An imaginative high school based coming of age romantic comedy, with a definite edge to it, Absolute Value Of Romance (2026, Amazon Prime Video) is perfect for Korean drama fans who are still high school age or in their twenties, for the emphasis on education and romantic fantasy is well done here and should please them.

I do think sixteen episodes was a bit too much for this story; it became somewhat repetitive at times. Ten or twelve episodes would have been better. It is quite a funny story, for the most part, so it will probably keep you entertained throughout, regardless, despite the longer episodes. All you can do is try it and see for yourself if you warm to it. I certainly did, enough to keep on going through to the end. The comments I read online from viewers about the drama were overwhelmingly positive.

The main star is the delightful actress Kim Hyang Gi who charmed us in several unforgettable Korean dramas like Moment Of Eighteen, The Queen's Classroom, Bad Love, and films A Werewolf Boy and Snowy Road, while the long list of male actors who play her teachers in the drama include the excellent Cha Hak Yeon from the dramas Children Of Nobody, Castaway Diva, Tunnel, The Stain, who is also in the boy idol band VIXX; Kim Jae Hyun, member of K-pop group N.Flying; Sohn Jeong Hyuck from Perfect Crown and Soundtrack 2; and new actor Kim Dong Kyu. They all brought some unique personal qualities to their characters, which were very sweet, funny, and enjoyable.

I would give a PG-13 rating to this drama, for in my judgment It's pretty clean overall, even though the female student character develops several misunderstandings about her new teachers; for instance, she mistakenly believes at first that at least one of them is gay, and then she develops a strong crush on another one, which some grown up viewers out there might, on the surface, consider objectionable. If you choose to watch the drama you'll have to work through those personal prejudices. Many students have crushes on their teachers in real life. I know I did in high school and college. (Friend Jill, Kdramalove Admin, says she did too!). Students spend so much time with them that we can't help but pick up on vibes from them about their basic moral character, or lack thereof.

The Story:

Bright and cheerful high school student Yeo Eui Ju (Kim Hyang Gi) loves creative writing and secretly writes her own novel after school, at first intending to keep it all to herself, but then deciding to put it online under the fake author name of Lee Mook. Her story features fantasies she develops about her handsome new high school teachers as the main characters, men who are also very dear personal friends with one another as well. Her novel is called simply We Were Friends.

However, when she winds up having out of classroom, personal encounters with these handsome teachers in her everyday life (for instance they all rent a place right near her home so she can observe them closely!), her once-peaceful school life takes a turbulent turn as she includes increasingly more personal information and wrong assumptions about the teachers in her online novel, making her story take off like crazy with young people, scoring thousands of hits a day. It also becomes a big topic of discussion among the girl students at her own school, Murim Girls' High, who begin to realize that the teachers described in the story resemble their own teachers almost to a T, despite the name changes in the novel.

The teachers involved are Ga Woo Su (Cha Hak Yeon) their homeroom teacher and genius math teacher; Noh Da Ju (Kim Jae Hyun) their Japanese language teacher; Yoon Dong Ju (Kim Dong Kyu) their very nice Korean language teacher; and Jung Gi Jeon (Sohn Jeong Hyuck) their physical education teacher. Because of their good looks they are all used to the high school girls sighing over them, so they aren't too ruffled by all the attention they receive every day. However, it begins to upset the school administrators more and more as time goes on, especially when she wrongly describes one particularly touchy-feely affectionate type teacher as gay when he isn't. Pressure is on the administration to discover who the real author of We Were Friends is so that she can be questioned and told to stop her inflammatory writing.  

Swept up in a controversy that is shaking up the entire school, Eui Ju is ultimately suspected as the author of the online novel (one particular teacher finds her out and cautions her about it), and she is summoned before the disciplinary committee in the school administration, and even faces the possibility of expulsion, heightening tension over how the school’s biggest troublemaker, its secretive author Eui Ju, will overcome this crisis — especially after her parents (played by Lee Seung Joon and Yang So Min) are called in as well to pressure her to give up her writing.

Shaken to her core, and feeling a need to escape from it all, Eui Ju soon feels she must abandon We Were Friends because otherwise it could mean her whole life could be ruined by scandal. The one teacher who sympathizes with her the most, and who even tries to protect her in his own quiet ways, to inspire her to mature as a person, is the homeroom / genius math teacher Ga Woo Su. One even suspects that he may be falling in love with his own student but is moral enough to never act on his personal feelings in any way that could threaten Eui Ju's future -- even more than it already is. He cautions her that if she continues to write she must write the truth about the teachers, not her fantasies. Will she listen to him, or not?

She, in turn, begins to suspect his feelings are deeper for her than he lets on and she begins to fall in love with him, too. The other teachers no longer receive the same interest from her, although she does still care about their welfare as teachers. She doesn't want any of their careers hurt because of her writing. 

Besides the scandal involving the online novel, the tangled, complicated relationships between the teacher characters keep Korean drama viewers deeply immersed in the story until the very end. Will their friendships be hurt or even destroyed by the scandal? What about their careers as teachers? They all worry: will those be threatened too? By one student's fanciful writings?

The final episode is filmed like a beautiful poem and gives us hope that after years have passed, and Eui Ju grows up, matures, and graduates from college, that she and Woo Su may actually end up together as a loving, committed couple.

Will there ever be a sequel showing us that? I admit I hope there is one, and soon. Meanwhile, check out this memorable drama on Amazon Prime Video Streaming if you feel comfortable with the story set-up. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. It's beautifully filmed. Take care!

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