I’ve been a fan of Park Hyung Sik for about a month now, and I had no idea that I would fall this hard for this guy. I have heard of this guy before but for some odd reason, he just went over my head.

I first saw his name and his face back in 2016 when Hwarang came out, and as a matter of fact I did watch that show in bits and pieces at the time. However, at the time when I was watching that show I focused on actors like: Park Seo Joon, Kim Tae Hyung from BTS, Choi Minho from Shinee and even a little bit of the actress Go Ara.

It’s strange cus I didn’t even give Park Hyungsik a chance, I didn’t even care to look at him, I really don’t know why I did that. But seven years later while I was still fangirling over Bummie oppa, someone just snuck into my heart which is Park Hyungsik. I was watching some Kim Bum dramas on Viki so I was seeing ads and promos of Hyungsik oppa’s new show called Our Blooming Youth that just ended……I was annoyed at first with the silly ads of Our Blooming Youth on Viki but I decided to bite the bullet and check it out anyways because I thought I was gonna get out of it so easily but nope I was instantly smittened by PHS and I thought it would last like a few days but I was wrong….so now My Hyungsik oppa has become my main since about a month ago.

So like I always do when I start to like someone new, I catch up on everything that they have done up to this point. I watched just about all of Park Hyungsik’s dramas and movies and What happens to my family is one of them. Once I started to watch What happens to my family I instantly fell in love with the show and my love for Park Hyungsik grew even more. Sorry for the long intro, I’m gonna actually get to my review/thoughts about this show that’s 53 episodes.

Many people might think that 53 episodes too long but to my standards, it’s not…I’ve watched even longer Korean dramas in the past…like Smile Donghae, a drama with Ji Changwook that had 160 episodes.

Anyways, What happens to my family is such a breath of fresh air because nowadays it’s hard to find a family friendly show like this. This show talks about the importance of family and friends, especially your direct family.

Park Hyungsik plays the youngest child of the Cha household. Mr. Cha owns a little tofu store in his neighborhood that’s been around for thirty years and this little store had practially fed the whole family. Park Hyungsik plays the third child out of the three and his name in this show is Cha Dalbong. Cha Dal Bong has an older sister played by Kim Hyun Jooo who is the lead secretary at GK Enterprieses and Dal Bong also has an older brother who is a very skilled doctor at a local large hospital. Mr. Cha is played by a vetern actor named Yoo Dong Geun and he also allows his younger sister, her daughter and her husband to live with them.

Dal Bong’s aunt Soon Geum has a granddaughter but lives in the Philippines to study and they never show her on screen. Dal Bong’s older sister’s name is Cha Kangshim and the older bother’s name is Cha Kangje. The aunt’s daughter’s name is Noh Young Seol and her husband’s name is Seo Joong Baek. Cha Kangje is played by Yoon Park, Noh Young Seol is played by Kim Jung Ran, Seo Joong Baek is played by Kim Jung Min and Cha Soon Geum the aunt is played by a veteran actress Yang Hee Kyung.

This household is a full house so it does make you feel like people actually live there unlike a lot of households these days. However, even though so many family members are jam packed in this one house but the children’s hearts are too into their own lives and their own careers. Kangshim is busy with her secretarial duties to a point where she forgets about her own father’s birthday while she remembers her boss’s bday which is on the same day as her own father’s birthday.

Kangje the middle child is a doctor but he has this resentment towards his poor dad because he’s seen people that are less skilled go up the ladder because they have powerful fathers. Dal Bong, the youngest child goes around getting into fights and such but he’s the only one that seems to be closest to his father. Maybe part of it is because he feels like part of the reason why his mother died was cus of him since she died after giving birth to him. Dal Bong doesn’t have a stable job like his siblings but he finally landed a job with the help of one of his upperclassmen friends from college but it turned out to be a pyramid scheme. While heading to work via train he meets his destiny, the love of his life, Kang Seo Wool, played by Nam Ji Hyeon.

Apparently, 12 years ago, Cha Dal Bong proposed to Kang Seo Wool when him and his friends from school went on a field trip during his middle school years. Kang Seo Wool is from a small village called Hongsong in Southern Choongchung province and she took the train all the way to Seoul, which is the capital city and the biggest city in South Korea.

She decided to go to Seoul to meet her husband to be because Cha Dal Bong apparently told her to meet him at Namsan Tower after 12 years at a certain time. Kang Seo Wool takes making promises to another person pretty seriously and took it to heart. She took this as a literal promise to being Cha Dal Bong’s fiancee/wife even though Cha Dal Bong never took this promise seriously and also it wasn’t Cha Dal Bong who made the promise, it was Dal Bong’s middle school friend Yoon Eun Ho, played by Seo Kangjoon who did that.

Seo Wool practically barges into the Cha household saying that she came to get married to Cha Dalbong because he promised her this 12 years ago and this shocks the whole family, even Dal Bong himself. I love the fact that Cha Dal Bong actually has an arc in this show. A lot of the times in these shows it’s hard to find characters with an arc of some kind but in this show a thing called arc exists. Not just for Cha Dalbong but for just about everybody.

I want to talk about Dalbong the most since I started watching this show because of Park Hyungik and he’s the one who plays our dear Cha Dalbong. When we first meet Cha Dalbong, he is immature, a little too playful, temperamental, a bit self centered and a whole bunch of other negative traits in a person but after he meets Kang Seo Wool, this changes bit by bit. Because of Kang Seo Wool, he becomes more mature, more considerate, more reliable, he causes less trouble and finds somewhat of a stable job. Through Seo Wool he was able to find out that he had a talent in cooking, and he also realized that he didn’t care about his father as much as he thought he did.

All three kids of the Cha household are too self centered to the point where Mr. Cha decided to sue them for not fulfilling their fillial duties as his children. Kangshim is 37 years old and unmarried. Kangshim was heartbroken by Lawyer Byun played by Song Jaehee so she promised herself to live as a single woman for the rest of her life. This breaks Cha Soon Bong, Kangshim’s dear father.

Kangshim’s father and aunt try their best to find her a mate so they tried their best to make her go on blind dates to pick out a decent marriage candidate soon.

Kangje’s problem is being too into work. When you think about Kangshim she is just as obsessed with her job but at least she is willing to somewhat communicate but Kangje has a huge attitude problem and he certainly shows it. Kangje thinks that his father didn’t do anything for him even though that’s not true at all which upsets Dalbong witnessing his brother treating their father that way.

Mr Cha worked his fingers to the bone to put Kangje and the other kids through school but he is not grateful about it since he is too busy comparing himself with the other doctors at the hospital he works at. Kangje does luck out in a way because the director and the owner of the hospital he works at wants a son in law that they can take in as a son since they only have one spoiled daughter named Kwon Hyo Jin played by Son Dambi.

And my favorite character of the show is Cha Dalbong played by my dear Park Hyung Sik oppa, he is a bit of a loser, at least that’s how he starts out anyways. He over sleeps everyday, gets into fights, hangs with bad people, doesn’t have a stable job, ends up getting hired at a pyramid scheme company without even researching the place and so on but this changes once he meets our beautiful Kang Seo Wool played by Nam Ji Hyeon.

I loved their chemistry, they felt like a real couple, so natural. Part of this is Park Hyung Sik’s doing because he is famous for being the chemistry maker. Even if his co-stars can’t seem to bring it out, Hyungsik will be able to make it happen, that’s how talented he is.

This show had a lot of humor for a weekend family drama. Lot of family dramas were famous for being a little too over dramatic and stuff, but this show avoided the whole Makjang drama cliche. What happens to my family has the over dramatic stuff as well but it’s easier to take cus it has a lot of humor in it as well. I think Director Moon Tae Joo, played by Kim Sang Kyung was the funniest. His banter between Cha Kangshim, his father who is the chairman of GK enterprises and Kangshim’s father are pretty hilarious. I was surprised that Kim Sang Kyung can do comedy since I’m use to seeing him in more serious stuff like Great King Sejong and Memories of Murder.

Park Hyungsik’s wide range of acting is impressive as well. He can do comedy, rom-com, mello, and the serious stuff as well. Another actor who I thought was funny besides Kim Sang Kyung were Park Hyungsik, Kim Hyunjoo, Son Dambi and Yoo Dong Geun. Son Dambi over acting when things go wrong was priceless. Her going, “Omona” was too funny every time she uttered it, which was pretty often since she moved into her in laws place.

I really love the sibling banters, especially between Dalbong and Kangshim. Kangshim would smack him when he gets out of line. I also love the way Dalbong and Seo Wool have their own love querreles. Also, Dalbong protects his Seo Wool whenever his sister in law Hyojin treats Seo Wool like a non family member and a servant.

There are cute moments of Dalbong and Seo Wool like going out on dates, having late night talks on the neighborhood bench at night, Dalbong going up to Seo Wool’s rooftop apartment and getting into physical banters. My favorite parts are when Dalbong gives Seo Wool kiss stamps and my super favorite is their first kiss on Dalbong’s birthday.

I didn’t mind the sort of a triangular relationship of Dalbong, Seo Wool and Eunho. Eunho does some dirty stuff but he was able to redeem himself fairly quickly unlike a lot of these kinds of characters that are in triangular relationships.

I had a lot of fun watching Eunho helping out Taejoo with his relationship problems with his new found love interest Cha Kangshim. Eunho and Taejoo both were against their parents marrying each other. Eunho didn’t want Taejoo’s father marrying him but these two step brothers getting along quite well which seemed really awesome. Most of the time in these kinds of shows step siblings rarely get along with each other.

I just love the way everybody banters, have disagreements about them but at the end of the day, they all come around somehow. Hyojin is a good example of this. She looked like the type that would not be able to handle the Cha household since she’s raised as an only child and spoiled by her parents, especially her mother Heo Yang Geum. However once Hyojin lives with the Cha’s she learns a lot about living with others, although she still acts like a spoiled brat living with the Cha family.

The children all come around too. Kangshim, Kangje, and Dalbong all realize later that they’ve been taking their dad for granted. This show’s core message is the importance of family and not to take your loved ones and direct family members for granted.

Mr. Cha Soon Bong, the father of the Cha household raised his three children by himself after his beautiful wife passed on after she gave birth to Dal Bong. However, unfortunately the children started to take him for granted after they became too focused on their own lives. Even though the children end up doing their own things for awhile but they eventually come around after a major event in the household.

This show has a good message which we lack these days on TV. No matter what we watch and where we watch it, it’s kinda hard to find shows that are family friendly with a positive and pure message behind it. Korean shows were family friendly for a very long time up until just recently…….I really enjoyed the characters because they felt real and they were quite comical. Their comedic antics didn’t seem over the top either, it was just right for me. I recommend this show to people that just want a good old fashioned family drama…..