Review of Cinderella at 2AM / 새벽 2시의 신데렐라

When I came back from eight weeks of living in South Korea in the summer of 2024, I was really thinking about how I could maintain the Korean skills I had acquired while living there.

I was in Busan, South Korea, for a program where you’re supposed to live and breathe the Korean language, so when I came back to the States, I was really missing Korea in some ways (although I was a bit relieved to come home and take the pressure off of my shoulders).

Anyways, one of the ways I coped throughout this process of coming home was watching an ungodly amount of Korean dramas. There are a lot of blog posts scheduled in the upcoming months with my reviews of the content I’ve been consuming, but Cinderella at 2AM was one of the shows I was watching every week as the episodes dropped.

I also had no idea when I began watching it, as I went it completely blind, was that it was ten episodes. So when I finished it earlier this morning (I’m typing this the day the final episode aired), I was so confused at how it just ended. I guess I should have figured that it was going to end sooner from how fast the plot was moving.

I’m starting to ramble already, so let’s get into the review!

An office worker dating the chaebol of her company is forced to break up with him.

Our female lead in this drama is Yoon-seo, who has the classic Korean drama story. She takes care of her high school brother by herself, as their parents are no longer here, and she works hard each day at her company. As we learn quickly, sometimes she’s willing to make hard decisions to get out of the hole.

We see this right at the beginning of the drama when she’s meeting with the mother of Joo-won, her boyfriend and one of the mythical Korean chaebols. They’ve been dating for a while and are deeply in love, but then Joo-won’s mother, the head of the company they both work at.

His mother demands that Yoon-seo break up with her son, but there’s an incentive: she’ll pay Yoon-seo off in order to get her son away from her. We don’t really understand why Yoon-seo does what she does at the beginning of the movie, but it becomes a lot clearer by the time we get halfway through the series.

Yoon-seo agrees to the conditions set by Jo-woon’s mother, and the course of the story is changed from that point on. She breaks up with Joo-won, who definitely feels blind sided by everything that just happened, as there were no warning signs in their relationship before this.

While she tries to avoid him, despite him getting a promotion and managing their team, these two are going to realize that there are going to be a lot of forces getting these two back together. When another man also appears in the picture as a potential suitor for Yoon-seo, it;s going to also create a jealousy streak.

Other side plots include how Yoon-seo interacts with her brother, who is a high schooler also struggling with his own problems, and interacting with her friends who own a restaurant.

We also get a heavy glimpse of the B plot involving Joo-won’s brother, who is close with him (which is refreshing to see two brothers who act like brothers instead of business partners they’re willing to betray for the sake of power), and how he is struggling in his own marriage. He’s seen giving advice to Joo-won as he has his own problems back home.

Overall Thoughts

I mean this is a cute drama, but I’m not sure if I’m going to return to it. It kind of reminded me of Business Proposal, but I liked that drama more than this one. We kind of know how this plot is going to go up until the ending, and I was able to predict the exact storyline by the time I was halfway done episode 2. And I was right!

There’s nothing wrong with that, and it was entertaining. But if you’re looking for something else, I find that it wasn’t super compelling beyond this straightforward plot. I watched all of it besides that.

It was also kind of interesting how the casting was done. I’m not against older woman younger man relationships, but it was kind of obvious the age gap between these two. Yoon-seo’s brother’s actor also did not look like a high schooler at all; definitely a sophomore in college kind of vibe.

Give this one a shot if you’re interested in it! Like I said, it’s a straightforward cute drama with some tension here and there, and it’s pretty comfortable throughout to watch.

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