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On April 2, 2025, AJUNEWS reported that IU expressed her admiration for co-star Kim Seon-ho from the Netflix series When Life Gives You Tangerines.
IU portrays the younger version of Ae-sun and her daughter Geum-myeong in the series. Kim Seon-ho's portrayal of Chung-seob, an artist with a free spirit, added complexity to the narrative, especially in his interactions with Geum-myeong.
Their on-screen chemistry resonated with audiences, adding layers to the intricate relationships depicted in the series. Meanwhile, during her exclusive interview with AJUNEWS, IU revealed that they only had 10 practice sessions with each other to build the chemistry between Geum-myeong and Chung-seob.
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"There were only about 10 episodes of filming, but I was surprised to see a huge amount of filming each episode. I was impressed by the way he caught up with the flow of the play at once and prepared various versions," IU said.
She continued:
"My relationship with a character named Chung-seob had to maintain the tension in the play, so I also worked while maintaining that tension." (as translated by Korean Naver Papago).
When Life Gives You Tangerines: Finale episode overview
When Life Gives You Tangerines provides an emotional exploration of love and loss, perseverance, and family, within a rich context of Jeju Island’s history and culture.
The plot spans multiple decades and includes the lives of its major characters until one final episode synthesizes the lives of those characters. In the final episode When Life Gives You Tangerines comes to emotional fruition with Gwan-sik's untimely death.
The enduring love story of Gwan-sik and Ae-sun comes to an emotional conclusion. The death of Gwan-sik in episode 16 is a pivotal point in the series where Ae-sun meditates on her life together with Gwan-sik, as he takes his last breath in the hospital ICU.
Ae-sun whispers to him, "Thanks to you, I was never lonely for a day," conveying a tremendous depth of their relationship. Gwan-sik's hope of dying after Ae-sun so he could give her a final farewell in life did not play out, as life had different plans.
With this ending, the story also reflected on irony in life— life has a way of reminding people how little time they do have to fulfill their wishes.
In When Life Gives You Tangerines, Geun-myeong experiences comfort and clarity with Chung-seob. After she ended her engagement with her first love Yeong-bum (Lee Jun-young), she found true love and companionship once again with Chung-seob (Kim Seon-ho).
Geun-myeong and Chung-seob are genuinely supportive of each other in shared goals, and When Life Gives You Tangerines episode 13's culmination of their relationship signals personal growth and acceptance.
The younger brother of Geum-myeong, Eun-myeong struggles throughout When Life Gives You Tangerines to find his own identity, caught between the rigid expectations of his family and the rapidly evolving world around him. His path captures the burden of the younger generation in balancing respect for tradition and familial obligations, with their desire to live their own lives in a modern world.
In the end, he comes to the realization that his parents, Gwan-sik and Ae-sun, never cast him aside. This awakening inspires change in him as he seeks to fix his mistakes.
Meanwhile, at first presented as an antithesis to Gwan-sik, Sang-gil's changes with age come to embody the value of loyalty and the commitment to family later in his life. Sang-gil's wife, Yong-ran, divorces him after tolerating his torture for over 30 years. She completed her real estate study and passed the exam to start a new chapter.
When Life Gives You Tangerines episode 16 ending shows Sang-gil trying to mend his relationship with Yong-ran, but the latter refuses it. Even though the pair was divorced, the ending showed the reality of life that being two old people, Sang-gil and Yong-ran had to contact each other to go for a doctor's consultation together, as their three kids are busy with their respective lives.
Interestingly, in their old age, Gwan-sik and he become incredibly unlikely friends, bonding over their grandchild (the kids of Eun-myeong and Hyun-sook). His developing character adds dimension to a story that deals with themes of redemption and self-awareness.
When Life Gives You Tangerines masterfully interweaves anecdotal stories of familial relationships with larger socio-cultural themes, and offers its audience an opportunity to reflect on aging and the permanence of human relationships.
IU's collaboration with Kim Seon-ho stands out as a highlight, with their performances bringing authenticity and emotional depth to the series. As When Life Gives You Tangerines continues to garner acclaim, it serves as a testament to the power of storytelling and the universal themes that resonate across cultures.
When Life Gives You Tangerines is directed by Kim Won-seok and stars IU, Park Bo-gum, Moon So-ri, and Park Hae-joon. It is available on Netflix.
