Hwang In-youp, Hyeri K-Drama 'Dream to You' Opens Low at 2.7%

ENA's new Monday-Tuesday drama "Dream to You" pulled a 2.7% rating for its premiere, a soft start for a project that had leaned heavily on the chemistry between its two leads. The show, headlined by Hwang In-youp and Hyeri, aired its first episode on the 13th.

The premiere number is 3.2 percentage points below the 5.9% finale of ENA's previous drama, "Doctor on the Edge" (Dakteo Seomboi), and stands as the lowest debut among ENA Monday-Tuesday dramas so far this year.

"Dear My Dreamer" follows the reunion of two people who once shared a dream. Woo Su-bin, played by Hwang In-yeop, is a hotshot film director who returns home after achieving everything he set out to do. Ju I-jae, played by Lee Hye-ri, is a reporter working the road across the country, someone who has long since let her own dreams go quiet.

In the opening episode, Woo Su-bin takes home two prizes at a film awards ceremony, winning Best New Director and Best Picture for his first feature, "Wandering" (Wandering). Fifteen years earlier, he had been an aimless 18-year-old expected to become a doctor like his father and grandfather. Ju I-jae was the classmate who told him he could be a filmmaker instead. She was his first love, and she was the one whose own dream made her shine. He promised her he would become a director.

Fifteen years later, standing in the spotlight, Woo Su-bin thinks of her. Ju I-jae, meanwhile, is scrambling for money after the deposit on her mother Park Hyun-ok's shop has gone up. Park Hyun-ok is played by Park Myung-shin.

When the two meet again, Ju I-jae feels small next to him. She is thrown when he smiles and tells her he wanted to see her. Asked bluntly if she has a boyfriend, she lies and says she has a husband and a child. Woo Su-bin sees through it in a second. "You don't," he says. "Do you have time?"

She tells him she cursed him for years and asks him not to run into her again. The promise that he would become a director, she says coldly, broke the day he left for the United States.

He does not back off. He hands her a worn, faded script called "Gyeongseong Yeonga" (Gyeongseong Yeonga) and tells her, "I want to make this into a film. But it doesn't have an ending. Do it with me." Ju I-jae spills coffee on the script and walks out. Then the rain starts, the same way it did on "that day" 15 years ago, and something in her sinks.

On that day 15 years ago, she had gone to his house and knocked on his gate in the pouring rain. She waited every day for at least two weeks. Hearing her tell it now, Woo Su-bin has no defense.

"You don't get to show up like this, like nothing happened," she tells him. "You were supposed to stay a first love. Not a regret. Woo Su-bin, you are my regret. Try going back to that day yourself. See how it feels."