Self
Sung Dong-il
Self
Overview
The special follows the cast on a two-day, one-night trip to celebrate the show's anniversary.
Sponsored
Cast
Reviews
✦ AI-generated review
The Ghosts of Ssangmun-dong
Watching people you grew up with on screen get older is a strange, slightly painful experience. It’s been ten years since we first 'moved into' the neighborhood of *Reply 1988*, and for a long time, those characters felt safely preserved in that late-eighties Seoul bubble. Then I saw the new three-part tvN special, *Reply 1988 10th Anniversary*, and the weight of the present hit me immediately. This isn't a fictional sequel; it's a variety reunion run by Na Young-seok, who brought fifteen of the original cast to a house in Gangwon Province. You quickly see that these aren't just beloved characters anymore. They're middle-aged actors and former couples, visibly tired from the industry, trying to find glimpses of who they used to be.
You can't really talk about this without mentioning the breakup between Lee Hye-ri and Ryu Jun-yeol. They were the show’s big real-life romance for years, but they split before this anniversary project happened. The way the production handles it is oddly poetic and sad. Ryu shows up via 'scheduling conflict' footage that's been edited in, but he and Hye-ri are never on screen together. It’s a conspicuous, captivating gap that fans have been dissecting like it's a crime scene. Honestly, I found that distance really affecting. It anchors the whole trip in a very real truth: you can look back as much as you want, but you can’t actually go back, and some bridges just stay burned.
Na PD avoids the usual polished vibe you get with most TV reunions. He just sticks the cast in a room, feeds them well, and lets their actual exhaustion show. There’s one bit from the first dinner that really stuck with me. They try to recreate the original show poster, and for a brief second, while they’re all smiling and finding their spots, you see the characters again—Deok-sun, Taek, Sun-woo, the whole group. But then a knee clicks, Ra Mi-ran cracks a joke about how old her joints feel, and everyone just loses it. The camera stays on their faces for a second too long, and in that extra bit of silence, the show becomes something much better than just fan service. It feels real.
The older actors are the real soul of this. Sung Dong-il, the loud but soft-hearted dad we remember, moves with a different energy these days. He has a bit of a shuffle now, and his posture is heavier. Watching him just sit on the porch with a drink, quietly observing the younger ones arguing, is honestly heartbreaking. There’s no performance there; he’s just a man watching a group of people he helped bring up, clearly feeling the passage of time. It made me think of something a critic for *The Guardian* once said—that reunions aren't really about the show, but about mourning who we were when it first aired. You might find that too sentimental, but for me, this messier, sadder look at the cast in Gangwon-do was exactly right. It felt human.
Watching people you grew up with on screen get older is a strange, slightly painful experience. It’s been ten years since we first 'moved into' the neighborhood of *Reply 1988*, and for a long time, those characters felt safely preserved in that late-eighties Seoul bubble. Then I saw the new three-part tvN special, *Reply 1988 10th Anniversary*, and the weight of the present hit me immediately. This isn't a fictional sequel; it's a variety reunion run by Na Young-seok, who brought fifteen of the original cast to a house in Gangwon Province. You quickly see that these aren't just beloved characters anymore. They're middle-aged actors and former couples, visibly tired from the industry, trying to find glimpses of who they used to be.
You can't really talk about this without mentioning the breakup between Lee Hye-ri and Ryu Jun-yeol. They were the show’s big real-life romance for years, but they split before this anniversary project happened. The way the production handles it is oddly poetic and sad. Ryu shows up via 'scheduling conflict' footage that's been edited in, but he and Hye-ri are never on screen together. It’s a conspicuous, captivating gap that fans have been dissecting like it's a crime scene. Honestly, I found that distance really affecting. It anchors the whole trip in a very real truth: you can look back as much as you want, but you can’t actually go back, and some bridges just stay burned.
Na PD avoids the usual polished vibe you get with most TV reunions. He just sticks the cast in a room, feeds them well, and lets their actual exhaustion show. There’s one bit from the first dinner that really stuck with me. They try to recreate the original show poster, and for a brief second, while they’re all smiling and finding their spots, you see the characters again—Deok-sun, Taek, Sun-woo, the whole group. But then a knee clicks, Ra Mi-ran cracks a joke about how old her joints feel, and everyone just loses it. The camera stays on their faces for a second too long, and in that extra bit of silence, the show becomes something much better than just fan service. It feels real.
The older actors are the real soul of this. Sung Dong-il, the loud but soft-hearted dad we remember, moves with a different energy these days. He has a bit of a shuffle now, and his posture is heavier. Watching him just sit on the porch with a drink, quietly observing the younger ones arguing, is honestly heartbreaking. There’s no performance there; he’s just a man watching a group of people he helped bring up, clearly feeling the passage of time. It made me think of something a critic for *The Guardian* once said—that reunions aren't really about the show, but about mourning who we were when it first aired. You might find that too sentimental, but for me, this messier, sadder look at the cast in Gangwon-do was exactly right. It felt human.