K-Drama Rewind, My ID is Gangnam Beauty: Icy Cha Eun-woo and fiery Im Soo-hyang challenge hollow beauty ideals

Gulf News

04-05-2025

Bullying is brutal, ugly and messy—it tears you apart from inside. It's merciless and leaves a person scrambling to rewrite the entire psyche. And South Korean dramas have never disguised the sheer misery of it, the most traumatising being The Glory. Yet, another one that often slips through the cracks, possibly because it's considered more of a fluffy romance, is My ID is Gangnam Beauty. Starring Cha Eun-woo and Im Soo-hyang, the show revolves around a girl, who was so badly harassed in school, that she undertakes plastic surgery to feel remotely human about herself again. The title refers to the Korean word gangnammin (gangnam beauty), which is a derogatory term in South Korea for people who are attractive, but look like they went through several plastic surgeries.
And so, with this knowledge, she tries to navigate a new college and start afresh.She's still crippled by the fear that someone might discover her past—and isolate her all over again. Im Soo-hyang does an absolutely stellar job in this series as a woman, who is never quite at peace. There's always a sense of tension, even when she is falling in love with Eun-woo 's brooding Kyung-seok, she is rather hesitant about herself. People are vicious, particularly a rival, who hits her with verbal punches. Her gradual acceptance of her past and present is perhaps the real focus of the series, though for obvious reasons, the romance and possible love triangle gets the spotlight. Nevertheless, in all the subdued fluffiness of the drama, the show is still a lot grittier than you would expect from a K-Drama—if you look hard enough.
The romance is sweet and a slow-burn, without too much dramatic flair. While Soo-hyang carries the emotional weight of the series, Cha Eun-woo brings in a different kind of tension—ice-cold detachment. But it's not a flaw. It's debatable, but Cha Eun-woo's role in My ID is Gangnam Beauty is actually the most entertaining. At first glance, you wouldn't believe it. He is so stony-faced and blank to the point that he spits out his dialogues with sheer snark. But it isn't an acting glitch: He just chose to give the battered Do Kyung-seok such a personality. It's fun to watch their love story unfold, through cryptic words, silences, and rainy confrontation. There's a possibility of a love triangle too, but that's shut down quickly. The show keeps a remarkable boundary between the love story and the main storyline, never once taking away the protagonist's agency, or her internal turmoil.
It is possibly one of the more nuanced dramas dealing with appearances—given the weight of expectations that people carry about looking 'flawless'. The subject is handled with sensitivity and a sense of realism that most other dramas with the same theme, dilute with the excessive, sugary romances. True Beauty, which released two years later, also starring Cha Eun-woo, told the story of a bullied girl, who hid her flaws behind makeup—till she finally decided to abandon it all, and embrace her real self. While True Beauty was fun and kitschy—largely thanks to the dramatic love triangle and divided fandom—the obsession with appearances didn't hit as hard as the emotionally fraught friendship between Eun-woo's Su-ho and Hwang In-youp's Seo-jun, both grieving the loss of their third friend. The real pain lay in the guilt they carried, and the storyline about appearances gradually faded into the background, overshadowed by the love triangle.
On a lighter note, if Eun-woo had borrowed a little of Kyung-seok's edge for Su-ho, Seo-jun fans might have had a better shot. But who's to say? Either way, My ID is Gangnam Beauty