In the final episode of When Life Gives You Tangerines, Netflix’s slice-of-life K-drama, protagonist Ae-sun (played here, in her 70s, by Moon So-ri) tells daughter Geum-myeong (played here, in her 40s, by IU): “Getting old is nothing special. You feel the same on the inside, but when you look in the mirror, you see an old woman. That’s all aging is.” As a line of dialogue out of context, it is a valuable and perhaps relatable observation. In the final act of a TV series that has just spanned 70 years over the course of 16 masterfully executed episodes, it is devastatingly profound.
We know what Ae-sun says is true because we have lived those decades alongside her, seeing how life’s joys and pains still cut the mother, wife, and poet just as deeply as they did when she was young. Here’s how one of the best K-dramas of the year so far tied up its tapestry of Korean modern history, Jeju culture, and one family’s dreams in its emotional conclusion.
Does When Life Gives You Tangerines have a happy ending?
In the final episode of When Life Gives You Tangerines, the precious agony of being alive is borne out in the death of Gwan-sik (played predominantly by Park Hae-joon in these final episodes), Ae-sun’s beloved husband and Geum-myeong and Eun-myeong’s dad. Gwan-sik has been by Ae-sun’s side since they both were young, when he would bring fish from his own family’s table to feed a neglected Ae-sun. Together, they have lost a child, and raised two more to adulthood. They are grandparents and beloved members of the community, and they’ve done it all side by side.
As he’s dying, Gwan-sik apologizes for not being able to make Ae-sun’s life easier, but she reassures him: “Thanks to you, I was never lonely for a day.” She doesn’t regret choosing to marry Gwan-sik over someone like Bu Sang-gil (Choi Dae-hoon), whom she was briefly engaged to in her youth.
Sang-gil was rich in resources but lacked loyalty or affection. The woman he ended up marrying, Yeong-ran (Jang Hye-jin), divorced him as soon as she had enough economic independence, after raising their four children. Throughout the series, we see the contrasts between Gwan-sik and Sang-gil: While Gwan-sik is a devoted husband, Sang-gil is a philanderer. While Gwan-sik sells his boat to get son Eun-myeong out of jail, Sang-gil never went to any of his kids’ school events. Sang-gil begins to learn and change his ways later in life, but Gwan-sik is depicted as being decades ahead of him in the talent of caring for those you love. In a time when patriarchal family and societal structures allowed men like Gwan-sik and Sang-gil power over their wives and daughters, Gwan-sik chose to love Ae-sun rather than to control her. For Ae-sun, it’s a happy ending. All love must end in a farewell, but Ae-sun doesn’t regret taking Gwan-sik’s hand and never letting go.
Who does Geum-myeong marry?
While many K-dramas play into the romantic concept of one true love, When Life Gives You Tangerines subverts the trope in its depiction of Geum-myeong’s romantic life. The daughter of Ae-sun and Gwan-sik meets her first love, Park Yeong-bum (Lee Jun-young). at Seoul National University, fall in love, and date for seven years. They plan to get married, but Geum-myeong eventually decides against it because Yeong-bum’s mother treats her poorly, thinking Geum-myeong and her working class background are not good enough for her son. When Geum-myeong sees how much her future mother-in-law’s treatment upsets her parents, who gave up so much to send her to college and to study abroad in Japan, she breaks off the engagement. The decision breaks both Geum-myeong and Yeong-bum’s hearts.
Later, Geum-myeong reconnects with artist Park Chung-seob (Kim Seon-ho). The two met when Chung-seob was dating the daughter of Geum-myeong’s Seoul landlord. At that time, Chung-seob got Geum-myeong a part-time job at the movie theater where he worked painting posters. Chung-seob obviously had a thing for Geum-myeong, but she was devoted to Yeong-bum.
Following Geum-myeong’s breakup and Chung-seob’s return from military service, Chung-seob manages to track Geum-myeong down—by literally chasing after a bus he sees her on. They fall in love, and get married. “The size of the love wasn’t different,” Geum-myeong says in voiceover, comparing her two romantic relationships. “The temperature was. It was the temperature that let me be myself. I’ve found my prince.”
The real history in When Life Gives You Tangerines
When Life Gives You Tangerines is the story of one family, but it is also the story of Korea’s modernization from the postwar period to today. The series, written by Lim Sang-choon and directed by Kim Won-seok, is peppered with specific historical detail throughout its run.
“They do a great job, although you would have to know the history well enough to know what’s going on,” Namhee Lee, a professor of modern Korean history at UCLA, tells TIME of When Life Gives You Tangerine’s use of history as background.
In an early episode, young Ae-sun loses the class election, not because she didn’t get enough votes but because the class rich kid brought in treats for everyone. “The class election, in a way, is projected to the larger national history, right?” says Lee, noting that the scene shows a newspaper reporting on the March 1960 presidential election fraud. “The relationship has been made between the kind of corruption that goes on in a very small class to a larger historical event.”
In the series’ ending, Ae-sun and Geum-myeong’s professional successes are positioned as examples of social progress that was hard-won across generations. Ae-sun, who was not able to graduate from high school or go to college “on the mainland,” despite her cleverness and ambitions, begins publishing poetry in her 60s and 70s. After her husband’s death, she volunteers her time teaching residents of a Jeju nursing home how to read, write, and express themselves through poetry. They call her “teacher,” and it makes her feel good.
Geum-myeong, whose family sacrificed so much for her education, becomes a successful early tech entrepreneur. She launches an online lecture business in the hopes of making education accessible to people like her mother, who missed out on college because of factors like social class and geography.
The significance of Jeju Island in When Life Gives You Tangerines
While some of When Life Gives You Tangerines is set in Seoul, its heart lies on Jeju Island. Jeju is the biggest of Korea’s islands, and it has a rich and distinct cultural history. It has been depicted in previous K-dramas, such as Our Blues, but arguably never with such historical scope and cultural specificity. “I think there is an attempt, at some level, to acknowledge the [cultural] distinctiveness of Jeju Island,” says Lee.
In the final episode of When Life Gives You Tangerines, we see the opening of a Haenyeo Museum dedicated to the culture of Jeju’s female divers, which have also been recognized as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. “Haenyeo is usually an embodiment, again and again, of Jeju women being independent,” says Lee. It’s fitting, given When Life Gives You Tangerines’s women-centric depiction of Korean modern history. “In some ways, it’s no wonder that this drama is focused on women and is taking place in Jeju.”
Read More: Korean Superstar IU on Starring in When Life Gives You Tangerines
Who is editor Chloe Lee?
In the only plot-twisty element of the When Life Gives You Tangerines’ ending, the editor of Ae-Sun’s poetry collection is played by Jeon Gwang-rye, who also plays Ae-sun’s haenyeo mother, Yeom Hye-ran. Hye-ran died when Ae-sun was young, and her daughter has never stopped missing her. In the finale, we see a 70-year-old Ae-sun calling out for her mother to the sea, like she did when she was a child. She hopes that her mother has been reincarnated and is working a comfortable desk job, unlike the breath-stealing work of a haenyeo.
It is implied that editor Chloe Lee is a reincarnated version of Hye-ran. Though we don’t know who she is until this finale scene, Chloe is seen twice in the series as a child. First, as the daughter of a couple being interviewed on the TV during the Jeju Canola Flower Festival, and later when she and her mother pay Ae-Sun to fillet their squid at the fish market.
The character also acts as an audience surrogate. Like Chloe Lee, we have lived the story of Ae-Sun through a work of art (and are perhaps shedding tears about it)—in our case, a TV series rather than a book of poems and photos. We too are meant to feel pride that Ae-Sun has managed not only to endure life, but to find joy in it—and that she is finally able to tell her story.
The meaning of When Life Gives You Tangerines‘s Korean title, 폭싹 속았수다
As far as English-language titles go, When Life Gives You Tangerines is a solid one. The sentiment of the English-language expression, a play on “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” works with a central theme of the K-drama. Many of Ae-sun’s hopes and dreams are not possible, and she must learn to make the best of the options she does have. The English-language expression is tweaked to use tangerine instead of lemon, as tangerines are grown on Jeju and are one of the island’s emblematic exports. The island produces 99.8% of the country’s tangerines.
While the English-language title works, the original Korean title, 폭싹 속았수다, has an even more specific cultural context. It is a common phrase in the Jeju dialect of the Korean language that translates to “you have worked hard” or “thank you for your hard work.” Some Korean-language speakers who are more familiar with standard Korean may misinterpret the title as “I was fooled.” “In Jeju dialect, it has a very different meaning,” explains Lee. “I think [the series] is an attempt to acknowledge that distinctive culture and history of Jeju people, and yet, at the same time, to incorporate the story into the larger, general history of Korea.” Thematically, 폭싹 속았수다 is arguably an even more appropriate title for a drama that celebrates the diligent hard work of Ae-sun, Gwan-sik, and many of its other characters across decades of rapid social change.
In an interpersonal context, the phrase takes on greater meaning in the series’ final episode. Before Gwan-sik dies, he is able to see one of Ae-sun’s poem’s published. It’s dedicated to Gwan-sik, telling him she will be OK after he dies. The poem ends with an expression of immense gratitude that uses the show’s Korean title: “My precious dearest, here’s to all you’ve been through.”
