K-Drama Rewind, Lovely Runner: Brilliant Kim Hye-yoon and solid Byeon Woo-seok lead a soft time-bending romance

Sun Jae!

Rain and some. And cue a series of flashbacks, and the realisation that the first episode itself hit you with one of the most heartwarming twists in K-Drama history.

Lovely Runner arrived quietly, at a time when general sentiment around K-Dramas felt a little deflated. Thrillers and heavy narratives had dominated the scene in recent years, but for viewers longing for something warmer, softer, and simply kinder, Lovely Runner was an unexpected gift. It aired with almost no promotion, quietly premiering alongside the juggernaut Queen of Tears. But by the end of its very first episode, it had everyone asking: Is romance finally back in K-Dramas?

It was — and Lovely Runner delivered, bringing back all the beloved tropes, but in such a fresh, carefree way that it never felt staid. Moreover, it was carefully woven into a time-traveling love story, starring Byeon Woo-seok as Ryu Sun-jae, and Kim Hye-yoon, as Im sol.

The first episode lulls you into believing it's a sweet tale of a wheelchair-bound fangirl quietly devoted to her K-pop idol, Sun Jae. After attending his concert, she’s stunned to find him on a roadside — and even more stunned when he offers her a ride home. But bound by a prior promise to a friend, she reluctantly declines. Minutes later, she learns he has died.

Visibly shaken and horrified, Im Sol—as fate would have it—is transported to the past, and high school, where she meets Sun Jae again. He seems baffled by her desperation to save him—but as the episode ends, we find that he had loved her all along.

And so, begins an entire smorgasbord of genres: Romantic comedy, drama, thriller, time-travelling heists and more drama. Im Sol is determined to save Sun Jae at any cost—but each time she is in the past, she unravels something more about her own traumatic history, and each seemingly insignificant event might just lead to a different timeline. 

There are three of them, by the way.  Nevertheless, it’s not just Im Sol trying to protect from Sun Jae—he’s trying to save her from evil that lurks well within their reach. There’s no over-the-top love confessions between the two of them—just gentle reassurances, though you’re almost filled with dread, because every time that happens—something drastic occurs. 

But you persist through the dread. It’s the warmth that carries you through. 

Maybe, it’s this overwhelming feeling of love that made Lovely Runner so popular. In a world of off-screen and on-screen thrillers, it was a breath of fresh air to watch two people bend time and space to be with each other. Even if the story struggled sometimes after a point, Woo Seok and Hye-yoon kept the charm alive, with banter, goofiness and such hilarity, that even today, fans keep sharing edits of them. 

Lovely Runner is a warm hug. It's comfort.

You need something like that in the midst of doomscrolling.