Secret Childhood Connection in K-Drama

If you’re new to K-drama and having a hard time predicting who the heroine will end up with, there’s a trick to identifying the winner. Her true love will be announced well in advance through a series of flashbacks revealing that the hero and the heroine knew each other as children, but have been separated for decades. Western viewers thrill to the idea of finding the needle of true love in the global haystack. But K-drama viewers know true love is based on a secret childhood connection.

Since the secret childhood connection is a climactic reveal, usually midseason (somewhere in episodes 8-10) it’s hard to discuss this trope in detail without spoilers. But I’ll do my best. The Secret Childhood Connection is a specific Korean formula for the related but more general TV tropes: Connected All Along and Forgotten First Meeting.

Usually the connection is a “secret” because the characters themselves are unaware of it. Often because they have amnesia. The connection was often fleeting, usually occurred at a time of trauma (parental death in a car accident is the go-to), and even as children, the characters often didn’t know who the other was at the time.

Examples

Her Private Life – The show that started me on my K-drama journey, Her Private Life packs a lot of tropes into a story that remains refreshingly original even now that I know what to expect from a K-drama. The heroine’s childhood connection to the second lead is significant but no secret (although it takes the viewer a few episodes to work out the details). But the childhood connection between the leads is a delicious whopper of drama and trauma and implausible coincidence.

Crash Landing on You – This one is a bit different, because they met as much younger adults rather than children. But Korean coming-of-age stories often feature characters in their mid-20’s. Plus, the circumstances of their meeting fit the “profound earlier encounter at a time of personal crisis” I’m including it here.

Romance is a Bonus Book – Another one that ticks most but not all of the trope’s boxes. Their childhood connection is no secret. They’ve been friends since the day their tween/teen selves met. But they met because she saved his life and was severely injured in the process, so they still have a shared childhood trauma.

Cinderella and Four Knights – Here there be spoilers.

The main character and the love interest have similar life stories involving the early death of their mothers. Only later do they realize that their mothers were both killed in the same accident. Their first meeting was when they comforted each other at the funeral home.

Meow, the Secret Boy – Since this is an age gap romance, only one of them was a child when they met the first time. That day, the heroine tried to help a little boy find his mother. But the boy is secretly a cat. A year later that kitten has grown up and they meet again. I know how weird that sounds. But trust me, it’s actually a tear-jerker and basically a 16-episode commercial for animal rescue.

Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo – It doesn’t take very many episodes for the protagonists of this show to discover that college weighlifter Bok Joo was the same girl that saved the life of swimmer Joon-Hyung when he fell out of a window in elementary school.

Hyde, Jekyll, Me – Without giving too much away, in this secret childhood connection, during early adolescence the heroine was involved in the experience that created the hero’s split personality.

Chicago Typewriter – Why stop at childhood when your secret connection can date from a past life? But never fear, even in that past life, the hero rescued the heroine from bad guys when she was still a child.

Secret Garden – It’s a bit spoilery, but it’s also not a fabulous show. So, the heroine’s dad was a firefighter. When she was still in high school, he died saving someone’s life in an elevator accident. The hero has amnesia, caused by the trauma from what he thinks was a car accident. But the accident actually involved an elevator and the death of his rescuer.

Love with Flaws – She was his crush in middle school. But they haven’t seen each other since then. His family moved abroad while she was out of school due to her parents death in a car accident. They don’t recognize each other right away, but figure it out pretty quickly. It takes much longer to realize her parents were driving to his house the night they died.

Healer – The entire show is basically about secret connections from the past. So of course the heroine has a forgotten connection with both her professional idol and the mysterious man she has a crush on. The mentor was only a teen, and she her love interest were only five years old when a tragedy separated them all, causing her and her love interest to lose their families and develop amnesia. The connections don’t stop there, though. As a journalist researching a new crime, the heroine eventually goes up against the old bad guys. She even ends up interviewing her own birth mother in the course of her journalistic work. I know it sounds soapy. But the magic is in the execution and this is seriously one of the best television I’ve seen.

{My favorite image of this for Healer is captured in a Drama Beans post on the same subject.}

She Was Pretty – In middle school, she was pretty and he was fat. They were separated 15 years ago when his family moved to America, and eventually lost touch. Now they’re adults; he’s hot and successful, she’s lost her looks and works a bunch of part-time jobs. So she pulls a Cyrano and then has a hard time pulling it off when he becomes her new boss. After all, he’s bound to feel that childhood connection even when she claims she’s a stranger.

While You Were Sleeping – Of course it takes the characters much longer to discover, but flashbacks inform viewers early on that two of the three central characters’ fathers were killed on the same day saving others from the same rogue soldier. They met each other at the joint funeral, which they don’t remember. Also, one of them saved the other from drowning when they were kids and didn’t know each other.

More Secret Connections

A Millionaire’s First Love – One of Hyun Bin’s first movies, this melodrama reveals an almost completely irrelevant secret childhood connection near the end. As usual, it involves a promise to meet again that is broken because of a car accident that killed of their parents (resulting in a hint of amnesia – “I forgot about you after that”).

What Did I Miss?

That’s a baker’s dozen of examples just from the shows I’ve watched. Since I’ve only been watching K-dramas since just before the pandemic, that means it’s a pretty common trope. And a dozen examples should be enough. But I’m always game for more. My Drama List has 31 suggestions. How about you? Got any recommendations for me?