I'd like to respond to the writer who asserts, on the strength of having lived in Korea for nine months, that "the girl's aggressive behaviour towards Gyun-Woo is non-existent in [the] patriarchal, male dominated society of South Korea."

I haven't set foot in Korea. But I refuse to believe that ANY country is, or ever was, THAT homogenous. The population of South Korea is 48 million; assume that only someone in the heroine's age group could possibly resemble her (she does change in subtle respects as she grows older), and that the chance of any one woman developing her characteristics is a mere one in eight million, then by my rough calculations there's still an even chance that somewhere in South Korea is a woman who resembles her. Most Koreans won't have met her, of course.

Never mind whether this story is explicit fantasy or not (I'll need to see the film again before I can become decided on that point); fiction is there to focus on the exceptional, not on the ordinary. "The Girl" is presented as being exceptional. Gyun-Woo is right in thinking that the woman he loves is special and that he won't see her like again. Is everyone else in love right to think this about THEIR beloved also? Maybe, maybe not; other people's love lives aren't part of the story.

The fact that The Girl IS as special, as interesting, ultimately as lovable, as the story requires her to be (what's more: actress Ji-hyun Jun is lovely, and her facial expressions have to be seen to be believed) is only one of the reasons that "My Sassy Girl" is as fresh a romantic comedy as you're ever likely to see. Another reason is that it doesn't use romantic comedy formula even as its starting point. The levelling of obstacles standing between the lovers isn't really the point of the story. The point lies in the encounters themselves: how these two people change each other's lives.

Each of the three successive acts (first half, second half, overtime) adds something to the story and takes it to a new, unexpected and subtly magical place. Of the many risks Jae-young Kwak took the only one that I think was ill-advised was his decision to make Gyun-Woo's taking the story to Shin Cine studios to be filmed part of the story, suggesting that the movie we're watching is the movie its protagonists helped to create. Luckily we're watching something far better than that and the scene is but a brief distraction, one false note in a two-hour symphony of delight.