What Is One-of-a-Kind Romance About?

One-of-a-Kind Romance is a TVING original drama about two people who turn out to be each other's biggest fans. Gong Yu-il is an ordinary job seeker who has worked just about every part-time job there is and writes novels on the side. Tak Mu-i is a top star in his nineteenth year in the business, a former child actor who hides the scars a stalker left behind. Through a run of misunderstandings, she ends up as his manager.

The first misunderstanding is the best one. Yu-il works at a convenience store that is being used as a filming location, and Mu-i, who has every reason to be wary of strangers, decides she must be a stalker. The truth runs the other way. Mu-i has been reading a web novel written under the pen name "Author Gong," and that story is what pulled him out of a long slump. He is a fan of her before he knows who she is.

That two-way fandom is the hook, and the Korean promotion sums it up as a romance of mutual fandom. The tone is gentle rather than dramatic: a top star and a job seeker who keep missing each other's real feelings, with a past connection between them that comes out a little at a time.

Two more people widen the circle. Kang Hee-su is a star chef who is warm with everyone but keeps a secret of his own, and Ju Da-hong is a free-spirited actress who has adored Mu-i since childhood and sees Yu-il as a rival. Together the four make the drama a four-way romance.

What Is the Original Webtoon?

The drama is based on the Naver Webtoon One-of-a-Kind Romance (유일무이 로맨스) by the artist Dubu, who is credited as Dooboo on the English WEBTOON app. The webtoon won the grand prize in Naver Webtoon's 2017 youth romance contest and began its serialization in 2018. The story is complete, so you can read it to the end today.

Across its Korean, English and Japanese editions it has drawn roughly 390 million cumulative views worldwide, with a reader rating of 9.98 out of 10, and a print edition followed in Korea from 2021.

If you want to read before or alongside the drama, the English version is on WEBTOON under the same title. The setup matches the drama: Yu-il is hunting for a corporate job while ignoring her real passion, writing, and Mu-i crashes into her ordinary life.

How closely the series follows the webtoon has not been laid out in detail. Even Kim Hyun-jin has said he was curious how faithfully the script would follow the webtoon. On screen, the drama's promotion puts the four-person relationship front and center.

One-of-a-Kind Romance is one of several webtoon adaptations premiering this autumn. Our guide to upcoming K-dramas based on webtoons puts it next to the others, and tvN's Love in Disguise is another webtoon romance worth comparing it with.

Who's in the Cast of One-of-a-Kind Romance?

• Joy (Park Soo-young) as Gong Yu-il: a job seeker who has done every part-time job imaginable and quietly writes novels. It is Joy's first drama role in about four years. Korean credits list her under her real name, Park Soo-young.
• Kim Hyun-jin as Tak Mu-i: a top star who debuted as a child actor and hides the pain of being stalked.
• Shin Hyun-soo as Kang Hee-su: a star chef, kind on the surface and harder to read underneath.
• Kang Na-eon as Ju Da-hong: a free-spirited actress who has been devoted to Mu-i since she was a child.

Behind the camera, the series is directed by Kim Jin-young and written by Jeon Hyun-mi, and produced by Corpus Korea.

Joy has described what drew her to Yu-il: two very different people who come to understand each other's pain and flaws, and a heroine who stays bright through hard circumstances. That warmth is what the teasers sell, too: a star who expects the worst of people and a job seeker who keeps proving him wrong.

Kim Hyun-jin, for his part, wanted to show the different sides of Mu-i: the professional on set, the man at home, and the one who goes quiet around the person he likes. Watch for the moment he realizes who wrote the novel he has been carrying around.

How Many Episodes Are There, and Where Can You Watch It?

One-of-a-Kind Romance has 12 episodes. It premieres on Monday, November 9, at 6 p.m. Korea time, which is 6 p.m. in Tokyo and 5 p.m. in Beijing, Taipei, Hong Kong and Singapore.

ABEMA, which streams the series in Japan at the same time as Korea, has announced two episodes every Monday at 6 p.m. At that pace the twelve episodes run over six Mondays:

Where you watch depends on where you live:

• Korea: TVING, where it is a TVING original.
• Japan: ABEMA, as an exclusive that streams at the same time as Korea and is free to watch.
• Parts of Asia, the Middle East and Africa: Viu, which carries it as a Viu Original on the same day as Korea. Viu's own channels in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia have been promoting it, and Viu lists the title without hyphens, as One of a Kind Romance.

It is not on Netflix. Viu has not published a separate release hour for each country, so the simplest move is to add the series to your list in the Viu app and check the title page on Monday evening.