Soulmate

Soulmate (2023) is a South Korean drama directed by Min Yong-geun. It adapts the 2016 Chinese film Soul Mate by Derek Tsang. The film follows 14 years of meeting and parting, friendship and love, longing and jealousy between two girls who meet at age 13 on Jeju Island. Both were born in 1988.

Mi-so (Kim Da-mi) is free-spirited, bold and artistically gifted, and she grew up without much family support. Ha-eun (Jeon So-nee) is reserved and dutiful, and she is pushed toward her father's dream of her becoming a teacher. Each admires what the other lacks. Together they roam Jeju, make art and look after a stray cat. A young man, Jin-woo (Byeon Woo-seok), enters their lives and puts the first crack in their closeness.

The story moves between childhood, adolescence and adulthood, with flash-forwards that hint at a mystery in Mi-so's later life. It asks what it means to be someone's soulmate when love, envy, resentment and silence all live inside the same bond.

The film argues that a "soulmate" is not a frictionless ideal. It is the person who shapes you, who sees you completely, and whom you may hurt and resent for that reason. Reviewers note that Mi-so and Ha-eun fail to say the things they should say to each other. Their love is real, but it is tangled with envy, pride and unspoken sacrifice.

Min's version stresses that people can be lived through each other. Each woman carries part of the other's dream and identity, and that connection outlasts separation and even death. It also suggests that love between friends can be as deep, and as hard to define, as romantic love.

Many viewers, including Letterboxd and Rotten Tomatoes reviewers, read Mi-so and Ha-eun's bond as romantic or at least queer-coded. They cite the longing, the jealousy and the intensity. Others see it strictly as a deep platonic soulmate friendship, a bond more lasting than romance.

The film belongs to the wave of East Asian remakes of Chinese-language films. It reinterprets Derek Tsang's 2016 work for Korean audiences. Viewers who watched both versions say the friendship is better developed in the Korean one, while the individual characters come out better in the Chinese one. Some say the endings differ and that the Korean ending speaks more deeply about friendship.

Its theatrical run was modest in Korea, at around 234,000 admissions. It found a second life with international viewers and on streaming. Letterboxd lists it under themes such as emotional LGBTQ relationships and teen coming-of-age stories. Critics such as Dramabeans and HanCinema have commented on its handling of the soulmate idea and on its ending.

Viewers praised the chemistry of Kim Da-mi and Jeon So-nee, and some singled out Jeon's performance. They also praised the Jeju scenery, the colour grading and the nostalgic music. Many described crying and said the emotions stayed with them afterwards.

Criticism focused on the ending, which one critic called unsettling and another said drifts into melodrama. Some viewers also found the male lead's role cheesy. Overall verdict: a moving, if uneven, portrait of friendship that rewards emotional engagement. Audience scores on Letterboxd and similar sites were positive, though Korean box office was modest.