A Fan of Noh Hee-Kyung Felt the Nervous Excitement of Golden Years Through 'Dear My Friends'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWy5qs4iW-Y

Through an interview titled "Fan's Pick: Noh Hee-Kyung Issue" by oh my HK!, Avida Zain uncovered her deep-down emotion about her favorite drama series by Noh Hee-Kyung, Dear My Friends.

Avida has fancied Noh Hee-Kyung's works since she watched Our Blues (2022), and it prompted her to watch Noh's other dramas, including Live (2018), The Most Beautiful Goodbye (2017), Dear My Friends (2016), It's Okay, That's Love (2014), and That Winter, the Wind Blows (2013). “I love her dramas because the stories she made are not grandiose. Most of them are slices of life dramas, so they are about ordinary people that relate to our lives,” she said on Saturday (20/5/2023) at her boarding house, “And what's special is she dug deep inside topics that—I don't know how to say it—but (what I mean is) topics like mental illness, teen pregnancy, disability, chronic illness, and so on,” she added.

Among the Noh dramas she has watched, Dear My Friends is her favorite. This drama follows a group of friends, consisting of Jang Nan-Hee (Go Du-Shim), Jo Hee-Ja (Kim Hye-Ja), Moon Jung-A (Na Moon-Hee), Lee Young-Won (Park Won-Suk), and Oh Choong-Nam (Youn Yuh-Jung), who rediscover themselves through love and family in their golden years. This sixteen-episode drama highlights the stories of each of them. Jang Nan-Hee is the backbone of his parents and his younger brother, who cannot make a living for himself. Her mother, Oh Ssang-Boon (Kim Young-Ok), was abused by her father in the past, but Jang and his mother still take care of him in his old age. Her daughter, Park Wan (Go Hyun-Jung), is a single forty-year-old writer and translator. Because Jang's ex-husband cheated on her and her brother is disabled, she wants Park not to marry a married or disabled man. However, what happened was ironic. Park once almost had a relationship with her married boss, and the man she loves is disabled due to an accident.

This drama also shows the stories of the other members of the group: Jo Hee-Ja has dementia; Moon Jung-A wants to live freely by divorcing her husband, who always takes her for granted; Lee Young-Won hides her cancer from her friends, and she wants to fix her friendship with Jang Nan-Hee; and Oh Choong-Nam becomes the breadwinner for her huge family, so she never finished her school and got married.

“So, when I watched this drama, I felt the worries of older people about what might happen in their future lives, their past regrets, their desire to fix or end a relationship, and their efforts to protect their children from things that once ruined their lives,” Avida stated what she felt about Dear My Friends.

Directed by Hong Jong-Chan, Dear My Friends won the Best Drama and Best Screenplay categories at the 53rd Baeksang Arts Awards awards. The original network of this drama was tvN, and it is currently available on Netflix.

To access the full interview between Avida Zain and oh my HK!, please watch the attached video or click the following link: https://youtu.be/nWy5qs4iW-Y.