K-Drama Rewind, Descendants of the Sun: Song Joong-ki and Song Hye-kyo’s epic love saga is all vibes and no logic

It was 2016, and Descendants of the Sun was airing on our television channel, after a series of Turkish shows. There were only 16 episodes, and were all dubbed in Hindi. In our Delhi circles at the time, it caused a stir and was the only topic of discussion—it was the face of South Korean shows, for us in Delhi at least, before Crash Landing on You came along, later. 

It’s not difficult to see why. DOTS is so unbelievably soapy, without any ounce of logic whatsoever, and it still sticks, nine years later. In emoticon language, it would probably be the peace-out sign, because it's a show that exists solely on vibes.

DOTS is a love story starring Song Joong-ki and Song Hye-kyo, whose chemistry was so magnetic that it overflowed into their personal lives too—at the time, at least.  Before CLOY, it’s what the Bollywood fan might have seen as the DDLJ of the Korean world.  Maybe the Notebook? Just less dragged out. 

It possesses all the elements of the epic melodrama that the die-hard romantic would crave—a righteous soldier, and a doctor, stationed at a fictional Mediterranean country. They fall in love—a relationship that, at times, seems to jeopardise national security. But never mind that; they look so good together that nobody (least of all the writers) bothers to question it. It all begins with Joong-ki’s smouldering Yoo Si-jin, a principled soldier who falls head-over-heels for Hye-kyo’s Mo-yeon while off duty. Unfortunately, he can’t seem to complete a single date without some crisis derailing it, and Mo-yeon grows weary of trying to decode his mysterious background. Eventually, the relationship is shelved. 

And several months later, she is conveniently stationed at his camp in  a fictional town, named Uruk. Several thorny barbs, a seedy operation and a fantastical car accident later that can almost have you believe that falling off a cliff is a cinch, combined with an earthquake—you know, all the ingredients for a saga—they’re in love. War, explosions, viruses, kidnapping, assassinations, resurrections later, everyone has a happy ending.

Don’t try to actually get into the details here; your grip on reality will be about as solid as the fictional land of Uruk. Should you really ask about Joong-ki’s secret operations to save Song Hye-kyo from a rather caricatured American soldier gone rogue (Ryan, was it) in one sketchy cave?  Or should you try to understand how Joong-ki keeps surviving the most dire circumstances, from severe gunshots to explosions and abductions? He has a line for that too: ‘I keep achieving the impossible’. Sure that’s great, but there are never any real stakes here; he’s more invincible than Iron Man at this point and even the latter succumbed to a rather tragic fate. 

What you actually end up following are the two central love stories—most notably, Joong-ki and Hye-kyo’s, of course. Ironically, this is where the show feels most real, grounded and natural, when it allows the two characters to just enjoy their banter and sweetness. The most wholesome part of the show is when Si-jin hears Mo-yeon’s frantic love confession by accident, and in order to chase her down, he jumps from the balcony or as he says ‘I put my training to use’. Even their love confession is touching—with both of them sitting on a small cart, and Mo-yeon finally accepting her feelings for Si-jin and saying, ‘This is my confession. Should I apologise?’ 

That’s where the heart of the show really lies, if you drown out the rest of noise. The moments between the two are sweet and touching, as compared to the other couple—a rather fierce Kim Ji-won and Jin Goo. Kim Ji-won has real fire, when it comes to snark-ridden roles, and  complicated nuanced characters, somehow has more spunk and charisma than Hye-kyo in the series at times, even when she’s almost supposedly dying from a heinous virus. Of course—to further a love story, we always do need to put women through the worst of situations, but again, shh, don’t ask questions. Truth to be told, both the women here exist just for the romantic aspects of the story—the plot lines just involve the men, otherwise. 

In the end, DOTS wasn’t about logic or realism. It’s as the Gen Z would say…it’s giving feelings. 

And for all its chaos, it gave us characters we cared about, romances we rooted for, and a guilty pleasure we still remember nearly a decade later.