Review of Dare To Love Me / 함부로 대해줘

Although this blog post is coming out later than when I’m writing it in November 2024, due to the nature of how I schedule my content, I spent a lot of time lately watching Korean dramas. I blog about it here on my website, as well as my traveling, movie reviews, and book reviews. Check it out further if you liked this review!

Anyways, I started watching Dare To Love Me when it began airing. I had just graduated from graduate school with my master’s degree, and was in a small period of purgatory after the summer when I was waiting for my visa to come to bop over to the next country. Spoiler: it ended up being a months long wait, which was painful to get through.

But when I started Dare To Love Me I was waiting to go to Korea, not the second country. That’s where I spent the summer and discovered Viki did not work there. So I got through as many episodes of this show before I left for Korea, then finished the series when I came back to the US and was waiting for my next visa.

And let me tell you, it was painful returning to this show after such a break. This is a bit of a spoiler to for my review, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of this series in the end.

Let’s get into the review before I start rambling too much!

A man from a traditional village is given a task to protect some of the nation’s most sacred treasures.

This is a series that balances between two tones: a fluffy romance and something that really does not take itself seriously. Our male lead is Shin Yoon Bok, who grew up in a place called the Seongsan Village.

Located in South Korea, the Seongsan Village never modernized like the rest of the country. Everyone who lives in the village acts like it is the Joseon period, dressing and living like the world outside of their gate is full of tcechnological wonders that they’ve never experienced.

Yoon Bok comes from a prominent family in the village, and he has a specific role within it: he needs to protect the sacred heritage of Korea, specifically from the Joseon Dynasty. He’s sent out of the village to go on missions and reacquire artifacts that have been stolen, which we see a lot of throughout the series. Who would’ve thought that there were so many artifacts on the loose?

Because he grew up in the village, Yoon Book is a little more traditional than a lot of people his age, but at the same time he’s more progressive than the others in the village.

The plot in this show is kickstarted when he goes out of the village to pursue a dream of becoming a webtoon writer, which is a bit out there, but certainly a unique plot point for a guy who was raised like it’s still Joseon. In the outside world, still dressed in his traditional attire, he’s going to have a lot of learning to do.

It also doesn’t help that he’s not the best at expressing himself and his emotions, which comes into play when he meets our female lead: Kim Hong Do. She’s been beaten down by the circumstances of life, which he’s not going to realize at first because he’s an optimist.

So throughout the course of the series, we’re going to see how these two evolve with each other, especially as she grapples with the fact he came from a place that people would definitely make fun of in the modern world.

Overall Thoughts

This is a fun show overall. If you’re looking for something that’s not too serious outside of the random scenes where we see people handling Joseon Dynasty artifacts that were stolen, this might be the show for you. The leads have some good chemistry, even with an age gap between them.

The plot is also very unique for a show. I think that’s what drew me in originally, and the dialogue is pretty witty with the circumstances the characters are in. That’s something to definitely put in the plus column for this show.

Would I return to this show? I wouldn’t say so. I didn’t love it, and as I mentioned before, I found it more difficult to get through in the final episodes. It felt like it was dragged out a little too long for me, and could’ve actually been twelve episodes instead of sixteen.

That said, I do think it’s worth checking out. Watch the first three episodes and see for yourself. Taste is so subjective! Don’t let other people decide for you what your opinions are.

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