Review: Secret Garden

If you’re looking for another Cinderella story, then Secret Garden is not for you.

In fact, writer Kim Eun Sook dismisses our hopes of finding a Cinderella story at Episode 6, where Joo Won tells Ra Im that instead of being Cinderella if he falls for her, she’ll be the Little Mermaid. And they were not talking about the Disney version of the tale, but Hans Christian Andersen’s lonely tale of the Little Mermaid’s unrequited love and of how she chooses to disappear like bubbles into the ocean. This imagery is recurrent and consistent throughout the whole series, as the characters Joo Won and Ra Im kept relating themselves to the Little Mermaid.
And as it is with the lonely tale of the Little Mermaid, Secret Garden is not your ideal love story. This, perhaps, is what makes Secret Garden appealing and moving at the same time — it has the element of fantasy (thus the soul-switching), yet it has the bittersweet reality of life. In fact, it breaks most of the Korean drama stereotypes we could ever think of.