There once lived a boy without a heart. Everyone said he wasn't human; he wasn’t like normal people. He had hidden motives and his cruelty was casual. Everything was a game to him. No one's life, not even his own, was worth much. But that all changed when he crossed paths with a big-hearted girl, who returned his lost heart to him.
I didn't know what to make of The Smile Has Left Your Eyes two episodes in. Some things might have been lost in translation and I was also impatient for the main story to get started.
There is a rich girl named Baek Seung-Ah, with an arrogant chaebol fiancée, Woo Sang. She's an artist who doesn't want the exhibition Woo Sang has procured for her. There's a piece by another artist that she's supposed to pass off as her own. Woo Sang ignores her objections and expects her to follow his orders. A stranger overhears their conversation and Woo Sang pays him off. But after he leaves, the stranger rips up the money and encourages, or rather goads Seung-Ah to skip the exhibition. From there, she's drawn to this mysterious stranger, Kim Moo Yeong (Seo In Guk), and tries to break off her engagement to Woo Sang who won’t let her go easily. Her mother also forbids her from seeing Moo Yeong anymore, but she's only momentarily deterred.
Seung-Ah’s best friend, Jin Kang (Jeong So Min), acts as messenger between her and Moo Yeong. Jin Kang doesn't get along with him, and he's always baiting her. Seung-Ah has only been seeing Moo Yeong for a few weeks, but she’s smitten with him. It’s really something more than that, almost obsessive. She’s willing to leave her family and wealth behind to be with him. Seung-Ah becomes suspicious about Moo Yeong’s feelings for Jin Kang, which he readily admits to. Jin Kang is disgusted — how can he treat people so carelessly? Moo Yeong says he never loved Seung-Ah, that he only went after her because of Woo Sang, his real target. In the end, he won. He was also, however indirectly, the architect of tragedy.
Here now is the real point of the story, how Jin Kang falls for Moo Yeong. But I did begin to appreciate the storyline with Seung-Ah, because it made the main romance all the more stronger. It wouldn't have made sense for the two of them to immediately fall into each other's arms, especially when they are so different, and especially since Jin Kang’s elder brother Jin Kook (Park Sung Woong) believes Moo Yeong killed someone. Moo Yeong also makes the older man uneasy whenever they meet.
Despite my earlier misgivings, I found myself drawn to the show. It rewarded my patience. While it may seem like a typical mystery thriller with the token bad boy, it’s anything but.
The show had won me over by the fourth episode, but I wasn’t a goner until a few episodes later.
Jin Kang has once again scolded Moo Yeong for his lack of remorse, and this time, he seems to take her seriously. There are moments when his eyes don’t betray anything, so cold and empty is his stare. And then there are moments when he can’t hide what he’s feeling. In this particular one, it’s clear that Jin Kang’s words are reaching him on a deeper level. Unlike her brother and his colleague Cho Rong, Jin Kang doesn’t believe that Moo Yeong is incapable of change or redemption. Cho Rong, whom she briefly dated, tells her not to get involved with Moo Yeong because of how deeply she feels other people’s emotions. She can’t be with someone who’s the total opposite. What she demands of Moo Yeong is borne out of frustration.
“Promise me that you’ll be a good person.”
“Teach me how.”
I tried to guess what he would say in the silence that followed. Maybe he would say no. I was silently pleading for him to make that promise, I wouldn’t accept anything else. Him saying ‘teach me how’ after that silence stretched on was better than anything I could’ve imagined.
And that was the moment when this show was no longer oddly compelling, but a beautiful story that was tailor made for me.
I don’t pay very much attention to tropes, stuff like ‘enemies to lovers’ or whatever else. I know that I love tragic romances where one of them dies, but any separation will do. Roman Holiday is my favorite movie after all. Conversely, couples who are destined to be together, who overcome every barrier keeping them apart, is also my jam. Thankfully this drama has the latter kind.
I don’t know if I’ve come across Moo Yeong and Jin Kang’s dynamic in other fiction. Maybe it isn’t as novel as I think, but it’s just so profound. Last year’s Doom at Your Service, also starring Seo In Guk as a deity, does something similar. In DAYS, Dong Kyung’s determination to love Doom teaches him (and the audience) that to love is human. I don’t the think the impact is as powerful as Your Eyes because Moo Yeong actually is human, he’s just been labeled a monster. Jin Kang’s love makes him want to be better. Her love reaches inside him and finds not a dragon to slay, but a wounded boy.
One scene shows Moo Yeong watching a group of detectives joke around with each other. The bars in front of his face are so unsubtle, but they vividily reinforce just how much distance there is between him and ‘normal’ people. My boy longs for that closeness.
It’s one thing to have a complicated and misunderstood character like Moo Yeong, but to make someone like my precious Jin Kang his soulmate…!
I love her. You have to understand, she’s perfect. She chooses to love someone who’s given up on it, who everyone warns her against, who needs it most of all. Because Jin Kang suffered the same as Moo Yeong, she can relate to him. But she’s never used her suffering to bludgeon others. Of course she’s grateful for Jin Kook. Unlike Moo Yeong, she didn’t grow up in an orphanage. She may not have visible angst, but she’s still a fascinating character. Bubbly, warm, kind, endearing, adorable — she proved irresistible to a moody, brooding guy. And! Even when Jin Kook does the unthinkable, even when he continues to pry them apart, she never gives up on him either.
Moo Yeong and Jin Kang bond over their shared histories: they’re orphans with burn scars and scant memories of childhood. The show even hints at their intertwined pasts.
As with everything else, I choose k-dramas based on premise, but often it’s because of certain actors. In Your Eyes, it was Park Sung Woong, a brilliant character actor and middle aged baddie. He has excellent timing in broad comedies and portrays suave yet ruthless villainy in a gangster flick like New World (2013).
And then there’s The Deal (2015). He plays a serial killer possessed of preternatural calm, a man who is unrepentantly evil. His eyes in the poster haunt me. Moo Yeong’s impenetrable gaze is nowhere near as chilling. Jin Kook at first is a good guy: a protective older brother, an honorable detective. But his hatred for Moo Yeong is so all consuming that he proves himself to be far more dangerous. If the eyes are a window to the soul, then Jin Kook’s is vastly corroded. He moves about in a daze, looking out from such lifeless eyes that it was like seeing the killer from The Deal again. Only this time he’s acting out of deluded righteousness.
My initiation into dramaland began five years ago. I was unprepared for just how melodramatic and maudlin k-dramas can be. It felt cringey because raw, naked emotions should be suppressed, as far as the west is concerned. But this tension has always been present in my life as the daughter of Cape Verdean immigrants. Watching dramas where older Korean women sob over the dead bodies of their children, demanding to know why they died, is something I’ve witnessed all my life.
The Smile Has Left Your Eyes, like a majority of k-dramas, is unashamed of melodrama. Sometimes the situations are so far-fetched that suspension of disbelief is impossible. But what sets them apart from a ridiculous American soap opera like Passions is the brilliant writing. This drama was never so unbelievable, though. It upended my expectations right until the final heart wrenching moment.
I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I like this show a lot. It really is a tale as old as time. Finding you can change, learning you were wrong. The curse is lifted when the beast learns to love and earns her love in return. And love is really what it’s all about. Love is why we even exist.