My Liberation Notes

My Liberation Notes (Korean: My Liberation Notes) is a 2022 South Korean television drama broadcast on JTBC from April 9 to May 29, 2022. Its sixteen-episode run was written by Park Hae-young and directed by Kim Seok-yoon. Park had previously written the acclaimed series My Mister. The drama centers on three Yeom siblings living in Sanpo, a fictional rural town in Gyeonggi Province, while enduring long commutes to Seoul.

Lee Min-ki plays eldest brother Yeom Chang-hee, a dissatisfied office worker who feels trapped by money and routine. Kim Ji-won portrays Yeom Mi-jeong, the quiet youngest sibling whose emotional exhaustion and desire for genuine connection drive much of the story. Lee El is their older sister, Yeom Ki-jeong, an outspoken woman frustrated by her romantic life and by the constraints placed on her.

Son Seok-koo plays the mysterious Mr. Gu, also identified as Gu Ja-gyeong, a withdrawn man with a concealed past who arrives in Sanpo and works for the Yeom family. Mi-jeong asks him to “worship” her, a deliberately unusual request that becomes the series’ defining expression of her search for liberation. Their restrained relationship forms a central thread, while Gu’s history gradually reveals ties to a violent Seoul criminal world.

The supporting cast includes Chun Ho-jin and Lee Kyung-seong as the siblings’ parents, Yeom Je-ho and Kwak Hye-suk. The family’s work in its sink business gives the drama a concrete domestic setting. In Seoul, the siblings’ workplace disappointments contrast with Sanpo’s fields, buses, and repetitive travel. A “Liberation Club,” started by Mi-jeong with coworkers, lets participants speak candidly about the parts of life they want to escape.

My Liberation Notes became notable for its unhurried pacing and its close attention to mundane pressures: commuting, office hierarchies, debt, family obligation, loneliness, and the difficulty of naming happiness. Rather than building around a conventional romance or a single mystery, Park’s screenplay follows small shifts in how its characters speak, work, drink, argue, and return home. The series was released internationally on Netflix in selected regions, making its quiet Sanpo setting accessible beyond South Korea. Its title reflects the characters’ wish not for dramatic reinvention but for release from the lives they have learned to endure. The finale returns attention to the siblings’ separate but connected attempts to live with greater honesty and freedom. It closes without erasing their problems, preserving the drama’s emphasis on gradual personal change over time and circumstance.