“Love Alarm” (좋아하면 울리는): Season 1

By Jae-Ha Kim
jaehakim.com
September 10, 2019

☆☆☆☆
Kim Jo-Jo (played by Kim So-Hyun)
Lee Hye-Yeong (played by Jung Ga-Ram)
Hwang Sun-Oh (played by Song Kang)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

As a young woman passes by two men, an app on her phone goes off. “There is one person who loves you,” it says.

The app is called JoAlarm (좋알람), which alerts users if there is someone within 10 meters who loves them. If you’re thinking that JoAlarm sounds nonsensical, you’re right — in English, it doesn’t make sense. But in Korean, it literally means an alarm to measure if someone likes your. (Remember that Jay Park song, “Joah”/”좋아”? 좋아 means good or to like. Now it makes perfect sense, right?)

Flashback to four years ago: Jo-Jo is a high school junior dating a musclehead. A former male model, Sun-Oh has transferred to her school. As expected, his phone chirps non stop. His best friend, Hye-Yeoung, lives in Sun-Ho’s house — but in the basement. His mother is the family’s housekeeper and cook. Having grown up together, the boys are best friends.

So, of course, this means they will both fall in love with Jo-Jo. Seeing how Hye-Yeong looks at her, Sun-Oh repeatedly asks him if he has feelings for Jo-Jo. Hye-Yeong denies it each time. With a few suave moves — including a kissing scene in the first episode, which may be the earliest first kiss I’ve ever seen in a Korean Drama — Sun-Ho and Jo-Jo begin dating.

Jo-Jo has a lot of secrets. Poor and overworked, she lives with an aunt and cousin who make it clear she’s a burden on them and they don’t want her there. She doesn’t want to be there, either, but she has no other options. Her parents died when she was young and she is the sole provider for her grandmother, who’s residing in a nursing facility now. Still, the relationship with Sun-Ho brings happiness into her life and she can momentarily forget that she has to work several part-time jobs to pay for her grandmother’s bills and her own.

The JoAlarm appears to have been created by one of Jo-Jo’s classmates, Duk-Gu. A loner who’s a school outcast, he has a crush on Jo-Jo’s cousin, Gul-Mi. But Gul-Mi is a wannabe-idol and the school’s most popular girl. She wants nothing to do with Duk-Gu and is cruelly blunt about her distaste for him. She says that she deserves to be with Sun-Ho, who’s tall, rich, famous and good looking.

It’s easy to dislike Gul-Mi, because she doesn’t have many redeeming characteristics. But when you think about it, Duk-Gu is ridiculous, too. Yes, he’s smart and thoughtful. But even though she has told him she wants nothing to do with him, he refuses to move forward and says he still loves her. Why? Because … she’s pretty. Though she was cruel about her distaste for him, Gul-Mi was honest about her feelings and didn’t lead him on into thinking he had a chance with her.

The series touches briefly on the plight of gay students. One boy mercilessly beats another classmate because the latter’s JoAlarm indicates that he loves the bully. Later, we learn that the bully is trying to cover up disgust at his own homosexuality.

This app sounds like a lot of fun, but the consequences could be dire. Love isn’t a constant flow that remains the same in any relationship. You can be in a loving relationship and have feelings of hatred for your partner after an unpleasant disagreement. Even assuming that the app has ways to differentiate between romantic love and the love you have for your family, can you imagine how embarrassing it’d be if the app outed your sexuality before you were prepared to tell the person? Or if you had a crush on someone who you never really wanted to be with romantically, but thought about them every so often just because?

At various times, Sun-Oh and Hye-Yeong each want proof of Jo-Jo’s love for them by getting confirmations via the app. Earlier, Jo-Jo had said why she didn’t want to be in a relationship. She had a very difficult life and didn’t need the complications of dating. So even if she was in love with one of them (or both), they should’ve respected her wish to just do her own thing.

But hey, this is a K-Drama, so the operative question is: Who will she choose? Will their friendships between the trio be maintained? Though there are some silly moments in this series, it does a great job of keeping viewers on their toes, while presenting a sobering dose of reality.

Airdates:

Eight episodes — each about 1-hour long — were released on Netflix of August 22, 2019. You may see a review of the second season here.

Spoiler Alert:

Jo-Jo’s parents were struggling and planned to die together — along with Jo-Jo — via carbon monoxide poisoning. She was only about seven at the time. She woke up, was unable to wake them up and escaped by herself.

Gul-Mi had been the most popular girl in high school. It’s difficult to believe that because she couldn’t get Sun-Oh interested in her, she would be undateable. Let’s face it, she may have had an unpleasant personality, but there are plenty of boys/men like Duk-Gu who don’t care — as long as she’s pretty.

Duk-Gu had given Jo-Jo a shield, which would block someone from knowing that you like them. Worried that she will ruin Sun-Ho’s life, she uses the shield to deny that she loves him. He is heartbroken. When they meet again four years later, she decides that she wants to remove the shield. But she can’t. That can only be removed by the app developer, who she thinks is Duk-Gu, who has been MIA for the past four years.

Unable to handle Gul-Mi’s repeated rejection, Duk-Gu jumps from his bedroom window.

Or does he?

His suicide is alluded to by a brief shot of him falling from his windowsill. But no one at school gossips about it. They just know he’s disappeared. A student’s death would’ve made the news.

In the cliffhanger, we see a man leading protests against the JoAlarm. He says it’s dangerous for people to become dependent on it and that people have forgotten how to show their feelings for each other without the use of technology.

Is it just me or does the profile on the right (from the season finale) look like it’s the same person on the left (Duk-Gu in the first episode). This leads me to believe that Duk-Gu never actually committed suicide and is alive and well.

All of this begs the question: Who invented JoAlarm then? At the gala, the inventor is introduced as Brian Chon. He is shown only in shadows and the camera never focuses on his face. I hit pause every few seconds to see if his face resembled Duk-Gu’s and I honestly couldn’t tell. Brian also appeared much taller than I remembered Duk-Gu. So did Brian invent the app? Is Brian really Duk-Gu? Did Duk-Gu sell the app to Brian? Inquiring minds want to know. And for that, we’ll have to wait until the second season…which hopefully will be sooner rather than later.

© 2019 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved