What Inspired Ted and Soo-ah’s K-Drama Love Story

 People assume I wrote a K-drama-flavoured romance because I wanted the aesthetic.

That is the lazy version.

I wrote it because K-dramas understand something most romance stories forget: love is not a feeling floating in a vacuum. It is a feeling under pressure. Family pressure. Class pressure. Reputation pressure. Ambition pressure. The kind that makes you choose, again and again, who you are willing to be.

I did not want to borrow K-drama plots. I wanted to borrow K-drama emotional mechanics.

The real inspiration
The moment I got hooked on K-dramas was realising they let tenderness sit next to intensity without turning either into a joke.

They give you sincerity without apology. They give you the sense that a small gesture can be louder than a speech. They let a relationship be sweet, then brutal, then sweet again, because life does that.

That is the energy I wanted on the page for Ted and Soo-ah: not constant fireworks, but emotional gravity.

The 3 K-drama emotions I wanted to recreate

1) The ache of restraint

This is not generic ‘tension’. It is the feeling of wanting something and not being allowed to take it yet.

K-dramas are masters of the almost. The pause before someone speaks. The hand that stops short. The conversation that circles the truth because saying it would change everything.

On the page, I chased that ache by letting the romance build through near-misses and withheld honesty, not because I wanted to stall the story, but because restraint is the point. Ted and Soo-ah do not fall in love with big lines. They fall in love with the slow accumulation of proof.

2) The dread of exposure

The specific K-drama emotion here is fear, not of rejection, but of being seen.

In a lot of Western romance, the couple’s biggest obstacle is internal. In K-dramas, the obstacle is often the world. The hierarchy. The reputation economy. The way one mistake can get weaponised and replayed.

That is why the trainee world matters. That is why Mr Lee matters. That is why the idea of a private nickname and a private promise matters. It is not cute. It is defence. It is a relationship trying to stay human while everything around it turns performative.

If your love cannot survive being observed, it was never love. It was privacy.

3) The relief of warmth

K-dramas hit hard because they do not stay at maximum intensity. They give you warmth as contrast.

Food scenes. Small care. A moment of silliness after a heavy scene. The feeling of belonging, even if it is temporary.

That is why I used ritual. A sweet that becomes a symbol. A promise that starts ordinary and turns into an anchor. Not because I wanted a gimmick, but because warmth is what makes the pain worth reading.

What I refused to do
I refused to make the romance ‘easy’ for the sake of comfort.

If the story is about pressure, then the love has to earn its softness. If the story is about reputation, then the characters have to pay a price for being real. Otherwise it is cosplay, not emotion.

Reader extra
Which of those three emotions hooks you the most when you watch a K-drama?

The ache, the dread, or the warmth? And if you have read the book, which one felt strongest on the page?