“If You Wish Upon Me” (당신이 소원을 말하면)

By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack
October 6, 2023

☆☆☆☆
Yoon Gyeo-ree (played by Ji Chang-wook)
Seo Yeon-joo (played by Choi Soo-young)
Kang Tae-shik (played by Sung Dong-il)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

After a few post-military clunkers (“Melting Me Softly,” “Backstreet Rookie,” “Love Struck in the City,” “The Sound of Magic”), Ji Chang-wook is back! This 2022 K-drama is so moving that if you don’t outright bawl during each episode, you’ll probably at least tear up … or feel a catch in your throat.

The series takes place at a hospice, where Team Genie does everything in their power to fulfill the patients’ final wishes. The workers include Tae-shik (Sung Dong-il), the defacto leader of the program; Yeon-joo (Girls’ Generation’s Choi Soo-young), a spunky and resilient nurse; and Gyeo-ree (Ji Chang-wook), who is serving community service there in a bid to stay out of jail.

My favorite episodes revolved around characters with complex backgrounds. Se-hee (Park Ji-joo) had dreams of being a musical theater star. She has one wish she’d like fulfilled before she dies: to perform on stage with her favorite actor Pyo Gyu-tae (played by “Doctor Cha” actor Min Woo-hyuk). Unlike his image, Gyu-tae turns out to be a callous womanizer who only cares about himself. But thanks to a scandal he’d like to bury, he agrees to star opposite her on a small stage that Team Genie constructs at the hospice. In the process of helping Se-hee, he atones. Does he become a great person over night? No, but he recognizes that there are people he never thought about who are just as important as he is.

Episode 1:
Team Genie’s founder Mr. Yoon (Jeong Dong-hwan) is dying. They assume he wants to go back to his hometown to die. And there is an element of that. But what is really important to him is to visit his wife’s grave to let her know that they would be together soon. At his funeral, Tae-shik watches as his children bicker without showing much remorse for how they treated their father. For the record, watching Tae-shik take them to task for being rotten kids is a thing of joy.

Episode 3:
Viewers are introduced to Mr. Pyeon (Jeon Mu-song), whose wish is to die peacefully in the home he had lived with his late wife and their daughter. That home has new owners, who serendipitously have to move to a new place. When Gyeo-ree overhears Mr. Pyeon talking about how he used to love looking at their persimmon tree in the front yard, he stays up all night making papier mâché to hang on the barren tree.

Episode 7:
One of the Team Genie volunteers has dementia and doesn’t remember her own husband. He discreetly follows her home every evening to ensure that she is safe. And once she is inside their home, where there are photos of the two of them everywhere, he enters their home. Watching their interactions when she remembers the life they had carved together is beautiful, but also heartbreaking. We know that at some point, Team Genie will be called upon to grant her a last wish as well.

The point of this series isn’t to say that the dying can only leave this world if they have a wish fulfilled. Rather, sometimes they need to feel content before they can leave.

In my father’s later years, he had a complicated relationship with his siblings, who he had cared for since he was 17 years old. As he was dying, some of them came to visit and begged for forgiveness. My father forgave them.

Later that evening, he passed away in his sleep. I’ll never know for sure, but I believe that resolving the issues with his siblings gave him the peace of mind to let go.

Airdates: Sixteen hour-long episodes aired from August 10 to September 29, 2022 on KBS2. I watched this on Viki.

Spoiler Alert: Gyeo-ree was raised in an orphanage. His sister (not biologically related) is in love with him. She makes her her living streaming content of herself on an Only Fans-like site. The two are both broken. While he wants to break away from his old life, he also feels guilt at abandoning her.

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