Before the cameras rolled, Kim Tae-ri went to Bona’s house with sandbags strapped to her legs. Bona, who plays her rival in the story, found it a little shocking. Kim kept a daily fencing log too, the way her character would, and that notebook later turned up on screen as Hee-do’s diary in Twenty-Five Twenty-One. The performance began as a discipline long before it became a character.
Twenty-Five Twenty-One is a tvN drama that ran on weekends in the early months of 2022, sixteen episodes in all. It is set in 1998, and its title names two ages: twenty-five and twenty-one, the ages at which the story follows its two leads. It is about what it costs to want something at full strength, and about what happens when the world will not match your effort.
Spoiler notice: everything before the section on the ending avoids revealing how the story concludes. That section, which is clearly marked, and what follows it, does not.
A Gymnasium Without a Team
The story starts with a closure. Na Hee-do, eighteen, loves fencing, and her school team is disbanded because of the financial crisis that swept South Korea in 1997 and 1998. Baek Yi-jin, twenty-two, has watched his family collapse. He rents out comic books and delivers newspapers to get by, and he will later become a television journalist at a broadcaster called UBS. These two meet at those ages, and the series follows them again at twenty-five and twenty-one.
Hee-do has an idol, Go Yu-rim, a gold-medallist fencer who sees Hee-do very differently: as her trauma. Around them gathers a group of five young people, among them Moon Ji-woong and Ji Seung-wan, whose friendship holds up the lighter half of the drama. A second story runs alongside in 2021, where Hee-do’s fifteen-year-old daughter Min-chae, a ballet student, finds her mother’s diary at her grandmother’s house.
An outside viewer may need one piece of background. The crisis at the end of 1997 pushed companies into bankruptcy, put fathers out of work and closed school teams that had seemed permanent. “IMF” became a word that Koreans used for a whole era, not only for a lender. In the story, the crisis arrives in one concrete form: a school gymnasium whose fencing team no longer exists.
Why Twenty-Five Twenty-One Is Set in 1998
Director Jung Ji-hyun has said he chose 1998 because people of different ages can connect to it: younger viewers, his own generation and his parents’. tvN’s own tagline described the series as a story of youths whose dreams were taken by their era. Nam Joo-hyuk, born in 1994 and so only a small child in 1998, said he drew on his own experience and archive material to play the year, while doing as he liked on set, which, he said, the director preferred.
The Texture of the Late 1990s in Twenty-Five Twenty-One
The period comes in through small things. Cyworld, the social network, gives Ji-woong his ambition: tvN described him as a “back then influencer” who wants to become a Cyworld “Today’s Member” star. People arrange chat meet-ups by agreeing to carry a flower or wear a named shirt. A pirate-radio DJ belongs to the period too. Screen-quota protests appear in the background, which hints at a film industry anxious about its own future.
The cast had to learn this world. Choi Hyun-wook, born after the era, studied 1990s accessories and styling. Lee Joo-myung listened to old radio broadcasts on YouTube to find the sensibility of her DJ character. Kim Tae-ri cut bangs, had skin treatments to look younger, and checked old magazines and books to match the costumes. She said she looked in the mirror and thought, “oh, this is Hee-do.”
The locations are real, and some are easy to name. Jeonju Hanok Village stands in for the neighbourhood of Ahyeon-dong. A girls’ commercial high school in Nonsan, Chungnam, plays Taeyang High. Sampo Beach in Goseong, Gangwon, is where the school trip was shot, and the Donghae and Mukho areas of Gangwon stand in for the fishing town of Pohang. Anyone planning a visit should confirm current access before going.
The critic William Schwartz, reviewing the opening episode, read the bleak empty spaces Hee-do runs through as marks of a country in depression. It is a good way to see them. Twenty-Five Twenty-One is bright in tone but its spaces are often vacant, and the contrast does a good deal of its emotional work.
Fencing as the Real Subject
Training the body
Kim Tae-ri trained in fencing for five to six months under a gold-medallist teacher. Bona trained for about three. Kim said she worked two hours a day every other day for the first two months, then daily for about four more. Her description of the sport was “so fun and so wretched.”
Practice bouts made the rivalry real. Kim mostly lost to Bona, won once and cried. Both were competitive, and after a loss each would book another match. Bona noticed that Kim trained every morning. Kim said she did not want fencing to be a mere drama concept. She wanted to introduce it properly, and she worked, in her words, until her body crumbled.
On screen
The camera treats fencing as a road. Kim Tae-ri has described the director’s idea of joining several pistes so the strip looks endless, with her walking along it. It is easy to read that as an image of ambition: a narrow lane, one direction, no room to step aside.
The rivalry with Yu-rim is, in a sense, the other love story of Twenty-Five Twenty-One. Hee-do idolises her, and Yu-rim sees Hee-do as her trauma, which is how tvN’s own viewing guide frames a fated rivalry. Coverage of the shoot names an umbrella scene between the two at school, and Bona picked the diving-board scene in episode eight as the one she remembers most. She has said she was nervous before it and spent time preparing, and that Kim Tae-ri climbed up to comfort her.
Kim also learned something about cost. Her biggest lesson, she said, was energy distribution: she poured so much into the fencing scenes that she had little left for what came later. It reads almost as a statement of the drama’s theme: effort is real, and it is finite. The same generosity shows up off the strip. The fencer Kim Jun-ho made a guest appearance, and Kim Tae-ri helped him with his lines.
Hee-do and Yi-jin: Two Ways of Being Young
Hee-do
This was Kim Tae-ri’s first drama in three years and six months, since Mr. Sunshine, and at thirty-three, by Korean age, she was playing a high-schooler. She has said she took the part because the script was fun and “beautiful and heart-fluttering” among many genre dramas, and because Hee-do was a bright type she had not met. She remembered thinking that a child this bright, pure and honest, with no inferiority complex, could exist. The writer, she recalled, wanted viewers to be able to cheer for her without reservation. Kim said she first rated herself ninety percent similar to Hee-do, then about ten percent once she could not keep up with Hee-do’s tension. The critic William Schwartz wrote that she “positively glows.”
As the story draws her, Hee-do wants one thing and wants it completely. That wholeness is her gift and also her risk: with no hedge against disappointment, every setback lands at full force.
Yi-jin
The critic Kim Gyo-seok noted that Yi-jin is four years older but speaks informally to Hee-do as an equal. He is no rich “chief” of romance-drama habit. He is closer to the “Candy” type, a nod to the cheerful, hard-pressed heroine of older Korean romance dramas, here a young man who has to rebuild a bankrupt family. Kim also noted that the adult roles around him are all women. From his point it is a short step to a romance that feels level, in which neither partner rescues the other. They meet as two people the same year has hit.
Offscreen, Nam Joo-hyuk was the set’s “laugh-maker,” in the production’s words, full of witty ad-libs. Kim Tae-ri said he can lift the mood regardless of what he is feeling himself, something she cannot do, having long been the youngest on sets. In a playful water-fight scene, the two engaged without staff cues. And at the series’ press conference, Nam said he had believed he was meeting Kim for the first time, only to discover they had earlier shot two commercials together. Kim added that neither had remembered. Nam said he had already said “nice to meet you” before it came back to him.
The Five and the Beach
The warmth of the ensemble, which includes Bona as Yu-rim, Choi Hyun-wook as Ji-woong and Lee Joo-myung as Seung-wan, was partly made in the moment. For the beach trip, the cast played in the water before filming began, with such genuine excitement that the production team said they nearly forgot the cameras were running. Choi Hyun-wook later said the trip became an “actual precious memory.” Nam Joo-hyuk named the beach gazing scene as the one he remembered most.
Lee Joo-myung described the drinking-game scene in episode fourteen. The script said only that they play drinking games cheerfully. They played a consonant game that simply kept going without cuts, and she ad-libbed a swear-word joke at Yi-jin that made the other actors laugh. Jung Ji-hyun said at the press conference that the actors were so well prepared he received ideas from them rather than the reverse.
That matters for what follows. When the ending comes, it hurts in proportion to how much of that warmth the viewer has been allowed to keep.
What Happens in the End of Twenty-Five Twenty-One (Spoilers)
Full spoilers follow.
In the finale, Hee-do and Yi-jin separate, each saying thank you. It is a sad ending without fault. One review called it a meaningful choice for a drama about romance and growth rather than a romantic comedy, showing an ordinary break-up with no one to blame. Kim Tae-ri has said she began the romance knowing the ending and found it sad, and that she just thought, “so this is the writer’s story.” Yu-rim, we learn, naturalises as a Russian citizen because of family circumstances and ends up running a fencing academy, a detail reported in one account.
The 2021 frame added its own puzzle. Viewers had speculated throughout that the name of Hee-do’s daughter, Kim Min-chae, meant Hee-do had married Yi-jin. Theories ran hot online before the finale. Twenty-Five Twenty-One never settled who her husband was, and some viewers criticised that gap.
Why the audience split
Some viewers wanted a happy ending. Others, who had lived through that era in their own youth, found the ending relatable, while some younger viewers said it left them discouraged. Two controversies followed the finale as well: criticism of the use of the 9/11 attacks within a romantic narrative, and an accusation that the story glamorised a love line between an adult and a minor. Some netizens described the separation as abrupt despite the long buildup.
Here is a reading of what the ending does, offered as a reading and not as anything the writer has said. A story about an era that took dreams away cannot easily let love be the one thing left untouched. The mutual thank-you may be the generosity the era could not offer. There is a harsher way to put it. Viewers who hoped the two would end up together were refused that hope, and the refusal is where the audience split. Both versions rest on the same fact of the finale: two people who say thank you and part.
How It Was Received
Twenty-Five Twenty-One held first place in its time slot for most of its run, and the finale was first in its slot across all channels. Kim Tae-ri has recalled that the cast played a game guessing the ratings early on, and she was ridiculously off as the numbers kept climbing.
The critic Kim Gyo-seok compared watching Twenty-Five Twenty-One to a videotape of an intense moment that seemed eternal, and said the 1990s sentiment never feels corny. Kim Tae-ri reportedly won Best Actress at the Baeksang Arts Awards that year, and the drama was nominated for Best Drama, which reportedly went to D.P.
Choi Hyun-wook, meanwhile, found that people recognised him more. In restaurants, he said, some called him “Class 7’s Pretty Boy.”
Seven Months, and a Sandbag
As the finale aired, Kim Tae-ri said she had worked hard for seven months and did not think she would ever forget Twenty-Five Twenty-One. The scene she chose as most memorable was an early whisper, a line about being happy in secret for a moment. It is a quiet choice, and it sits well with the drama’s larger shape: small, private happiness set against a large public loss.
Return to the sandbags. One way to read them is as preparation for a day when the weight comes off. Twenty-Five Twenty-One proposes that effort does not guarantee the outcome. You can give a sport, a friendship or a love everything you have, and the time may still not be yours. A grandmother’s line in the 2021 strand, as tvN’s viewing guide notes, says that every era carries its own cross. What stays with the viewer is how Hee-do and Yi-jin carry theirs. When it is time to put it down, they say thank you, and, to return to the sandbags, the weight comes off.
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Source: Basic series information from the broadcaster’s official program page. Cast and film credits: Korean Movie Database (KMDb). Images: tvN official program page.