Goo Kyo-hwan and Moon Ga-young lead a romantic film that moved audiences in early 2026.
After opening on January 31, it steadily drew viewers and topped 2.5 million admissions.
The story asks what reunion with a first love leaves behind, as two people who dated in their early twenties meet again ten years later.
Audiences responded to an ending that asks them to understand and let go rather than to idealize the past.
What does seeing an old love again leave behind?
Overview
The plot is not simple.
The director Kim Do-young remakes the 2018 Chinese film '먼 훗날 우리' and adapts it to a Korean emotional register.
The main thread follows a romance that begins while the pair are poor students away from home, breaks under real-life pressures, and then reappears a decade later as they reunite.
Delicate performances and careful direction expand the film's capacity to connect with viewers.
Background and context
The film is rich in period detail.
Small props that summon 2000s nostalgia—MP3 players, feature phones, and Cyworld (an early Korean social network)—tint the past in color and intensify the story's mood.
Meanwhile, practical problems like finding housing in Seoul ground the romance by showing where feelings and daily life collide.
"You find yourself automatically adding the word ‘what if’ to the past."
In favor: why it connects and succeeds
The film earns its audience’s sympathy.
First, it confronts the universal question people have asked themselves: what if?
Rather than glorify memory, it shows both joy and pain so viewers can reflect on their own years.
Second, acting and direction hold the emotional line.
Goo Kyo-hwan and Moon Ga-young convincingly map the characters’ shift from friends to lovers and then to two people facing their pasts.
Small looks and gestures accumulate into larger feelings; that accumulation is the engine of this romance.
Third, the Korean reworking helps the film resonate locally.
Instead of copying the original's context exactly, the screenplay weaves in housing pressures—rental systems and loan burdens—so that the story touches viewers’ real lives.
As a result, the film reaches not only young people but also viewers in their 30s and 40s, expanding the audience for the romance genre.
Fourth, the film manages emotional pacing in a way that leaves people changed as they leave the theater.
Rather than reducing regret to self-blame, it reconstructs regret as a process of understanding and release.
In the end the film whispers that you should learn from the past to protect the present, rather than cling to what used to be.
Finally, box-office numbers add another layer of proof.
Crossing 2.5 million admissions is more than a statistic: it shows that the romance genre can still find its audience.
Commercial success can also increase a film’s social reach and draw market interest for follow-up projects.
Against: familiarity and predictability
Criticism is clear-cut.
The film’s biggest weakness is its familiar storyline.
Repeated romantic devices recall films like La La Land or Architecture 101 and leave some viewers wanting more novelty.
Second, the remake format has limits.
Sticking closely to the original’s structure can spark curiosity, but it risks feeling like a style exercise without deeper change.
As a result, audience growth can depend heavily on interest in the original or on star power.
Third, some viewers feel the emotions are overextended.
The device of coloring the past while rendering the present in grayscale highlights memory’s glow, but it can also read as escapism rather than insight.
On the one hand it offers moments of clarity; on the other it may invite skeptical responses.
Fourth, questions remain about long-term staying power.
Strong opening numbers are one thing; repeated use of familiar romantic beats may weaken repeat viewings and word-of-mouth over time.
At this stage, a distributor’s follow-up strategy and genre diversification will be decisive.
"Curiosity drove the box office, but the film lacks fundamental change."
Deeper causes
Why did this story work?
First, the universality of contemporary experience matters.
Struggles to secure housing, the burden of loans, and the responsibilities of starting a career all anchor the story in shared reality.
Second, an emotional narrative travels through time.
Memories can be exaggerated as years pass, yet that exaggeration itself tells us how people reconstruct love.
The film places idealized memories next to everyday reality so viewers reassess their own recollections.
Third, directorial choices help empathy.
Edit points, music placement, and color use contrast the glow of the past with the muted present and carefully steer the audience’s feelings.
As a result, viewers often find themselves overlaying the characters’ moments with their own memories.
Fourth, social context helped the box office.
With the romance genre getting renewed attention, many viewers looked back at their own relationships and found a shared point of reference.
In doing so, the film became more than entertainment; it functioned as a bridge between generations’ feelings about love and regret.
Cultural and industry implications
The film’s success sends a signal.
The romance genre still has audience potential, but that potential can be quickly exhausted if filmmakers rely on repeat formulas.
On the industry side, the result may change green-lighting choices.
Producers should both revisit how remakes are approached and dig deeper into stories that reflect local realities.
From a marketing perspective, sustaining momentum could depend on reissues, soundtrack releases, and merchandise that add value.
On a social level, the film amplifies private feelings into public conversation.
It prompts people to revisit choices and regrets, and that public airing can subtly shift how culture consumes and discusses romance on screen.
Conclusion
In short, the film is a victory for empathy.
Despite a familiar arc, audiences follow its emotional line from past to present and find comfort along the way.
At the same time, repeated romantic devices leave questions about long-term box-office durability.
Through the hypothesis of ‘what if,’ the film offers a way to understand and let go of the past.
The process reframes breakup as a rite of passage and suggests that small endings accumulate into the lives we lead.
Which scene from your past would you watch again?
