'Melodramatic Moments in Still Shining,' a Classic Romance Written by the Screenwriter of One Fine Spring Day

While dramas featuring romances blended with other genres have become mainstream, a work has appeared that stays true to the essence of classic melodrama. Drama 〈Still Shining〉, written by the joint screenwriter of the film 〈One Fine Spring Day〉 and brought together with Lee Sook-yeon, the writer of the drama 〈On the Way to the Airport〉, as well as Kim Yoon-jin, the director of 〈Our Beloved Summer〉, depicts a melodrama between two young people who support each other’s lives. Here, we compiled scenes from 〈Still Shining〉, which inherits the classic sensibility of first-love melodrama, along with moments that help you understand the relationship between the two protagonists even more deeply.

Tae-seo and Eun-ah’s library study scenes (Episode 1)

Tae-seo (Park Jin-young) and Eun-ah (Kim Min-ju) prepare for the future as they study together at a small school library in the countryside. The pure melodrama of 〈Still Shining〉, which brings back tender memories of first love, begins in this library scene. After taking first place in every subject for both the June and March mock exams, the model student Tae-seo is deeply focused on studying. Meanwhile, with time on her hands, Eun-ah decides to study as well, but she seems completely unable to stay focused. The library scene, highlighting the contrast between the two characters, delivers small joys right from the opening and pulls you into their charms. It also gives faint hints of emotion between two people whose love hasn’t fully started yet—creating a sense of anticipation. In the morning, sunlight filters in gently and wraps the library in softness; at noon, harsh beams pour down, and the ever-changing summer light forms a romantic mood within the library. In that luminous space, without either of them realizing it, the two slowly begin to seep into each other—like light.

Making It Possible

To Eun-ah, Tae-seo is the kind of person who makes the anxiety inside her vanish in an instant. Eun-ah’s deep fear—because she can’t bear to leave her father alone while he suffers from depression—settles, at least a little, beside Tae-seo. And in response, Eun-ah asks Tae-seo, “What am I to you?” Tae-seo answers with the English vocabulary word Eun-ah has been memorizing out loud: “facilitate.” Screenwriter Lee Sook-yeon, who wrote the script, said that the starting point for writing 〈Still Shining〉 was this word. Starting from a term that means “to make something possible,” she explained that she wondered, “What kind of relationship makes each person possible?” For Tae-seo, too, Eun-ah is the person who opened her heart in a situation where there was no room for feelings to take root. Both characters have someone they must protect, and they live in a reality where it’s hard to imagine a life that moves away from those people. But as Tae-seo and Eun-ah meet each other, they begin to imagine that each person’s life can open in different directions. They become a force that helps each other keep from giving up their own lives.

A Subway Station Scene that Expresses the Intersection of Emotions

The two end up in different schools—one in Seoul and the other in Gangneung—but they keep finding ways to meet without letting the time gap or the distance that pulls them apart stop them. Eun-ah, thrown into confusion by her father’s marriage announcement, goes to Seoul to see Tae-seo because she wants to. But she can’t honestly say that she’s there simply to see him—she worries she might steal time from busy Tae-seo—so she plans to go back to Yeonuri again. Sensing her hesitation in Eun-ah’s vague answer, Tae-seo tells her, “Go.” When Eun-ah waits for Tae-seo at Gangbyeon Station, the sound of the subway comes through. Then Eun-ah’s voice-over follows: “Listen—here comes the sound of Yeon Tae-seo.” The scene expresses Eun-ah’s longing for Tae-seo and her excitement as she waits for him in a synesthetic way. The scene is also reconfigured at Dongjak Station, the central space where the characters’ melodramatic emotional lines converge. Now that Tae-seo has become the subway conductor, he waits for the train at Dongjak Station, where memories with Eun-ah still remain. At that moment, Tae-seo says, “Eun-ah.” A single sentence from Tae-seo carries the trace of Eun-ah that still stays with him even ten years after they separated. In 〈Still Shining〉, the subway is not just a spatial backdrop—it exists as a space where the two people’s fate and emotional storylines intersect.

A Reunion at Dongjak Station, 10 Years Later

This scene is not the first time Tae-seo and Eun-ah meet again after ten years—it’s the true reunion, where they finally fully face each other. After a brief moment of eye contact, Eun-ah waits for Tae-seo at Dongjak Station so she can meet him again. Tae-seo notices Eun-ah’s back as she stands by the window, but he can’t approach, and then he turns away. Afterwards, Tae-seo leaves the platform without looking back at Eun-ah, and Eun-ah—watching him—sinks onto her seat and breaks into tears. In this scene, the writer precisely crafts each action beat of the character (the smallest structural unit of a scene) to evoke a painfully aching emotion. Eun-ah’s tears don’t come from a single turning-away moment; they come from the weight of those ten years. The person she once loved—the bag he carries as he walks, and the view of his back—still look the same, but his distance from her has changed. The writer doesn’t stop there and adds one more turn: after Eun-ah pours out tears on the platform and comes down, Tae-seo has been waiting for her—and only then does the reunion between the two become real. This scene effectively compresses the relationship between Tae-seo and Eun-ah, who has always been quietly waiting for him without ever truly leaving her behind, even as she drifts.