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Every so often, a drama dares to stare straight into the darkness. Dear X, the new TVING original starring Kim Yoo Jung, is one of those rare stories that turn beauty into something unsettling. It asks the question most shows avoid: what happens when survival requires becoming the very thing you fear? This time, Kim Yoo Jung isn’t here to make you fall in love. She’s here to make you doubt what goodness really looks like.
When ambition wears a smile
The trailer begins like a confession. “That girl, Baek Ah Jin, is truly ruthless.” The words hang heavy, as if warning you before the fall. Then she appears, all grace and charm, smiling like a weapon. It’s not the pastel fantasy of classic K-dramas but a world polished to perfection and cold as steel. From the first frame, Dear X makes it clear: this is not a redemption story. It’s a coronation for the unapologetic.
Baek Ah Jin doesn’t grow through heartbreak or forgiveness. She calculates, manipulates, survives. Behind every polite gesture hides a strategy, a hunger to climb out of the inferno she was born into. The show’s poster whispers the question that defines it: “If your life began in hell, wouldn’t you rather become the monster?”.
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The dark side of reinvention
In a society that still rewards obedience and sacrifice, Dear X flips the script completely. Ah Jin doesn’t want redemption, she wants power. And the disturbing part is how justified it feels. Her rise isn’t painted as madness but as logic sharpened by pain. The audience can’t help but ask themselves: if I had her scars, would I do any different?
That’s the show’s most dangerous trick. It forces empathy where we expect disgust. Baek Ah Jin is not meant to be liked, she’s meant to be understood. And that understanding changes everything.
From webtoon to psychological labyrinth
Based on the acclaimed webtoon by Ban Ji Woon, Dear X brings to life characters who walk the thin line between victim and villain. Co-written with award-winning screenwriter Choi Ja Won and directed by Lee Eung Bok (Sweet Home, Guardian: The Lonely and Great God), the series inherits the DNA of Korea’s most atmospheric thrillers. Lee’s direction is pure precision: quiet rooms heavy with secrets, beauty that feels dangerous, and silences that judge you back.
Every shot feels alive and intrusive at once. The elegance of his frames becomes a second character, reflecting the same contradictions as Baek Ah Jin herself. Cold, calculated, mesmerizing. The world of Dear X doesn’t just tell a story, it studies human nature under fluorescent light.
The age of the anti-angel
It’s no coincidence that Dear X arrives in 2025, right in the middle of a cultural shift. From Killing Eve to Eve, audiences everywhere are drawn to morally gray heroines who refuse to apologize. These women don’t break rules, they rewrite them. They aren’t rebelling for attention but for survival, dismantling the soft, obedient roles that fiction used to cage them in.
Kim Yoo Jung embodies that revolution. Known for her warmth and innocence, she turns those same traits into a weapon here. Watching her as Baek Ah Jin feels like betrayal and liberation happening in the same breath. There’s a scene where she looks straight into the camera and says, “I’ll climb so high that no one can treat me carelessly.” You can almost hear a million women echoing it quietly to themselves. It’s both terrifying and triumphant.
Why this story matters
It’s tempting to call Dear X just another dark fantasy wrapped in expensive cinematography. But beneath the surface lies a question that bites: what happens when a woman stops apologizing for wanting more? The show doesn’t glamorize cruelty. It exposes the system that rewards it. In Baek Ah Jin’s world, ambition without empathy is a language and she speaks it fluently.
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By the end of the trailer, you don’t know if you want to save her or fear her. Maybe both. And that’s exactly why Dear X stays with you. It’s not about good or evil anymore. It’s about survival, power, and the quiet violence of becoming what the world demands you to be.
This is the kind of series that turns comment sections into essays. It doesn’t offer answers, it asks the kind of questions that crawl under your skin. Dear X is less a show and more a mirror one that dares you to look too long.
