Our Sticky Love
恋は飴模様
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A prosecutor wakes with no memory in a country hospital, and the scruffy boxing coach who says he is her boyfriend is the gangster who was sent to kill her.
Go Eun-sae wakes up in a country hospital with no idea who she is. A scruffy boxing coach, Jang Tae-ha, arrives claiming to be her boyfriend and takes her home to Taffy Village, the sweet-making town where he grew up, whose residents back his story that the two of them moved there from Seoul together two months ago. Eun-sae, who suspects a man like him is not her type, doubts all of it and sets out to test him.
The truth is darker than she suspects. She is a prosecutor in Seoul's anti-corruption office who recorded evidence of bribery and murder against Baek Sang-gil, a crime boss and company chairman, and the city's mayor. Sang-gil's men beat and tortured her, and he sent Tae-ha, his trusted man for fourteen years, to finish her and dispose of the body. Tae-ha, a former youth boxing champion who gave up the Olympics and went to work for Sang-gil to pay for his grandmother's cancer treatment, recognised her as his first love, the student who years before had exposed an opponent's cheating at one of his fights, and faked her death instead. He is arranging a boat to take her to Japan.
Living together, they fall in love. When Sang-gil discovers the betrayal, Tae-ha sends Eun-sae off on the boat and stays behind to face him; watching from the water as fire breaks out where he stands, she remembers everything. Back in Seoul she brings Sang-gil and the mayor to trial with a copy of the recording, while Tae-ha wonders whether her life has room for him. Sang-gil escapes custody and takes Tae-ha's grandmother hostage in the village, where her photographs of Tae-ha as a baby show him that Tae-ha is the son he abandoned. Tae-ha chases him down and holds his gun on him; as Eun-sae arrives with the police, Sang-gil takes his own life in front of Tae-ha, who never learns he was his father.
Eun-sae, angry at first about the lie, has fallen in love with him. Tae-ha proposes, and they marry in his garden in the village, in the rain, among the neighbours who kept his secret.
Starring
Jung Hae-inas Jang Tae-ha
A small-town boxing coach and a crime boss's enforcer, who hides an amnesiac prosecutor by telling her he is her boyfriend.
Jang Tae-ha’s story
Tae-ha was a youth boxing champion bound for the Olympics until his grandmother fell ill; to pay for her cancer treatment he went to work for Baek Sang-gil, and has been his trusted man for fourteen years. Sent to finish off a prosecutor, he recognises his first love, fakes her death and takes her home to Taffy Village, where he tells her he is her boyfriend. He books her passage to Japan and falls in love as she does; when Sang-gil learns of the betrayal, he sends her away and stays to face him. When Sang-gil escapes and takes his grandmother hostage, Tae-ha hunts him down and watches him take his own life, never learning that he was his father. He proposes to Eun-sae and marries her in the village, in the rain.
Ha Youngas Go Eun-sae
An anti-corruption prosecutor who wakes with no memory after being left for dead, and distrusts the man who claims her.
Go Eun-sae’s story
Eun-sae wakes in a country hospital without a single memory, and nothing about the scruffy coach who says he is her boyfriend, or the village that vouches for him, rings true. She tests him, goes to Seoul in search of answers, and learns that she was a prosecutor. Living with Tae-ha, she falls in love with him. From the boat he has hired to carry her to Japan she sees fire break out where he is facing Sang-gil, and her memory returns: the investigation, the recording of Sang-gil and the mayor, the men who beat her. She goes back to Seoul, puts both men on trial with a copy of the recording, and returns to the village when Sang-gil escapes. Angry at first about the lie, she accepts Tae-ha's proposal and marries him there.
Heo Sung-taeas Baek Sang-gil
A crime boss and company chairman who ordered Eun-sae's death and trusted Tae-ha for fourteen years.
Why it matters
A romantic comedy built on a premise that would be alarming anywhere else, Our Sticky Love begins with a man telling a woman with no memory that he is her boyfriend, and her moving in with him. The series knows it. It gives Eun-sae her suspicion from the first episode, makes her test him, and makes the lie a way of keeping her alive rather than of having her. Its Korean title plays on yeot, a sticky taffy whose name is also a curse, and the show lives in that double register: a sweet small-town love story wrapped around a prosecutor who was tortured for her work and a crime boss who never knew the man he trusted most was his son. What it leaves open is whether a love that starts inside a lie, however protective, can be freely chosen once the truth comes back; the series answers only for these two.