Our Unwritten Seoul Review: Are You Kind to Yourself?

The matter of identity has been explored on TV a million times. You might have also watched your fair share of identity/body swap stories, like KBS’s Are You Human Too? or tvN’s Mr. Queen. But there’s something about the possibility of living someone else’s life that sparks our curiosity and imagination, isn’t there? If you were looking to scratch that itch and you often enjoy stories that blend a tad of melodrama, a good dose of slice-of-life, and a nice sprinkle of romance, you might have found yourself gravitating towards tvN’s Our Unwritten Seoul.

Written by Lee Kang and directed by Park Shin-woo and Nam Geon, Our Unwritten Seoul is a 12-episode romantic slice-of-life that aired from May to June 2025. The series follows Yoo Mi-ji and Yoo Mi-rae (both played by Park Bo-young), 30-year-old twin sisters who might look identical but have completely different lives and personalities. While Mi-rae is a perfectionist and diligent employee working a corporate job, Mi-ji is a laid-back, go-with-the-flow sort of person — especially after the end of her career as a track athlete. When Mi-rae finds herself in a tight spot, Mi-rae and Mi-ji decide to swap identities, giving each other the space they need to rediscover who they really want to be.

Through a narrative that emphasises contrast and continuous cycles, Our Unwritten Seoul proposes a poignant, hopeful, and compassionate tale. While its mechanisms might feel far-fetched or repetitive at times, Mi-ji and Mi-rae’s journey of self-discovery offers a vulnerable exploration of our innermost torments and a healthy dose of faith that we can all overcome them.

This review contains mild spoilers! If you haven’t watched the show yet, why don’t you pin our spoiler-free summary at the bottom?

The Heart of Our Unwritten Seoul: A Drama with Emotional Depth

Superficially, Mi-ji and Mi-rae’s identity swap encourages the development of empathy between these two sisters who have grown apart in their adulthood. Their struggles and sadness, hidden behind the imposed façade of the person the world believes them to be, are unknown to each other. Once Mi-ji catches a glimpse of her sister’s suffering, her idea to swap places allows them to rediscover who they are as well as who their sister is by having them live in each other’s shoes — quite literally. They start fighting each other’s battles, which forces them to look at their own past and the world around them with a different perspective.

So, primarily, Our Unwritten Seoul is a story about identity and empathy. However, the series goes beyond our main sisters, mirroring their emotional turmoil in the characters around them. This applies especially to childhood friend and lawyer Lee Ho-su (Park Jin-young) and their mother, Ok-hui (Jang Young-nam). Once you peel back that initial layer, the narrative expands to explore human connection, intergenerational trauma, and self-perception.

Through grandma Wol-sun (Cha Mi-kyung), Ok-hui, Mi-ji, and Mi-rae, Our Unwritten Seoul illustrates how sorrow affects generation after generation, passing down learned behaviours that, instead of healing wounds, allow them to fester even further. This vicious cycle is eventually broken once they open themselves up to the people around them, cherishing their bonds and developing open channels of communication.

This need for human connection in the process of healing is also seen in Ho-su’s character — a young man who sees himself as a burden instead of a loved son and friend. Connection, for these characters, is only a tool through which they can re-evaluate their sense of self.

At its core, Our Unwritten Seoul is a story about self-perception. It’s about how important it is for us to be kind, patient, understanding, and compassionate towards our own flaws, our own timing, and our own process of growth. It reminds us to celebrate our little victories and our small displays of strength and courage.

It’s only once these characters re-discover who they are, change their self-perception, that they can shed their ghosts and grow out of their misery. Because the lack of confidence and respect that these characters unconsciously feel towards their own selves is what is truly stopping them from living the lives that really matter to them.

Our Unwritten Seoul portrays depression, trauma, and workplace bullying with sensitivity, allowing its characters to be vulnerable, confused, and lost without being overly melodramatic. It features a mostly female cast that often helps one another, which is a delight to watch. It also breaks away from convention by naturally including disability and queerness in its narrative without pity or fanfare, establishing fairly diverse characterisation as a matter of course.

[SPOILERS] Comparisons & Cycles: Using a Chiastic Structure

These elements and themes are presented through a very basic (yet not flawless) chiastic structure. If you’re wondering what that means, chiastic structure is a “literary technique of repetitive symmetry, designed to create insight and resonance through both comparison and contrast.” That is, the story allows its elements to mirror each other in reverse order.

In Our Unwritten Seoul, we end where we began — but in a completely different, clearly improved world. Mi-ji, who started out lost in the countryside, now lives purposefully in Seoul. Mi-rae, who started out living purposefully (in appearance) in Seoul, now lives in the countryside while discovering her skills and future goals. Ho-su’s final challenge — as well as Mi-rae’s colleague Su-yeon (Park Ye-young)’s — mirrors Mi-ji’s initial struggle to a tee. The narrative is full of these little contrasting elements, which make Our Unwritten Seoul emphasise its idea of life cycles and constant evolution. It’s a reminder that we all struggle, but we can all find our way out eventually. We just have to keep on writing our own story.

[SPOILER-ISH] The Weaknesses of Our Unwritten Seoul

While the show is very cohesive and effective thematically, it does present some narrative flaws. Our Unwritten Seoul relies on repetitive conflicts that revolve around mistrust, misunderstanding, and miscommunication. These conflicts go up until episode 11 (out of 12) and their repetition makes them feel more like plot devices than a natural development of the narrative.

By keeping the same conflicts to the end, Our Unwritten Seoul fails to show consistent and permanent change in these characters, giving all the solutions a flair of the miraculous. That happens especially with Mi-ji and Ho-su’s growth. They are portrayed, for most of the series, as two people who are full of intricate traumas and complexes that would even harm their ability to maintain a healthy romantic relationship. But by the last episode, these traumas and complexes seem to have vanished into thin air.

Once again, romantic love seems to be the solution to all problems, which returns the show to a more clichéd approach to the topic. The idea that “two broken pieces complete each other” is more romantic idealism than a rational path for someone suffering similar struggles in real life. Mi-rae’s journey is significantly more realistic, however. She’s also full of traumas, but at the end of the series, she’s clearly still healing and rebuilding her confidence more actively — instead of just looking like everything is perfectly fine now, we’ve dusted ourselves off and to infinity and beyond!

The show does require a bit of suspension of disbelief when it comes to their identity swap, especially on the Seoul side of the story. Even though Mi-rae works at a financial management company in a role that requires solid and extensive economic knowledge, Mi-ji is able to make do with a couple of all-nighters of research on Google. It doesn’t help that Mi-ji, especially in earlier episodes, is awfully naïve for a 30-year-old, often failing to respond accordingly to situations that would only require the common sense of an ordinary functional adult.

The dialogue, despite its inspiring quotes, comes off as preachy and rose-coloured because everyone, all the time, has a beautifully poetic line to share. Every conversation seems to lead to a wise conclusion, ready to be quoted a million times in the future. It’s nice, yes, but it could’ve been done more subtly and moderately.

While the mechanism is flawed, Our Unwritten Seoul succeeds thanks to its emotional depth, its optimism, and its excellent delivery. As long as you connect with the series on an emotional level, you’ll surely appreciate its message, enjoy the journey, and benefit from Mi-ji and Mi-rae’s growth.

Technical Notes: Visuals, Performances & OST

The cinematography is beautiful, giving a more pastel, film-like quality for the past and using harsher colours and lighting for the present. The visuals slowly evolve throughout the series, making the present feel warmer and warmer as the narrative unfolds. Editing is also extremely effective, especially to highlight the comparisons raised by the script, and the soundtrack is a bit wistful, a bit bright, and very romantic, responding well to the tone of the series.

Park Bo-young did an amazing job as both Mi-ji and Mi-rae and, even without the different hairstyles, you could clearly see who was who. Personally, I felt as if I was watching two different actresses perform two different roles. So, special and heartfelt praise should definitely go to Bo-young for giving such a magical, sincere delivery. Park Jin-young was just as charming as ever and, as usual, he disappeared into a role that required a lot of emotional control from him. Much of Ho-su’s inner struggles are delivered in between the lines and he nailed them all.

Ryu Kyung-soo as the strawberry farmer/hedge fund CIO Han Se-jin was just as charismatic and lovable but his character could’ve been used a bit more effectively throughout the story. Another character that definitely deserved more screentime and characterisation was Mi-ji’s best friend Gyeong-gu, who was marvellously played by Moon Dong-hyeok. Cha Mi-kyung, Jang Young-nam, Im Chul-soo (as Ho-su’s senior lawyer Lee), and Won Mi-Kyung (as restaurant owner Kim Ro-sa) were all extraordinary. The true hero of this story has to be Ho-su’s incredibly kind, human, and loving mother, Bun-hong (played by the great Kim Sun-young).

A final special mention should go to Lee Jae-in and Park Yoon-ho, as young Mi-ji/Mi-rae and Ho-su, who portrayed such complex characters with such affection and courage.

Should You Watch Our Unwritten Seoul?

Our Unwritten Seoul offers a character-driven story that knows very well where its heart lies. Mi-ji and Mi-rae introduce us to a tale about empathy and identity, but one that, underneath, explores the complexity of depression, intergenerational trauma, human connection, and self-perception. Even though the conflicts and set-ups might feel flimsy and redundant at times, this is a solid romantic slice-of-life that has much to share.

Full of tenderness and sensitivity, Our Unwritten Seoul will surely encourage you to look at yourself and the world around you with kinder, more understanding eyes.

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