy (2025) and posting the review during the last week of the month.
Want to participate in the comments when it posts? You’ve got 3 weeks to watch! Rather wait for the review before you decide to stream it? We’ve got you covered.
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