@joelkeller Published March 2, 2026, 6:00 p.m. ET More On: Korean Dramas Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Siren’s Kiss’ On Prime Video, Where An Insurance Investigator Looks Into An Auctioneer Who May Have Killed To Make False Claims ‘The Art of Sarah’ Ending Explained: “Who Are You?” Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Art Of Sarah’ On Netflix, Where A Woman Fakes Her Way To A Luxurious Life, And A Police Detective Uncovers Her Lies 14 Romantic K-Dramas To Watch This Valentine’s Day In the new Hulu Korean drama In Your Radiant Season, two people are stuck in particular emotional “seasons”, and the one in “summer” will try to get the other to come out of their “winter.” But that’s actually not the least confusing aspect of this series.
Opening Shot: In a research lab, a woman chats away over a phone speaker while a student in a hoodie does his work.
The Gist: Song Ha-ran (Lee Sung-kyung) is the one chatting away from Seoul; she works a low-level job at a fashion company while her boyfriend, Seonu Chan (Chae Jong-hyeop) is a student at the Boston Institute of Technology. He seems to be leading a dark existence, but has a nice pen engraved with Ha-ran’s name and sends it to her for her birthday.
But when she tells him she’s going to fly to meet him on a four-day break from work, and tells him that she loves him, something in Seonu prompts him to run to the lab where he works. When he opens the door, a massive explosion blows him out the window. Just as Ha-ran pulls up on the campus, she sees the chaos the explosion caused. She gets a call from Chan’s sister saying that he’s dead — but as we see, he’s barely hanging on.
Seven years later, Ha-ran is the lead designer for Nana Atelier, a company run by her grandmother, Kim Na-na (Lee Mi-sook). She rarely socializes with her staff; her office has automatic shades, and she leaves photo shoots before they’re over. Even at her grandmother’s house, she sits and draws in a tiny attic space off her bedroom. Her downtime is spent by herself at a coffee shop owned by Park Man-jae (Kang Seok-woo).
Physically recovered from the explosion, but with a number of scars and some memory issues, Chan returns to Seoul for the first time; he’s now an animator, and he’s there with his colleague Ben (Firas A. Naji) to pitch an idea to Nana Atelier that the company designs the outfits for one of his characters in a video game. He dresses in sunny colors, takes group pictures of everyone he met on the plane, and runs around Seoul like a tourist.
At an art exhibit, Chan spots Ha-ran, and when he sees her outside, he calls her name when a scaffold is about to fall on her. She hears it, but has no idea who called her by name.
As Chan and Ben pitch their idea to Na-na, he runs into Ha-ran again in the hallway; she still has the pen he gave her seven years prior. But, for some reason she doesn’t recognize him. However, Na-na notices that the character that Chan has designed looks a whole lot like her granddaughter.
The idea of working with Ha-ran for the three months the project will take seems to be too much for Chan to bear, so he almost quits the project he spearheaded. But he decides to stick around, and the more that Ha-ran sees him, the more that she thinks he’s the stalker who’s been taking pictures of her and sending them to her office.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In Your Radiant Season gives off similar vibes to the series It’s Okay To Not Be Okay.
Our Take: The idea driving In Your Radiant Season is that both Chan and Ha-ran are operating in different emotional seasons that seem to be permanent. In Chan’s case, he’s in a permanent summer, perhaps happy that he got a second chance and has made the most of it. In Ha-ran’s case, it’s a permanent winter, completely stuck in mourning mode and unwilling to be social or even go on dates her grandmother has set up for her.
But we also don’t know a lot through most if not all of the first episode. For instance, it seems that Chan’s supposed death is what sent Ha-ran into this emotional winter, but what we don’t know until the end of the episode is that Chan suffered multiple tragedies all at once, which sent her spiraling into her self-imposed isolation.
In the same vein, we have an idea why Chan turned himself around, but a) we don’t know why he was so depressed to begin with, and b) if the explosion was really an accident or is something he knew would happen if he opened that door.
We also have no idea why Ha-ran didn’t recognize Chan when they met again in the hallway at her office. Is it because he was older? Dressed differently? Or does she just seem to have a blindness towards him because of the massive tragedies that befell her on the day she thought he died?
There are certainly a lot of blanks to fill in as these two people try to rebuild their friendship and maybe relationship again. We also have to get past a misunderstanding subplot where she thinks that he’s her stalker. How long that will take is unclear.
Performance Worth Watching: Lee Sung-kyung is a compelling lead as Ha-ran. She’s especially good in the final flashback scene when her grandmother meets her at the Seoul airport, with her already knowing all of the bad news that happened that day.
Parting Shot: “Seonu Chan, who are you?” Ha-ran asks as they stare at each other outside her hotel.
Sleeper Star: Lee Mi-sook is great as Na-na, who seems like a Korean version of Anna Wintour.
Most Pilot-y Line: Ha-ran has her younger sister Ha-young (Han Ji-hyun) working for her, but for some reason insists on her sister calling her Ms. Song in the office.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Like most K-drama romances, In Your Radiant Season develops its love story slowly. But this story has some frustrating holes in it that we hope get worked out earlier in the season rather than later.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
