Hello, My Twenties!

Hello, My Twenties! (Korean: 청춘시대; Age of Youth), written by Park Yeon-seon and directed by Lee Tae-gon and Kim Sang-ho, follows five female university students in their twenties living together in a shared boarding house in Seoul named Belle Epoque. Across two seasons and 26 episodes, the series chronicles the mundane, messy, and deeply emotional reality of navigating early adulthood.

The narrative weaves together the lives of women from radically different socio-economic backgrounds and personality spectrums: a chronically overworked eldest housemate, an insecure woman trapped in a toxic relationship, an uninhibited journalism student with a wild imagination, an unapologetic sugar-baby lifestyle companion, and a painfully shy country freshman. As their clashing habits and private neuroses collide in shared domestic quarters, the house transitions from a place of quiet alienation to a sanctuary of profound solidarity.

Beyond the charm of daily college life and youthful romance, the overarching story arc across both seasons functions as an emotional excavation. As personal crises, past traumas, family obligations, and buried secrets bubble to the surface, the series explores how young women learn to confront their respective ghosts through communal empathy and shared resilience.

The fundamental message of Hello, My Twenties! is that growing up is an act of unmasking and confronting one’s hidden wounds in community. The show deconstructs romanticized nostalgia associated with youth, illustrating that one's twenties are frequently fraught with financial instability, social anxiety, emotional abuse, and unresolved grief.

Through its multi-season arc, the series asserts that:

• Every individual carries private burdens that others cannot see, demanding empathy rather than snap judgment.
• Healing from personal and systemic trauma cannot happen in isolation—it requires authentic communication, vulnerability, and mutual support.

• The Reality of the Ghost: A supernatural reading interprets the entity as an actual spirit drawing death-adjacent guilt together, while the canonical psychological reading treats the ghost purely as a psychological mirror onto which each roommate projects repressed trauma.
• The Nature of Eun-jae’s Crime: Eun-jae’s belief that she poisoned her father demonstrates how trauma and childhood memory distortions lead survivors to blame themselves for tragedies beyond their control, verified when the autopsy reveals no poison.
• Foreshadowing of Ji-won’s Fate: Ji-won’s confirmed death in 2025 is interpreted as the culmination of her investigative morality, showing she could no longer live an unexamined life after confronting systemic injustice.

Premiering on JTBC during 2016–2017, Hello, My Twenties! pioneered female-led ensemble dramas in South Korea, breaking away from male-dominated thrillers and conventional chaebol romance formulas. It set a benchmark that influenced later female-centric series such as Be Melodramatic (2019) and Work Later, Drink Now (2021).

The drama broke significant social taboos by addressing dating violence, the psychological aftermath of abusive relationships, sex-positive conversations among college women, trauma-induced agoraphobia, and childhood sexual misconduct.

Season 1 received universal critical acclaim for its sharp screenwriting, naturalistic dialogue, and lead chemistry, developing an intense cult following domestically and on Netflix.

Season 2 earned solid ratings and praise for tackling dark topics like PTSD and child abuse, but received mixed reactions regarding the recasting of Yoo Eun-jae, the reduced role of Kang Yi-na, and the darker tonal shift into home-invasion thrillers. Overall, it is regarded as one of the most honest and influential Korean coming-of-age dramas of the 2010s.