Director says 'A Time Called You' "naturally deviated" from source material

The director of A Time Called You, the recent Netflix K-drama based on the Taiwanese show Someday or One Day, has acknowledged and addressed the changes made in the Korean series, which departs from the storyline of the original show.

Kim Jin-won, who is a self-described “big fan” of the original show, revealed the “difficulty” of adapting the 2019 Taiwanese series for Korean audiences, explaining how the challenge lay in “finding the balance between staying true to the original and carving out a new identity.”

Speaking to The Korea Times, Jin-won said “If it’s too similar, there comes a question on our series’ identity and on why we are making this series,” whilst also noting that writer Choi Hyo-bi “didn’t deliberately try to make huge changes.”

The show follows a woman, Jun-hee, grieving the recent loss of her late boyfriend, who passed away a year ago. She then mysteriously transports back through time to 1998, inhabiting the body of a young high schooler and meeting a fellow student who looks inexplicably like her deceased lover. It comes after a deluge of Korean content hosted by the streaming giant.

Jim-won explained, “As we go with the flow, we know it will have certain aspects of the characters that will naturally deviate. There have been a lot of changes to the characters, rather than in the overall story.” The director specifically singled out the character of Nam Si-heon, played by Ahn Hyo-seop, as a significant factor affecting the “tone of the series.”

Si-heon, whose character was significantly different in the original series, was changed to be “more adult and mature” in order to “develop the story more smoothly” – although it’s been met with mixed reception by fans of Someday or One Day.

Nevertheless, the director is confident in his decision, saying, “It needed to show the depth of his pain. He went through loss and had to give up a lot. So I felt he would look drained, living with a sense of desperation.” A Time Called You debuted on Netflix on September 8th. Watch the trailer below.