What happens when two people who would never choose each other are made to share a house among the trees? Forest, a South Korean drama series from 2020 directed by Oh Jong-rok, builds a slow romance out of that question and wraps it around a mystery about memory.
What is Forest about?
Kang San-hyeok looks like a man with nothing missing: money, looks and a quick mind. The one gap is his own childhood, which he cannot recall at all. He serves with the 119 special rescue team, a job that brings him to a remote woodland with a reputation for strangeness. Jung Young-jae arrives there by a different road. She is a surgical resident, energetic and stubborn, and the forest is not where she expected her career to take her. Neither is pleased to find the other under the same roof, yet circumstances leave them no alternative. Shared meals, village routines and the quiet of the trees begin to wear down their resistance, and small pleasures replace the pace of the city. As they settle in, both start to sense that the woodland is tied to their own pasts, and that the answers San-hyeok has been missing may be buried there.
About the cast
Park Hae-jin and Jo Bo-ah head the ensemble. Around them the series places Jeong Yeon-joo, No Gwang-Sik, Ryu Seung-su, Lee Do-gyeong, Lee Si-hoon and Woo Jung-kook, a supporting group that fills out the rescue crew, the hospital staff and the local community the two leads move through. Direction is by Oh Jong-rok.
Context & significance
Forest sits where several popular strands of Korean television meet. It is partly a workplace drama, with emergency rescuers on one side and doctors on the other; partly a healing story, the kind in which city people slow down in the countryside and take stock of their lives; and partly a romance driven by the well-loved device of reluctant housemates. The amnesia thread adds a layer of suspense without turning the show into a thriller. Episodes run about an hour each, giving the natural setting plenty of room, and the series was warmly received by viewers who favour gentle, scenery-rich love stories. Anyone looking for a calm watch with an unresolved question in the background will find it a comfortable fit.
Watching Forest on Ktime
Forest is in the K-Time catalogue. K-Time is a Persian-focused streaming service for the Iranian diaspora, and its menus and player are in Farsi. This page is free to read, while watching episodes requires signing in to a K-Time account. A Persian dub or Persian subtitles are not currently listed for the series.