When we first meet Kang Ji-won (Park Min-young) in 2023, she’s a downtrodden, cancer-stricken woman who only has months to live. Her good-for-nothing husband Park Min-hwan (Lee Yi-kyung), who is unemployed and in debt, has secretly used up the last of their money, which had been earmarked for her hospital fees. Desperate for answers, Ji-won leaves the treatment facility, encountering a familiar but eccentric cabbie who gives her some life advice on her way home.
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Once home, however, Ji-won discovers that Min-hwan has been having an affair with her best friend Jeong Su-min (Song Ha-yoon), and the duo have taken out an insurance policy on her life worth one billion won. Overcome with rage, she confronts the philandering duo, threatening to expose their fraud to the authorities. A physical altercation soon breaks out, but Ji-woon is too weak from her illness to fight back, and ultimately dies at the hands of her cheating husband.
Moments later, Ji-won finds herself 10 years in the past, when she was cancer-free and before she married Min-hwan. She soon learns that whatever happens in the future will still happen – except, they don’t necessarily have to happen to her. Determined to change her life, Ji-won then sets out on a mission to transfer her fate to someone else by getting Su-min to marry Min-hwan instead. Unbeknownst to Ji-won, she has a supporter backing her every move: her boss and secret admirer Yu Ji-hyuk (Na In-woo).
Marry My Husband makes it easy to fall in love with protagonist Kang Ji-won – and that’s already half the battle won for this K-drama. Park Min-young effortlessly portrays her as smart and kind, though not in a superficial way, but a little too naive and trusting. Yet, she’s learning from her past (or, in this case, future) mistakes and evolving as a person. Thankfully, it’s a gradual process that allows the audience space to root for Ji-won as the show progresses, while acknowledging that she can’t possibly handle it all on her own.
To that end, Ji-won is surrounded by a cast of equally charming, if fairly one-dimensional, characters. There’s her bubbly co-worker Yu Hee-yeon (Choi Gyu-ri), who gives Ji-won a makeover, well-meaning but meek assistant manager Yang Joo-ran (Gong Min-jung) and her stoic but secretly soft-hearted boss and love interest Yu Ji-hyuk (Na In-woo). They are as tropey and archetypal as K-drama characters come, but in a way that’s also their job, to not detract from who we’re all here for: Kang Ji-won.
In the same vein, Marry My Husband also keeps its storyline relatively simple and easy to follow – which should be applauded, seeing how shows with a similar story device have let themselves go off the rails. What truly makes Marry My Husband stand out, though, is how unseriously the show takes itself. While, yes, there are earnest dramatic scenes and the set-up is decidedly dark, this K-drama (and its creators) keeps in mind that this is, after all, a fantastical melodrama that tells a tale of revenge through time travel.
Marry My Husband may not be the most groundbreaking of shows, but that’s not what it’s trying to be either. This Korean drama knows it’s a guilty pleasure through and through, and embraces that wholeheartedly. It satisfies by giving the audience exactly what they want by letting Ji-won get her payback, with a handful of unexpected twists that are just enough to keep viewers running back for more.
Marry My Husband airs every Monday and Tuesday on tvN. The series is also available to stream internationally on Prime Video.
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