Dear X, not to be confused with “Dear X Who Doesn’t Love Me,” is 2025’s latest thriller that is so gnarly (not in the Katseye way) that you wouldn’t believe actress Kim You-Jung is in it. The actress, who has been in the industry since she was a child, appears in a never-before-seen role that’s vicious, psychopathic, and sees her character out for blood. I don’t think I’ve seen TVING drop 4 episodes of a K-drama before, but it’s interesting to see how much of a story you can get and can’t get in this much time. For Dear X, the story’s perhaps not as important as the gore, in my opinion. This is not to say there’s no story, because it’s quite intense. But it definitely lets you marinate in the psychopathic nature of the main character, just like she marinates in all that blood in the fourth episode. But with that said, let’s jump straight into the first 4 episodes of Dear X.
Spoiler Alert
What Happened to Ah-Jin When She Was a Kid?
For the purpose of this article, I’m going to go in chronological order, because it just makes it easy to keep track of what’s happened so far. To begin, in 2006, Ah-Jin was a young girl who faced constant abuse at the hands of her drunkard mother. She would get her to steal alcohol for her and then beat her up all day after getting too drunk. Ah-Jin’s mother never divorced her husband, and he never really helped his daughter either. Instead, one night, on a rainy day, he decided to take the woman out onto the steps outside their house and throw her off, making it look like she had fallen to her death. Ah-Jin didn’t see what happened, but she clocked it based on the situation. After all, she’s her father’s daughter at the end of the day; that’s why she’s turned out the way she has as an adult.
You’d imagine Ah-Jin’s worries would be over after this, but instead, her mother is still alive and grabs onto the little girl’s leg, asking her to save her. Ah-Jin walks away, kind of making her an accomplice? By this time, Ah-Jin’s father, Sun-Gyu, has already found a new wife in Hwang Ji-Sun. He takes Ah-Jin to her house, but the little girl soon finds out that they want to sell explicit videos of her because she’s such a looker (Mom, I’m scared). At the same time, Ah-Jin has a stepbrother named Yoon Jun-Seo, Ji-Sun’s son, and the two kids become friends. However, Ah-Jin is already smart enough to use this boy and make him her servant. When he gets sick one day, she spends the whole night with him, keeping him warm, and then claims he doesn’t look like his mom. He brings out a picture then and says they look happy in it, but the thing Ah-Jin notices in it is that Jun-Seo looks more like the chauffeur than his father, who is sitting in a wheelchair.
Ah-Jin immediately leverages this information to blackmail her stepmother, telling her to buy her new clothes and never send her to an orphanage. This plan works for a bit, but when the woman overhears Ah-Jin filling in her son’s ears with some toxic things about her, she starts to get annoyed. She calls Sun-Gyu and tells him to get rid of her immediately or she won’t marry him, but he asks her to wait till he’s back home. By this time, Ah-Jin triggers the woman again, and the latter drags her down to a bathroom on the ground floor and starts to dunk her head in a bathtub filled with water (how was it already filled?). Before getting dragged, Ah-Jin screamed for Jun-Seo, who woke up and followed the noise, only to find his mum trying to kill a child the same age as him. Their relationship is ruined forever, but at least Ah-Jin gets to have a pretend family for some time until she’s fully grown up (talk about trauma). Oh Ah-Jin also runs up to the top floor and jumps off the building when Jun-Seo calls the cops, just so they’ll think her stepmother threw her. She says she’s lucky and she’ll survive (what a child).
What Happens In School?
When Ah-Jin and Jun-Seo are in school, a girl named Sung-Hee starts bullying Ah-Jin. She makes it known to everyone that the poor girl lives by herself and doesn’t have a mom. She also has a crush on Jun-Seo, but we find out that Jun-Seo is obsessed with Ah-Jin. No, they’re not dating, but it definitely seems like it at the beginning. Ah-Jin has another lackey, a boy named Kim Jae-O, who also suffers at the hands of an abusive father. Jae-O is willing to do anything for Ah-Jin and has a ledger for the things she gets him to do with messages about money lending on his phone to a “boss” who is Ah-Jin. Sung-Hee tries everything she can to rattle Ah-Jin, but it doesn’t work. Finally, Ah-Jin strikes back by getting Jun-Seo to pretend he likes Sung-Hee. He tells her the only thing she needs to do is stop bullying Ah-Jin. Sung-Hee says she will, but deep down she hates the girl, who always beats her despite her background.
Finally, Ah-Jin, Jae-O, and Jun-Seo trap Sung-Hee in a fake stealing situation in school. She screams and yells that she didn’t do it, but nobody believes her because there’s so much evidence against her. Even her father, who is an attorney, disowns her in that moment. More importantly, Ah-Jin even tells her that the homeroom teacher who was exposed at school (by Ah-Jin herself) was having an affair with Sung-Hee’s dad. When Ah-Jin’s dad shows up to school, Sung-Hee’s delighted to see what a madman he is, making a big mess for the girl, but instead it’s Jun-Seo who finds him and calls him “Dad” in front of everyone, making Sung-Hee more frustrated. As revenge, Ah-Jin leaves a notebook on the floor, in which Sung-Hee has rated her classmates A-D based on how rich their parents her, which gets her beaten up. Sung-Hee ultimately requested to be transferred from school, leaving Ah-Jin the queen that she is.
Meanwhile, Jae-O goes to prison after accidentally killing his dad, who was hurting his younger brother. It seemed in that moment like he’d come back later because Ah-Jin told him she might become a lawyer and save him, but that never happens. So he might get delighted to see her on TV and show up at some point in front of her home or something? Who knows?
What Happens to Sun-Gyu?
Ah-Jin’s already living by herself in high school, but her father finds out from her stepmom where she lives because Jun-Seo and she go to the same school. Later, when she moves, When she gets into Hanguk University, the best in Korea, Jun-Seo takes a loan for her from his grandfather, who is nice but also a bit scary, but Sun-Gyu steals it from her after beating her up just before graduation day. Ah-Jin goes to graduation and just sits by herself, probably thinking about everything she’s lost. But, at the end of the day, she sees a man named Choi Jung-Ho catch a pickpocket with ease. Choi is an ex-baseball player who runs a cafe and hopes to play again. Ah-Jin gets fixated on him and knows she can use him to her benefit.
She gets a job at his cafe, and after some time, pictures of her start circulating on social media because she’s so pretty. At the same time, we’ve already seen a scout try to get to her twice, but she’s refused both times, even with the desperation of the looming threat of her father on her head. He will ruin it all for her. Ah-Jin ends up having a stalker in this situation, and this man, who wears a beanie, tries to go after her one night, but she strikes him in the head, nearly killing him; however, Jun-Seo, who is somehow always close by, stops her from killing the guy and even calls the authorities. However, Ah-Jin takes his beanie with her. She then asks Jun-Seo how far he could go for her. He doesn’t give her the answer she wants to hear, and she already knows he can’t kill people for her because he can’t even kill a fly. But Jun-Seo will get the chance to prove himself right.
Now, Ah-Jin’s plan comes into action when her dad comes back for money. She buys him a beanie that looks like her stalker’s. She invites him over and sets up an elaborate plan to phone Choi right when she’s getting beaten up by her dad, so he can be there in 10 minutes to do her bidding. Somehow, her plan works, and Choi shows up in 10 minutes, after Ah-Jin is fully battered and bruised. Seeing Sun-Gyu with a beanie on, choking Ah-Jin, Choi freaks out and uses the baseball bat he gave her to keep herself safe to strike the man. The blow is too strong, and it looks like Sun-Gyu is dead, but he’s still breathing. Ah-Jin sends Choi away, telling him that the man’s her dad, not the stalker, and she’ll handle the rest. Choi, in a trance, goes to his car and waits there, and the call goes to the police at 3 am, much after the man was already dead.
How Does Ah-Jin Escape A Prison Sentence?
Ah-Jin cuts up the beanie that Sun-Gyu is wearing and tosses it in the toilet before calling the police. When they arrive, they arrest Choi for the murder. Choi wants to play baseball again because his injury has healed, and he has connections, so his manager convinces the detective to look into Ah-Jin herself. The detective’s hunch is pretty spot on, but the thing he doesn’t account for is that Ah-Jin has so many men ready to sacrifice themselves for her. Case in point, Jun-Seo. At the same time, the scout is at the station because one of her idols has been caught in a drunk driving case. She’s obviously set free with her assistant taking the blame, but this allows the scout to bribe Ah-Jin. “I’ll help you if you come work for us.” On the other hand, Jun-Seo confesses to the police that he killed Sun-Gyu, but the detective doesn’t believe him at all. Even though Ah-Jin tried to frame him when he took a bribe, the plan backfired, and the detective is onto her psychopathic tendencies, but it’s the scout who comes in handy here.
At the end of Dear X episode 4, Ah-Jin is set free, and the CEO of the entertainment company cracks a deal with her. As long as she cuts ties with Jun-Seo, she’ll be totally okay. This woman hopes to make Ah-Jin very famous, and when that happens, these things always come to the surface, and Jun-Seo and her relationship will too. Ah-Jin says she was planning to do so anyway and walks away, scot-free, while the detective who took the bribe is caught for real thanks to her new connections. The episode ends with Ah-Jin’s face on every billboard in Seoul. She’s the most famous actress in the country, and Choi watches her play a nun from prison. He’ll probably want revenge. Meanwhile, I wonder what Jun-Seo is up to and how he’ll be able to deal with this separation. Kim Young-Dae is literally on the poster of this show, so there’s no way he’s actually gone, is there? Also, Hwang In-Yeop (True Beauty), a fellow actor in the show, whose name we don’t know yet, might end up being her next target?
