Loosely based on the Japanese novel/drama 'Heaven's Coins', the story of 'Spring Day' is about a pair of brothers fighting for the affection of one woman.
Go Hyeon-Jeong (Sand Glass), in her first acting role since her hiatus from the entertainment world 10 years ago, plays Jeong-Eun, who was abandoned by her parents and grew up under the care of a small town physician. Jeong-Eun spends her days without any goals. Although she is not mute, a traumatic event early on in life caused her to stop talking. As a teenager she was once given piano lessons by a visiting medical intern Go Eun-Ho (Ji Jin-Hee: Dae Jang Geum; Love Letter, etc), who is the son of a doctor.
Eun-Ho, now a doctor himself, appears bright and happy on the outside, but he is full of loneliness and longs for his mother. When he was still a child, Eun-Ho's mother suddenly left and a new mother as well as a half-brother showed up. To please his father Eun-Ho became a doctor and spent a decade practising medicine. Finally, he takes a break and leaves Seoul. On a mission to find his mother, he returns to the town where Jeong-Eun lives and almost immediately, he opens up Jeong-Eun's heart to the point that she utters her first word in years.
Eun-Ho leaves to see his mother, promising Jeong-Eun that he will return; however Eun-Ho meets with an accident and wakes up with no memories. Jeong-Eun then goes to Seoul and tends to Eun-Ho. There at the hospital, she meets Eun-Ho's half-brother Eun-Seop, played by Jo In-Seong (What happened in Bali, Shooting Star, etc.). Eun-Seop is supposed to be a medical prodigy and he works hard to please his father, but he is terrified of blood and suffers from various phobias. He is at first puzzled by Jeong-Eun, the woman from the countryside, but soon falls deeply in love with her.
Meanwhile Min-Jeong (Han Go-Eun: Lawyers; More Beautiful Than Flower, etc.), who grew up as Eun-Ho's neighbor, returns after studying abroad and still finds herself in love with Eun-Ho, her childhood crush. The story gets more complicated as Eun-Ho awakes from his coma and with no memories of his life prior to the accident, he is no longer the same thoughtful Eun-Ho, but Jeong-Eun is determined to help him through this tough time even though she is slowly humored and touched by Eun-Seop's childish and awkward attempts at declaring his love for her...
I have very mixed feelings about this drama. On one hand I highly recommend it because there are some truly hilarious moments from Jo In-Seong, coupled with some very touching lines of redeeming love, forgiveness of oneself, and displays of complex nuances that define a sibling relationship within a highly dysfunctional family. However, I also found the pace of the drama extremely slow, to the point of utter boredom after the first 8 episodes. Though I admire Ji Jin-Hee greatly, his role as the noble-turned-lost-soul reminds me greatly of his role in 'Love Letter', which was just as boring.
I was at first impressed with Go Hyeon-Jeong's screen presence after such a long absence from acting and like everyone else, I was glad to see her back. However, she is not a good fit as Jeong-Eun. First of all, she is too mature-looking to be playing someone younger than Eun-Ho. Second, she could really do without the ahjoomma (older woman) wardrobe. Her scenes opposite Eun-Seop remind me more of a mother-son relationship than potential lovers. And though I agree that she has a beautiful way of delivering her lines, she is over-dramatic and too careful in here.
Jo In-Seong's character is too unreal to be taken seriously, but the actor is too charming and funny to ruin anything, and Eun-Seop's comical ways actually add a lot to the otherwise mundane script. Han Go-Eun, who plays the third wheel in the Eun-Ho/Jeong-Eun relationship, doesn't really offer much of a threat to anyone because all one notices is how bad her acting is compared to the rest of the cast. I have thus far only enjoyed her performance in the drama 'More Beautiful Than Flower' because she seems to stumble on her lines everywhere else. Overall, I would not recommend 'Spring Day' to people looking for a satisfying love story, but for fans of Jo In-Seong, I think it's definitely worth checking out.


