The One and Only (2021): A Deeply Human K-Drama About Life, Death, and the One Choice That Changes Everything

  

  Some Korean dramas aim to comfort. Others aim to thrill. And once in a while, a drama comes along that quietly does both—without forcing emotion, without overplaying tragedy, and without trying too hard to be profound. The One and Only (Korean: Hansaramman) is one of those rare dramas.

Released in 2021, The One and Only is a deeply emotional Korean drama that blends terminal illness, moral conflict, female friendship, and murder mystery into one unforgettable story. At first glance, it may seem like another slow and sorrowful melodrama about people facing death. But that assumption would miss what makes this series special.

Yes, the story begins in a hospice. Yes, its central characters are terminally ill. But The One and Only is not really about dying. It is about what happens when people who have nothing left to lose begin to live more honestly than ever before.

The One and Only (2021): A Deeply Human K-Drama About Life, Death, and the One Choice That Changes Everything

This is a drama about pain, regret, survival, justice, and human connection. It is about broken people trying to reclaim their dignity. It is about loneliness, and what it means to finally be seen. Most of all, it is about how even one meaningful connection can change the direction of a life.

If you are looking for a Korean drama that is emotionally rich, beautifully written, and far more layered than it first appears, The One and Only deserves your attention.

What Is The One and Only About?

At the heart of The One and Only are three women who meet in a hospice ward. They come from completely different walks of life. They have different personalities, different regrets, and different ways of coping with the knowledge that their time is running out.

What connects them is simple and devastating: all three have been told they are dying.

Under normal circumstances, these women likely never would have met. They have little in common on the surface. But inside the quiet walls of the hospice, stripped of the distractions and expectations of ordinary life, they begin to see one another clearly.

And then everything changes.

What begins as an emotional story about terminal illness suddenly shifts into something darker and more dangerous. Through a moment of emotional desperation and moral anger, the women become involved in a murder case. They decide there is one person—just one—who deserves to die before they do.

That decision becomes the emotional and moral engine of the drama.

From that point on, The One and Only becomes more than a hospice drama. It becomes a tense and introspective thriller, asking difficult questions with no easy answers.

If someone has caused pain, destroyed lives, and escaped consequences, is revenge justice?

If you are already dying, do the rules still matter in the same way?

And if you think your life is already over, what happens when you suddenly find a reason to keep living?

These questions drive the story forward, but the drama never loses sight of what matters most: the emotional lives of its characters.

A Story About Death That Feels Surprisingly Alive

Many dramas that deal with terminal illness fall into predictable patterns. They rely heavily on tears, dramatic breakdowns, and emotional manipulation. They often ask viewers to cry for characters instead of truly understand them.

The One and Only takes a more thoughtful path.

Rather than turning illness into spectacle, the drama uses mortality as a lens. Death is not treated as a twist or a source of easy sadness. It is simply the reality the characters must live with. That grounded approach makes the emotional moments feel more honest and far more powerful.

The drama asks a quiet but important question: how do people live when they know time is limited?

Not in a poetic sense. In a practical, human sense.

Do they become braver?

Do they become reckless?

Do they stop pretending?

Do they finally say what they mean?

This is where The One and Only becomes truly compelling. It is not interested only in death. It is interested in what death reveals.

One woman realizes she has spent her entire life enduring mistreatment in silence.

Another realizes she has built her identity around public approval and empty validation.

Another realizes she has never truly been seen as a person at all.

These are not just dying women. They are women confronting the truth of how they have lived.

And that truth is often more painful than the diagnosis itself.

The Emotional Core: Three Women, Three Lives, One Unlikely Friendship

The emotional center of The One and Only is not romance or mystery. It is friendship.

This is what gives the drama its heart.

The relationship between the three women is written with unusual tenderness and realism. Their bond does not form instantly, and it is not built on sentimental clichés. It grows slowly, awkwardly, and honestly—through discomfort, conflict, humor, and shared vulnerability.

That makes it feel real.

They do not become friends because the script says they should. They become friends because suffering strips away performance, and in that emotional honesty, they begin to understand one another.

Their friendship becomes the most powerful part of the story.

In a genre where female relationships are often reduced to rivalry or convenience, The One and Only offers something much more meaningful: solidarity.

These women do not save each other in dramatic, unrealistic ways. They save each other by listening. By staying. By seeing one another clearly. By refusing to look away.

Sometimes that is the most radical kind of love.

Pyo In-sook: A Woman Who Never Expected to Be Loved

Pyo In-sook, played by Ahn Eun-jin, is the emotional anchor of the series.

She is not written as an easy heroine. She is cold, guarded, emotionally distant, and often difficult to read. She has spent most of her life on the outside—unwanted, unseen, and emotionally neglected. Because of that, she has learned to survive by expecting very little from other people.

That emotional detachment becomes her armor.

In-sook is the kind of character many dramas would try to soften too quickly. The One and Only does not make that mistake. It allows her to remain difficult. It lets her silence mean something. It trusts the audience to understand that emotional numbness is not emptiness—it is damage.

That choice makes her deeply compelling.

Her journey is not about becoming warm or cheerful. It is about allowing herself to be vulnerable enough to want something. To trust. To care. To be cared for.

It is a subtle performance, and one of the strongest in the drama.

Ahn Eun-jin plays In-sook with remarkable restraint. She never forces emotion, which makes every crack in In-sook’s emotional control feel devastatingly real.

Min Woo-cheon: The Hitman With More Humanity Than Most

Min Woo-cheon, played by Kim Kyung-nam, is one of the drama’s most intriguing characters.

He enters the story with the quiet danger of a noir antihero: distant, unreadable, and morally compromised. He is a hitman, and the drama does not pretend otherwise. But like many of the best-written characters in The One and Only, he is far more than what he first appears to be.

Woo-cheon could have been reduced to a familiar archetype—the dangerous man with a tragic past. Instead, the drama gives him emotional complexity and moral ambiguity.

He is not romanticized. He is not excused. But he is understood.

That distinction matters.

His connection with In-sook is one of the most compelling parts of the series because it never feels exaggerated. Their relationship is quiet, wounded, and built on mutual recognition more than idealized romance.

Neither of them is looking for salvation.

That is what makes their connection work.

They recognize something in each other: emotional exhaustion, loneliness, and the deep fatigue of people who have survived too much.

Their relationship does not ask whether love can fix broken people.

It asks whether being understood can make life bearable.

That is a much more interesting question.

Kang Se-yeon: The Woman Who Finally Stops Enduring

Kang Se-yeon, played by Kang Ye-won, represents a quieter kind of tragedy.

She is not hardened like In-sook or performative like Mi-do. She is, in many ways, painfully ordinary. A housewife who has spent years shrinking herself to fit the needs of others, Se-yeon is the kind of woman society often overlooks entirely.

Her pain is not dramatic. It is familiar.

She is the woman who kept compromising until she disappeared inside her own life.

That makes her story especially affecting.

Se-yeon’s arc is about reclaiming personhood. About recognizing that a life does not need to be spectacular to matter—and that quiet suffering is still suffering.

Her journey will feel painfully recognizable to many viewers, especially those who have spent too long prioritizing survival over selfhood.

Seong Mi-do: A Woman Trapped Inside Her Own Image

Seong Mi-do, played by Joy, brings a very different kind of emotional tension to the group.

Mi-do is a social media influencer, deeply invested in image, attention, and public validation. On paper, she is the most superficial of the three. And at first, she seems designed to be the drama’s most frustrating character.

That is intentional.

What makes Mi-do interesting is that the drama does not stop at surface-level judgment. It digs deeper into what her obsession with image actually represents: fear.

Fear of irrelevance. Fear of invisibility. Fear that without performance, there is nothing worth loving underneath.

That makes Mi-do far more sympathetic than she first appears.

Her arc is one of the drama’s strongest surprises.

Why the Murder Mystery Works So Well

The thriller element in The One and Only is not just there to create suspense. It serves a deeper purpose.

Without the murder plot, the drama could easily have become too static or emotionally heavy. The mystery introduces movement, urgency, and moral tension. It gives the characters something external to confront while they wrestle with internal collapse.

More importantly, it forces them into action.

That matters because grief can be passive. Fear can be paralyzing. But once these women become involved in something dangerous, they are forced to make choices.

And choices reveal character.

The thriller plot keeps the story moving, but it also sharpens its central themes: guilt, justice, consequence, and moral compromise.

Themes That Give The One and Only Its Lasting Impact

Redemption Without Easy Forgiveness

One of the drama’s greatest strengths is its refusal to confuse redemption with absolution.

Its characters are not magically healed. Their pain is not erased. Their pasts do not disappear.

But they are given something more realistic: the chance to choose differently.

That is what redemption looks like here.

Not purity. Not innocence. Just the courage to become more honest before time runs out.

The Need to Be Seen

Again and again, this drama returns to one deeply human truth: people can survive enormous pain, but invisibility breaks them.

Every major character in The One and Only is, in some way, unseen.

What they long for is not perfection. It is recognition.

To be known. To be understood. To matter.

That emotional truth gives the series its quiet power.

The Value of One Human Life

The title is not accidental.

The One and Only is ultimately about the immeasurable value of a single life—especially the lives society overlooks.

Not the exceptional. Not the celebrated. Just the human.

And that idea gives the drama its emotional soul.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Is The One and Only worth watching?

Yes, The One and Only is absolutely worth watching if you enjoy emotionally rich Korean dramas with strong character development and meaningful storytelling. It stands out because it combines terminal illness, female friendship, and moral suspense in a way that feels thoughtful rather than overly dramatic. Instead of relying only on sadness, the drama offers emotional depth, mystery, and quiet human warmth.

2. Is The One and Only a sad K-Drama?

Yes, it is emotional and often heartbreaking, but it is not emotionally exhausting in the way many tragic dramas can be. While the story deals with death, regret, and loneliness, it also includes warmth, humor, healing, and unexpected hope. It is more bittersweet than purely sad, which makes it feel more human and balanced.

3. Does The One and Only have romance?

Yes, The One and Only includes romance, but it is subtle and emotionally grounded. The relationship between Pyo In-sook and Min Woo-cheon is not written like a typical dramatic love story. It develops slowly and naturally, built on emotional understanding, loneliness, and mutual trust rather than grand romantic gestures. Romance is important to the story, but it never overshadows the emotional core.

4. Is The One and Only more of a thriller or a melodrama?

It is a balanced mix of both, but at its heart, The One and Only is a human drama. The melodrama comes from the emotional journeys of the characters, while the thriller element comes from the murder investigation and moral tension surrounding it. The suspense keeps the story moving, but the emotional growth of the characters remains the real focus.

5. What makes The One and Only different from other terminal illness K-Dramas?

What makes The One and Only different is that it does not treat terminal illness as its only emotional hook. Instead of focusing only on suffering, it explores friendship, identity, justice, and what it means to truly live when time is limited. It feels more mature and reflective than many similar dramas, with stronger emotional realism and more layered character writing.

Final Verdict: Is The One and Only Worth Watching?

Absolutely—especially if you prefer character-driven Korean dramas with emotional depth, strong writing, and something meaningful to say.

The One and Only is not loud. It is not flashy. It does not chase spectacle.

What it offers instead is something rarer: emotional honesty.

It is a thoughtful, quietly devastating drama about death, justice, loneliness, and the fragile courage it takes to keep living.

If you enjoy emotionally intelligent Korean dramas like My Mister, Flower of Evil, or Move to Heaven, The One and Only is well worth your time.

It may begin with death.

But what makes it unforgettable is how fully it understands life.