Park Min-young, queen of K-drama romances, has done it again. After missing the mark with Forecasting Love and Weather (2022) and Love in Contract (2022), Park returned to show off her acting skills in the role of a long-suffering, good-girl heroine who comes back from the dead to avenge herself against her cheating husband and scheming best friend in Marry My Husband (2024). With co-stars Na In-woo and Song Ha-yoon, Park has landed a hit, which feels all the more impressive because the plot of Marry My Husband is practically the same as that a much-loved K-drama from last year, Perfect Marriage Revenge (2023).
Both Marry My Husband and Perfect Marriage Revenge are based on webtoons about a docile, submissive woman who has spent years trying to please her husband and his demanding family. Soon after she discovers her husband is cheating on her, the woman has a lethal accident, but instead of dying, she wakes up to find she’s got a second chance at life. In Marry My Husband, Ji-won (Park Min-young) realises she’s gone back by 10 years while in Perfect Marriage Revenge, Yi-joo (played superbly by Jung Yoo-min) finds herself a year back in time. Both women decide they want to change how their lives unfolded and find themselves getting help from a hunky Prince Charming who seems to have a knack for being at the right place, at the right time. It turns out that he too has travelled back in time.
Stop rolling your eyes. When authors and auteurs do this sort of thing, it’s called magical realism. When K-drama does it, it’s makjang, and we’re here for it. There’s something about the cheerful normalising of completely ridiculous clichés that makes this particular sub-genre of K-dramas delightfully entertaining. That said, maybe you’re the sort who feels that their life has room for only one time-travelling revenge fantasy at a time. In which case, let us try and help you decide between Marry My Husband (on Prime Video) and Perfect Marriage Revenge (on Viki).