Is When Life Gives You Tangerines Based On A True Story?

When Life Gives You Tangerines, a South Korean television series that juggles the romance and slice-of-life genres at its core, has received universal acclaim for a wide variety of reasons. Not only have the main couple and the rest of the supporting cast stolen the hearts of viewers worldwide, but the series has also been praised for its impressively realistic depiction of Korean lifestyle scattered across decades.

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Throughout its 16-episode run, which is divided into four volumes, When Life Gives You Tangerines has a deeply authentic feel about it, which naturally raises the question: Is it all just fiction, or does the series follow a tale from real life?

Is When Life Gives You Tangerines A True Story?

Despite there being plenty of elements that the series takes from the real world to add further layers to its realism, When Life Gives You Tangerines is not based on a true story at its core. Which means that the intergenerational journey of Oh Ae-sun and Yang Gwan-sik is a work of fiction, but the situations that they, along with the rest of the characters in the series, have to face are very real.

For example, since the story primarily revolves around Jeju in South Korea, When Life Gives You Tangerines presents Ae-sun's mother, Jeon Gwang-rye, as a haenyeo, a job that was common among women in that province. The series showcases the semi-matriarchal system that the majority of families follow in Jeju, something that shapes the lives of the three leading ladies in When Life Gives You Tangerines.

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Along with that, since the series spans decades, it also showcases the modernization of South Korea across various eras, ranging from the Korean War in the 1950s to the country's first Summer Olympics, held in Seoul in 1988. These important events are by no means the central focus of the series, but they are used to showcase the repercussions they had on the ordinary people of South Korea, whether in the capital, Seoul, or a rural province like Jeju.

A great example of a real event having a massive impact on the characters in When Life Gives You Tangerines is when Geum-myeong has to face challenges in her career due to an economic downturn. Not only does this creative choice make the series a lot more believable, but it also acts as a wonderful plot device to present character growth and the feeling of years passing by.

When Life Gives You Tangerines also authentically showcases the lives of people in Jeju as it slowly starts to become a tourist destination later on, as they may not be the strongest financially, but they rely on their agriculture and unconventional jobs, like the haenyeo, to survive.

The series also shows the drastic differences between the slow-paced, simple life in Jeju and the much faster, modern world of Seoul. All of these elements work in tandem to keep the series grounded and feel realistic, which means that although the story and characters in When Life Gives You Tangerines are not strictly based on true accounts, almost everything else that shapes them is as real as television gets.

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