Heart Signal
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Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Eight strangers share a Seoul house for a month and text one anonymous 'heart signal' a night; China's Tencent bought the format in 2018.
Heart Signal puts eight young single men and women in a shared house in Seoul, the Signal House, for a month. On the first day they may not say what they do or how old they are. They cook dinner in mixed pairs, may flirt as much as they like but may confess only on the last day, and every night each sends one anonymous text message to the person they are drawn to, passed on by a messenger. In a studio, a panel of celebrities and experts, among them Yoon Jong-shin, Lee Sang-min and Kim Eana, watches the footage and tries to predict who is texting whom.
The second season, broadcast from March to June 2018, is the best documented. Its residents include Oh Young-joo, a marketer at Microsoft; Im Hyun-joo, a student who had worked as a fitting model; Song Da-eun, an aspiring actress; Jung Jae-ho, who runs a start-up; Kim Do-gyun, a doctor of Korean medicine; and Lee Gyu-bin, a Seoul National University graduate preparing for the civil service. The chef Kim Hyun-woo moves in during the second night, into a room kept locked until then, and the fashion entrepreneur Kim Jang-mi arrives midway.
For much of the month Young-joo and Hyun-woo send their signals to each other, and theirs becomes the season's central story, though one night he texts Hyun-joo and she texts Gyu-bin, and Hyun-woo wavers between the two women to the very end. Gyu-bin keeps choosing Young-joo; Do-gyun is torn between Hyun-joo and Jang-mi; Jae-ho and Da-eun are drawn to each other from the first day, though their signals do not always cross. On the last day each resident makes one phone call to the person they choose. Hyun-woo calls Hyun-joo, and she calls him; Jae-ho and Da-eun choose each other. Young-joo calls Hyun-woo, Gyu-bin calls Young-joo, Do-gyun calls Hyun-joo and Jang-mi calls Do-gyun, and none of them is chosen in return. In a special episode looking back five months on, Jae-ho and Da-eun are a couple; Hyun-woo and Hyun-joo have already parted, and Hyun-woo stays away.
Starring
Yoon Jong-shinPanel
A member of the studio panel in most seasons, reading the residents' glances and guessing who will text whom.
Lee Sang-minPanel
On the studio panel for all five seasons, predicting the residents' signals with the other panellists.
Kim EanaPanel
On the studio panel for all five seasons, interpreting the residents' conversations and silences.
Oh Young-jooParticipant
A marketer at Microsoft who drew the most signals in the second season and chose Kim Hyun-woo at the end.
Kim Hyun-wooParticipant
A chef who arrived on the second night and became half of the season's main love story, then chose Im Hyun-joo.
Im Hyun-jooParticipant
A student and former fitting model who chose Kim Hyun-woo in the final calls, as he chose her.
Why it matters
Heart Signal turned dating television into a guessing game. The audience, like the studio panel, reads glances and silences to work out who is texting whom, and the pleasure lies in being right about other people's feelings. Its second season was a hit with viewers from their teens to their thirties and turned an office worker, Oh Young-joo, into a celebrity with advertising contracts. The costs were real. She told an interviewer she cried over hateful comments; Kim Hyun-woo was attacked online over his final choice and stayed away from the special; and suspicion that the show was scripted followed its first two seasons, which Oh denied. In 2018 Channel A sold the season's format to China's Tencent. The question it leaves is about watching itself: how much of these young people's feelings belonged to them, and how much to an audience deciding what they meant.