“Love Next Door”: When the 'Perfect' Child Implodes

Children are not human trophies whose lives are secondary to their parents'.

“Love Next Door”

엄마친구아들
☆☆☆☆
Choi Seung-hyo (played by Jung Hae-in)
Bae Seok-ryu (played by Jung So-min)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

Before getting into the review of “Love Next Door,” I wanted to talk a bit about the English title vs. the Korean title of this K-drama. The former is self explanatory, but the Korean title, 엄마친구아들, sets the tone for the core values that the parents in this series long for in their own children.

엄마친구아들 literally translates to mother’s friend’s son. The Korean portmanteau for this is umchina/엄친아, and is used by some parents to compare their children to someone else’s son (who may not even actually exist). But this mythical super child is used to make other children feel less than. A real-life example of an 엄친아 is Jonny Kim, a doctor who graduated from Harvard Medical school, was a former Navy SEAL, and is also a NASA astronaut. I mean, how on earth are the rest of us mortals supposed to measure up to his achievements?

In this Korean show, both Seung-hyo (Jung Hae-in) and Seok-ryu (Jung So-min) are umchinas (even though the latter is a daughter). The neighbors are talented, good looking and smart, and their mothers use every get-together as an opportunity to humble brag about their child’s achievements.

So when Seok-ryu leaves her prestigious tech job in the United States to return to Korea, her mother can’t understand why. Actually, she doesn't want to know the reason. She wants her to return to work because that's what she thinks is best. Seok-ryun tells her parents that she's back home because she broke off her engagement because she had cheated on him. It’s obvious to the viewers that this is most likely not true. Was it the opposite? Did cheating even occur? Or was she simply stressed out from working non-stop at a job she no longer wanted to do?

But instead of tsk tsking and showing her disappointment, Seok-ryu’s mother beats her 30something daughter. Why? Because Seok-ryu wasn't working, because she had left her fiancé who had a prestigious job as an international attorney (I think...let me know if I got his career incorrect!) and because she felt she had the right to do so.

FWIW, parents hitting their young (and adult) children in K-dramas is commonplace. But it’s literally a foreign concept to me. My parents grew up in an era when teachers were allowed to hit students in Korea. I grew up in the U.S. when it was the norm (during my youth) for parents to spank or whip their children’s butts with a belt for misbehaving. None of this was ever a reality for me. And I do not believe I am an outlier in that regard.

When we see flashbacks of Seok-ryu’s time in the U.S., we get some insight into the prestigious career that her mother wanted her to hold onto. As a product of the South Korean education and work system, Seok-ryu was an extremely diligent employee who tackled more duties than required. Seeing this, her Korean American coworker, Chris, encouraged his colleagues to take advantage of her eagerness to fit in. They dumped their work on her, and she accepted, believing that she was part of the team.

It’s only after she overhears them laughing at how gullible she is that she makes the decision to leave.

Back home, her passive father runs a struggling snack shop. After being scammed by so-called influencers, who claim he served them a meal that had hair in it and also somehow broke their luxury watch in the process, he takes out a loan and gets a side gig as a driver, so that he can give them $30,000 to buy another designer watch. He does this with no proof that the hair was actually his, or having the watch appraised for its actual value.

If he had asked his daughter for a loan, she could’ve helped him. She also would’ve recognized this shakedown for what it was, which is exactly what Seung-hyo figures out and fixes.

There is a lively subplot involving Seok-ryu’s EMT best friend Mo-eum (Kim Ji-eun) and her dislike of sweet journalist Dan-ho (Yoon Ji-on). Of course, this indicates that they two will end up together somehow, right? Not if Mo-eum’s mother has her way. She refuses to let her daughter date this man, because he has a young child. Instead of seeing that her daughter is happy to be with this man, the mother views his status as a single parent as a liability. (This storyline is also explored in Jung Hae-in’s K-drama “One Spring Night.”)

Airdates: Sixteen episodes aired on tvN from August 17 through October 6, 2024 on tvN. I watched this on Netflix. (Photos courtesy of tvN and Netflix.)

Spoiler Alert: When we are taken back to an earlier scene that made it seem that Seok-ryu's fiancé was cheating on her, we see that he was helping another woman with a contact lens. (It’s not clear why the woman couldn’t deal with her own lens, but there you go.)

Meanwhile, Seok-ryu was battling stomach cancer and didn’t want to worry her parents. It was easier for her to lie to them about having a failed relationship than it was to tell them she had 70 percent of her stomach removed and needed chemotherapy. Not knowing any of this, her mother still insists that Seok-ryu head back to the U.S. and get married. She equates financial stability with happiness. “I don’t want you to live the kind of shabby life I am living,” she tells her daughter. Her husband overhears this and is at a loss for what to do. He had tried his best, failed at his businesses and now has a snack shop that is barely bringing in any income.

When Seok-ryu finally snaps, it’s not because of one big issue, but because of how her mother views her as a trophy child who was born to reflect well on her upbringing. She is expected to excel at everything, because she has always done well at everything. Meanwhile, her mother excuses her younger brother (portrayed by N.Flying’s Lee Seung-hyub), letting him slack off. She spoils him, because she feels guilty that he was born with a hole in his heart. She doesn't realize that the disparate way she treated her kids left a metaphorical hole in Seok-ryu's heart.

Later, when Seok-ryu’s ex fiancé heads to the airport to return to the U.S., he asks Seung-hyo to bring her so they can have a proper goodbye. Seung-hyo does. Yay? But what I didn’t like was how he told her not to spend too much time saying goodbye. Actually, I didn’t like the two men conspiring to do any of this. It was her call to go to the airport or not. And it’s her call on how much time she wants to spend saying goodbye. She is the one who should have ownership of her own grief, not these men.

As she says goodbye to the man who she had once loved, and who was there for her when she was being treated for cancer, she tears up. It’s not necessarily because she regrets letting him go. But she's not just saying goodbye to him. She’s also saying goodbye to an important part of her past.

Meanwhile, Seung-hyo’s doctor dad thinks that his wife (a diplomat) is having an affair with her boss, when in reality, she’s being let go from her job. Without any proof of infidelity... without confronting her... without discussing the problems in their marriage... he declares that he wants a divorce.

Seung-hyo’s mom is career driven. Frankly, if she were a man, no one would question her gusto for her work. In a flashback, her son overhears her saying (in a moment of frustration) that she felt that having a baby chained her to a life she didn’t want. Of course, she didn’t mean that she didn’t love Seung-hyo. She does, very much. Not being able to cook and wanting to work outside the home doesn’t mean she’s a bad parent. Neither does hiring Seok-ryu’s mom to babysit him while she and her husband were at work.

She certainly had her issues, but why was she the one who was expected to give up her career, when her husband could just as easily have taken a break from his job? We know why. Because traditional gender roles across most cultures dictate that it's the woman's duty to make the sacrifice. And while spending time with your children is not a sacrifice, giving up your job can be one, especially when your career trajectory is affected. Unfortunately, Seung-hyo was outside the door and overheard his parents’ argument. A child hearing this could feel unloved, as well as an unwanted burden. (His parents reconcile near the end of the series. But prior to that, of course there’s a health issue she has to deal with — memory loss.)

As far as couples go, I was more invested in Mo-eum and her journalist beau, Dan-ho, than Seok-ryu and Seung-hyo. In a plot twist that I hadn't guessed, he was not a single father. Rather, after his brother, sister-in-law and his parents died in an accident, he raised his niece as his own child. When Mo-eum tells her mother she wants become a family with them, her mother is not on board, saying that parenting your own child is difficult — was she ready to raise a child she didn’t give birth to?

When Mo-eum tells her mother she wants become a family with them, her mother still objects, saying that parenting your own child is difficult — was she ready to raise a child she didn’t give birth to?

Listening to all of this, Mo-eum points out that after her father died, their family was kicked of her paternal grandmother’s house. Studying to become a real estate agent and working full time, Mo-eum’s mom was the opposite of Seung-hyo and Seok-ryu’s mothers. She didn't obsess about her children's grades. She just wanted her daughters to be happy.

It’s clear that Mo-eum was going to do what she decided was best for her, despite her mother’s misgivings. This is what 30 year olds should be doing, instead of capitulating to their overly intrusive parents’ whims and demands. In the end, her mother gives in and welcomes Dan-ho and his niece into the family. And when Mo-eum gets a bucket-list opportunity to work in Antarctica, Dan-ho doesn’t try to dissuade her. He encourages her to follow her dream, and promises that he will wait for her return. This is how healthy relationships work. No tantrums. No ultimatums.

As for Seok-ryu, she follows her dream of opening her own cafe. Seung-hyo, who's an architect, remodels her father's old snack shop into a beautiful space for her. While being a cafe owner isn't the bragworthy career her mother had dreamed for her, it was Seok-ryu's way of claiming her own own liberation — not only from her mom, but from her own notions of what a good daughter should be.

"Love Next Door" is written as a love story between two childhood neighbors. And it is. But it's also about loving yourself enough to follow your convictions, despite objections from those you love.

© 2025 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved

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