Completed
darkn3ss
16 people found this review helpful
Jun 28, 2013
18 of 18 episodes seen
Completed 1
Overall 9.0
Story 9.0
Acting/Cast 9.0
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 8.0
Although I wanted to slap the lead female throughout the drama, I was also totally shipping for her to recover her memories and family,so by the end of the drama I was fairly satisfied hence the 9/10 instead of 10.

If not going to waste my saliva or fatigued my fingers on the issue , but if you feel that you must overlooked this drama because someone may had badmouth it or a reviewer did not give it a high enough grade, then you should not blame anyone else but yourself for missing out on a true uniquely almost gem drama.

I have my "gringe" with this drama hence I did not give it a higher note, but if you really want to see great acting it's a must see, especially from the older cast, they had me totally hooked, same with the younger version is seems as the western standard for acting his going down the toilet, great germ are emanating from the east.

Acting aside the reason this drama should not be pass over is probably because of the message that is conveyed a simply touching and adorable story. With a powerful message of forgiveness.

So if you want to watch a drama that is fairly well acted and fairly wonderfully written then this must be your pick.

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Completed
Jay noona
1 people found this review helpful
Aug 12, 2021
18 of 18 episodes seen
Completed 0
Overall 7.0
Story 7.0
Acting/Cast 9.0
Music 5.0
Rewatch Value 4.0
This review may contain spoilers
i really liked this drama it was amazing
and i decided to keep it till ....
i completed it

the story took the wrong turn towards the end
there were no character development at all for both main leads

the story was about a genius woman who decided to change her life after getting through a trauma
then she lost her memory
all that was good and the events were great
but it has a huge flaws
they showed us at the beginning the FL was a genius
her memory was like a laptop or more
she studied business abroad

SOOOO ... for a genius woman like that i saw her sooooooo stupid and stubborn like a mule
has no sense, and so selfish
i want to slap her from the beginning till the end

because ..for a genius woman she should make a small business with her husband instead of a stupid bakery
or at least gaining money from stock market with this brain
but she did nothing she never used her bran in any thing
and above all that ...... zero romance in her character


the ML wasn't from her level neither the educational nor the social one
he never decided to develop himself
he was totally agree with th FL's humiliations towards him an continuing loving her unconditionally

inspite of that they showed us she loved him after living with him
and when her memory comes back she remembered she loved him
but she treated him in a very mean way with no reason
always try to show him she is much better than him
till the end she gave me the feeling she wasn't convinced with him

i thought after getting back her memory i thought there will be a huge character development for both leads
she is going to be nice and help him to change his character from a stupid guy to a real self-confident man

but that doesn't happen

and the second leads their story were very odd too with an open stupid ending
after all what Fl's uncle did and his wife i couldn't accept that end

totally it was nice drama with a vey annoying FL character
and u can just watch it once
at least for me

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Completed
Gastoski
0 people found this review helpful
Apr 9, 2024
18 of 18 episodes seen
Completed 0
Overall 6.5
Story 6.5
Acting/Cast 9.0
Music 7.0
Rewatch Value 6.5
This review may contain spoilers

Birth Mistery!?

I, sadly, found it quite poorly developed and even unresolved, e.g. the amnesia escamotage serves as an engine to move the story forward, but at the end of the day there is not even a really plausible explanation of the triggers of the memory loss, with its 'trauma' that should then activate the relative feelings of guilt, sin, redemption and all the corollary underlying the drama itself...

I'm not saying certain 'motorist clichés' like “Winter Sonata”, 'I Have A Lover' or 'Stairway To Heaven', but something more determinant and concrete than 'psychogenic amnesia' yes, but...

Then let's talk about the pedagogical disaster perpetrated on the poor child, treated worse than a postal parcel!
Abandoned by the mother, then taken back with proterrity and arrogance, then almost gifted to the aunt and uncle, then taken back again by the mother, with the relative runaway and the poor father who, between a child-exchange with the companies' shares as if we were at the local fish market, because he is a poor idiot, finds himself having to tolerate all this, perhaps without even complaining...

Quite a bunch of relatives, they should all be jailed and social services called in....

The male lead character who at least improves his posture during the episodes, stopping walking like a complete idiot, something that cannot be said of the tedious father-in-law/father/grandfather (which for an Italian like me, is quite funny, because it reminds of the journalist Beppe Severgnini, A/N). It's really a pain for 18 episodes, this Rain Man/Kaiser Soze style pacing with relative hand scratching (enough!) that even makes our amnesiac Yu-ri explode, in one of the best liberating moments of the story...

...Now a digression has to be made: 'But what did the mother of the female character find so extraordinary about this phenomenon who is always bent over, mumbles two words in 18 episodes and stares at the floor or books she has read a million times that she would even have a daughter with her?
Mystery of the plot, she leaves the drama almost immediately so we will never know....

Rather than "Birth Secret/The Secret of Birth" the drama should be titled "Birth Mystery/The Mystery of Birth"

The other cult-moment is the incredible argument between the two friends-colleagues who accuse each other of stealing their boiled-fish boyfriend (who laughs out loud!) as well as the theft of the thesis (and who knows what else must have happened in the USA, eh, you naughty girls!?) ...

There is something interesting in the secondary characters, such as the youngest son of the eccentric family, with musical ambitions, as well as his mother, a fervent Catholic with a chapel in the house ('we rich people don't miss a thing, do we'!?), but also among the lead character's friends, especially the hopeless lovers who intersect their repressed desires with the lead couple, who would have deserved a little more space in the story...
The 40-year-old son's contrition for his wife comes too late... sorry but your beautiful bride is already on the plane

Awesome the CEO who goes from the board of directors to robots-transformer in two episodes, almost a record;
by the way, is it the soju drunk in buckets that ruins the brains as well as the rest, of the poor Koreans!?

The 6.5/10 is for the entertainment, even if 18 episodes are sincerely too many, and for the cast, really great overall with Yu-ri who is always fabulous and the formidable child actress a cut above the rest, even if making her cry so often is really blackmailing, anyone would be touched by a crying child (except for that monster of a mother-genius, of course!)
but it's still very difficult for me to want to see it again

Last personal note: The music in certain bridging scenes, curiously enough, has resemblance to some sound passages from 'My Love From The Star'.

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Dropped 14/18
Colum H
0 people found this review helpful
Dec 8, 2020
14 of 18 episodes seen
Dropped 4
Overall 5.0
Story 7.0
Acting/Cast 8.0
Music 2.5
Rewatch Value 3.0
This review may contain spoilers

I nearly made it to the end but...

Will I go back to this? Can I bear to (not) finish it?
Right now I'm not completely sure, if I do go back I'll update this review.

I ended up at Birth Secret by a recommendation on the 'That Fool' page and at first I was very taken with it. It had a young Kim So Hyun and a fine if slightly irritating turn from Gal So Won. Sung Yu Ri also pulled me in.

The story has it's clichés (amnesia anyone?) but I didn't really mind the way it was done and that first part of the setup was intriguing.
But
At episode 10 I wrote in the comments:
<"Hong Gyung-doo is uneducated and poor" and unintelligent, boorish, violent, impulsive, aggressive... though he is a loving father. Not forgetting he is very, very shouty! (like the uncle) I'm on ep. 10 and really enjoying it apart from the shouty stupids which I tend to skip through.>

And a big part of my lack of enthusiasm by episode 14/15 is Hong Gyung Doo. I get that he's supposedly a nice chap and that they shoehorned various ways to show this into the script. He starts getting better off- better dressed, better job and so on and so on. But to me he's just a shouty simpleton with some serious boundary issues. The Oh now I remember being happy with him when we were married scenes were just jarring.

Unfortunately without the kick of Romance the rest of Birth Secret can't really stand up.
I had little time for most of the side characters whether they were love to hate or comic relief, they just weren't fleshed out enough to sustain interest. The only support character I really enjoyed was Sun Young I liked her progression. The Aunt and Kyung Doo's love triangle ended up as lost opportunities.

Another problem was by episode 14 of 18 I already felt it should have been 12 episodes or maybe 14 at the most. All the flashbacks, the long mother/father & daughter quality time scenes, the aforementioned pre-amnesia happy lovey-dovey scenes. And the professor with a handy speech impediment which could spin lines and 'tension' out interminably.

Which leaves me writing this - uninterested in the whole Chaebol corruption stuff, don't care if any of the secondary characters get happy endings and not shipping the main couple.

Hoping Sun Young gets her divorce, meets someone nice etc. and the cute kid aren't worth four more episodes.
The music was okay in places but there were quite a few yearning ballads in there which ought to have never existed

If you watch a few episodes and ship the main couple then go for it, I kept watching way past when I realised they were the 'ship of the show so it can't be all bad?

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Completed
Eun Ji Lee
0 people found this review helpful
Jul 8, 2018
18 of 18 episodes seen
Completed 0
Overall 8.5
Story 8.5
Acting/Cast 8.0
Music 7.5
Rewatch Value 7.5
Vi el primer y segundo episodio y comencé a amarlo. Me alegro de que decidí ver este drama. Es una buena. Demasiado triste que no me di cuenta antes. ¿Qué tiene de bueno este drama? Déjame decirte. ¿Qué harías si te despiertas de tu sueño y no recuerdas lo que has hecho desde hace 10 años? ¿Crees que es el año 1997, pero de hecho estás en el año 2007. Time slip? ¿Salto cuántico? ¿Viajero del tiempo? No, estás perdiendo tus recuerdos.


Primero, es el primer drama que me arrastra a su nivel emocional. Lloré incontables veces mientras miraba. Ridículo, ¿no? Intentaron sacar una comedia, pero no puedo evitarlo en lugar de llorar varias veces. No lo sé. Tal vez lo vi cuando estaba de mal humor, pero creo que esa no es la razón.


Tal vez la relación que los une me hizo sumergirme en el sentimiento de cada personaje, especialmente el amor de Hong Kyung-doo hacia su esposa Yoon-hee y su hija, Hong Hae-deum.


Personalmente creo que Birth Secret es una variante atípica de innumerables kdrama con cliché secreto de nacimiento. Aunque tiene makjang-esque y amnesia como dispositivos de trama, me encanta la forma en que se me presentó. Con la memoria perdida de Yi-hyun, ella está tratando de juntar su memoria piezas por piezas en el viaje llamado autodescubrimiento de la vida. Era una genio, una estudiante excelente y se graduó de la Escuela de Negocios de Havard, pero ¿por qué había un momento en su vida en que intentó suicidarse como si su futuro estuviera completamente arruinado y, por lo tanto, luchara por el mismo lugar para morir con un ... llamado perdedor ¿Cual es la diferencia entre ellos? ¿Por qué tomó una decisión tan impulsiva? Estas preguntas me intrigaron y me hicieron ver 10 episodios en una noche, sí, debido a la curiosidad.

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Birth Secret (2013) poster

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