Director: Kim Jae Hong
Seven teenage boys in a small South Korean town carry more weight than their years should allow, and Begins Youth spends its run watching what happens when they finally set it down together.
What is Begins Youth about?
Kim Hwan returns to Songju-si after years away, arriving as an outsider and the son of a man the local boys already distrust. That suspicion curdles into friction fast — misread intentions, old rivalries, a newcomer who does not fit the group's rhythm. But the six boys he keeps running into are dealing with their own versions of the same ache: absent parents, money trouble, grief nobody talks about, quiet humiliations at school. Slowly, reluctantly, they start letting each other see it. Long afternoons turn into shared trips, inside jokes, the kind of unspoken loyalty that forms when people stop performing for one another. Hwan, who arrived closed off and wary, finds himself wanting these ordinary days to last — not because anything is resolved, but because for once he is not carrying it alone.
Cast & crew
Seo Ji-hoon anchors the ensemble as Kim Hwan, playing guardedness without tipping into sullenness, while Ro Jong-hyun, Ahn Ji-ho, Seo Young-joo, Kim Yoon-woo, Jung Woo-jin, and Jeon Jin-seo each get room to define a distinct kind of hurt rather than blurring into a generic friend group. Director Kim Jae Hong keeps the camera close during the quieter scenes, letting small gestures — a shared cigarette, a held glance — carry more than dialogue does.
Context & significance
Begins Youth arrived in 2024 as part of a wave of Korean coming-of-age dramas that trade glossy teen-drama tropes for something rawer: poverty, family breakdown, and violence treated with weight rather than melodrama. Its 8.5 rating among viewers reflects how closely it sticks to that tone across a compact 70-minute episode format, favoring accumulation over big plot twists.
Where & how to watch
Begins Youth streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, built for viewers who want the emotional texture of the original performances without a language barrier. The show's page is free to browse; watching the episodes themselves just needs a K-Time account login, and the interface runs fully in Farsi for anyone who prefers it that way.