Some of the most memorable experiences in our lives come as the result of being in the right place, at the right time. A chance encounter where you bumped into an acquaintance that you had met in the past. Perhaps, you were feeling particularly courageous that day because you had good news and decided to reach out, leading to a blossoming friendship.
Youth of May is a story about two people who met through a series of coincidences and found love. Hee-tae is a medical student who moves back to his hometown, Gwangju so that he can transfer a comatose friend from Seoul to a hospital in Gwangju. He has a terrible relationship with his family, so he attempts to move back without letting them know but his father finds out anyway. Needing financial support to transfer his friend to Gwangju, he agrees to help his father by going on a blind date with a family who can help his father politically.
Myung-hee is a nurse who has been saving up to study abroad in Germany. She has been accepted to a German University but Myung-hee desperately needs funds to fly abroad within a month so that she qualifies for the Church scholarship which will fund her living expenses in Germany. Myung-hee’s rich friend, Su-ryeon has been forced to go on a blind date with Hee-tae but since she has had enough of going on blind dates, she persuades Myung-hee to go in her place, offering to pay for her flight tickets. This is quite reminiscent of Business Proposal.
A few days before the blind date, Hee-tae sees Myung-hee as a nurse at the Gwangju Hospital and right before the blind date, he sees Myung-hee helping a victim of a car accident. Her immediate care for the car accident victim captures Hee-tae and is the moment that makes him fall for her.
In classic kdrama fashion, Myung-hee attempts to crush any hopes of the blind date going well by acting like an alcoholic, a terrible wife-to-be and an air-headed philosopher. But, Hee-tae has already fallen for her and he is not swayed whatsoever.
I remember that one of the things that my high school English teacher taught about short story writing was that, the timeframe of a short story is important. Short stories have relatively few words so the scope of the story has to be narrow, sometimes occurring over a day or a few hours. Youth of May takes place for a month from late April. Many different events are said to take place during May and so it feels like there’s so little time. Myung-hee’s flight to Germany will be during May. Hee-tae’s knows that Myung-hee doesn’t have much time left in Korea so when he decides to go all in on his relationship with Myung-hee anyway, he just wants to enjoy every last moment with her. It’s the preciousness of the time they have together that makes the first half of this story special. In some ways, it reminds me of the sense of urgency in a story with terminal illness.
I think that if the story had been centred purely on the drama of Myung-hee and Hee-tae’s short-lived relationship and ended with Myung-hee leaving for Germany, I would have been much more satisfied. However, the story ends up covering the Gwangu Uprising which takes the story in a very different direction in the second half.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Myung-hee and Hee-tae continue going on dates and the families think that Su-ryeon and Hee-tae’s relationship is going swimmingly. At this point, Myung-hee has also fallen in love with Hee-tae. While they have not officially begun dating, Hee-tae has confessed his love and says that he would rather live with no regrets rather than backing away because Myung-hee will be leaving soon. So, Hee-tae’s father presses his advantage and begins to tie his and Su-ryeon’s family together. Now, Su-ryeon’s family must rely on Hee-tae’s father’s investment to keep their new business venture afloat. They begin to formalise plans for an engagement which of course means that Su-ryeon can no longer have Myung-hee act on her behalf. Nonetheless, Hee-tae only has eyes for Myung-hee. Even after finding out that Myung-hee is not who she claimed to be, he says that he fell in love with the nurse at Gwangju hospital, and not the rich daughter, Su-ryeon. Su-ryeon begs Myung-hee to persuade Hee-tae to go through with the engagement so that her family business does not go bankrupt from the withdrawal of investment and Myung-hee relents. She asks Hee-tae to become engaged with Su-ryeon and he agrees.
In my favourite scene of the series, Hee-tae confronts Myung-hee after it seems like she has been continuing to live her life happily without him. He says that while he’s been getting engaged, he has been holding back his feelings every single moment because he thought that Myung-hee was also holding back.
He says that they only have one month together so that’s why he doesn’t want to let even one day pass by without them being together. He ultimately ends by saying “I’m done writing letters to someone who won’t write back to me.”
That feeling of continually reaching out to someone who won’t reach back resonates with me. As someone who often reaches out first, it’s so disheartening to not get a response. It particularly hurts in Hee-tae’s situation where they have such limited time together.
Perhaps even more heartbreaking is finding out why Myung-hee has been putting Su-ryeon before herself. When she was in high school, she was arrested and forced to unjustly confess to crimes that she did not commit. Her father tells her to comply with their orders, stating that she must keep her head down and live a quiet life. This leads her to always sacrifice her happiness for her friends, family and those around her.
When Myung-hee and Hee-tae finally realised their love for each other once more, I felt satisfied by the way Myung-hee broke free of the personal shackles that had kept her from valuing herself and her happiness. This ends the first half of Youth of May and is by far my favourite part of the series. The remaining half covers the Gwangju Uprising and is a brutal recreation of the events that occurred in reality.