What Comes After Love – K-drama Episode 1 Recap & Review

Episode 1

Episode 1 of What Comes After Love begins with a woman named Hong leaving a letter on a desk and leaving her house. She then walks down a street in Japan and stops by a closed railway station. A flashback to 2019 shows Hong on a flight to Tokyo. She wanted to leave home and live life on her own, so she went to Japan to stay with a friend.

While exiting a train station, her bag falls over and a young Japanese man helps her pick her things up. Her friend, Ji Hui, arrives to pick her up and the man clicks a photograph for them as well. The girls go home where Hong tells Ji Hui that her mother doesn’t know she’s in Japan.

The next day, the man happens to see Hong while he’s on a bus. Meanwhile, she tries to find a part-time job and visits several shops and stores. At the last store, she ends up meeting the man again. They both compete for the part-timer role by working for one day on the agreement that whoever does a better job will be hired for the position.

When a customer is rude to Hong for being a foreigner, the man stands up for her and makes the customer leave. At the end of the day, Hong ends up keeping the job but the man gets a job at a food truck across the road. Later that night, Ji Hui and Hong discuss the situation. Ji Hui also mentions that Hong’s friend back home, Min Jun, likes her in a romantic way.

At work, Hong keeps staring at the food truck and the staff members notice. They even send her there to buy hot dogs. As the newbies on the job, both of them are sent to help clean the shopping district the next day. In the midst of it all, Hong gets a frantic call from her mother who has found out she’s in Japan. She accuses Hong of running away from getting a job and the man sees that she’s upset. He asks her to join him for a drink after work and she does.

They talk about her situation and Hong complains that her loved ones don’t understand her. They bond over being literature majors and Hong tries her hand at a toy machine. He finally introduces himself as Aoki Jungo.

On the way home, Hong is upset because she picked a toy but wasn’t able to win the toy’s accompanying character in the game. When Jungo mentions the characters have everlasting love, she asks him if he believes in it. He says it must exist somewhere. The drunk Hong then runs home.

In the morning, Hong is mortified at how much money she took from Jungo for the toy machine and feels embarrassed. While running in a park, Hong muses about how she doesn’t believe in fate but then comes across Jungo again. He was waiting for her all morning to give her the accompanying toy that he won after much effort. That’s when she begins to believe in fate. The two start seeing each other in earnest and spend the season of spring together.

The scene moves forward five years to Seoul in 2024. We learn that Hong has broken up with Jungo and has returned to Seoul. She gets a job at a publishing house named Sodan Books and rises through the ranks. She’s going about her work when Min Jun arrives with cake in hand and reminds her that it is her mother’s lunar birthday. Min-jun and Hong seem to have been dating for a while and Min-jun is considered a future son-in-law by the family.

Hong’s father then asks her to be his replacement language interpreter for the next day, since his own can’t make it. Hong reluctantly agrees. The next day she and a colleague go to the airport to welcome a Japanese writer named Sasae Hikari. To Hong’s shock, Jungo comes out of the arrival gate at the end of What Comes After Love Episode 1.

The Episode Review

What Comes After Love Episode 1 kicks off with a neat and intriguing pilot. The pace is a tad slow but with the time jumps and shifts in location, there’s plenty happening. Hong comes across as a relatable character who is easy to root for and Jungo has a unique charm of his own. Together the pair offer a sweet chemistry that I’m interested to see explored in more depth.

The show, overall, has a slice-of-life feel to it despite its heavy focus on fate and destiny. The cool colour palette, the serene shots of Japan, and the lack of overt dramatics or exaggeration make it all a very pleasant watch and give the series its own distinct style as well. All in all, a great start.