PD Shin Won Ho to Produce 10th Year Anniversary Special for Answer Me 1988 with Entire Cast Returning Except for Ryu Jun Yeol Due to Scheduling Conflict
The beauty of the Answer Me/Reply series of three K-dramas was the family, the romance, the nostalgia, and the evoking of memories in the passage of time. So looking back it’s wild that 2012-2015 may have been THE heyday for K-dramas in terms of sheer quality when PD Shin Won Ho went back-to-back-to-back with Answer Me 1997, then Answer Me 1994, and capped off with his masterpiece Answer Me 1988. This year 2025 is the 10th anniversary of the release of AM1988 and PD Shin is preparing an anniversary special to air on tvN and with the entire cast returning. Minus one of the two male lead Ryu Jun Yeol, whose agency explaining that he can’t make it due to a scheduling conflict. Yes, “scheduling conflict”, lol to the infinity, but at least this won’t turn the special into a exes with a bad breakup sharing the same stage awkwardness. I can’t wait for cast camaraderie and cuteness, and as a billion percent Taek shipper and knowing Hyeri and Park Bo Gum are great friends in real life I want more Deok Sun-Taekie cute backstories from filming.
With so many talents around, it’s surprising RJY is still doing so well….. he doesn’t have good looks, passive face… but maybe that’s what makes him stand out. His plain looks are interpreted as dorky and his awkward acting is perceived as natural and stellar performance 🤣🤣🤣
Anyway all the best to the lovable team of Answer Me 1988.
lol
I think RJY was right to keep silence, it’s his private life. It’s sad he won’t be in this reunion. Their show in Friends Over Flowers in Africa was fun to watch.
I have only watched reply 1997 of the three and back when it came out I didn’t get any of the kpop references but was still obsessed with the show and the mystery. It wasn’t clear to me from the article if the return of the cast is just the 1998 cast or l the reply series but likely just the 1998.
I really love Reply 1997. And I was also obsessed with the drama while airing. To this day, I haven’t rewatched the others, but Reply 1997 still holds a special place in my heart. I’ve rewatched it a few times. I didn’t always get the Korean cultural references at that time, so I had to look them up (the recaps on Dramabeans were a huge help back then). Even though the 1990s were also my growing-up years and I should relate to both series, 1997 still tops 1994 for me.
Same. I loved them all, but Reply 1997 is the first one I saw and my favorite. It’s the only one I have rewatched several times.
I would love to see a Reply 1997 reunion. I don’t think that will ever happen. 1988 is the most popular one. So, it makes sense to do that reunion from a ROI perspective
They had a mini reunion with the director and all the guys. Unfortunately, Eunji wasn’t there. It’s on YouTube. I think theirs was the first. The director also had a reunion dinner with some of the 1994 cast. 1997 was my favorite of the three. It was the one with no issues. The other ones had ridiculously long episode lengths. I think 1994 was the begining of drama episodes that long. I wasn’t happy that in 1994, Go Ara was playing the 2.0 version of Eunji’s Shi-won. I mostly barrelled through that season to catch up to watching 1988 and to see the 1997 cameos. The future husband mystery for both 1994 and 1988 also felt repetitive. At first the team said they wouldn’t do it again for 1988, but they wound up doing it again anyway. I thought they’d at least switch things up and make the future wife the mystery. Reply 1988 would’ve been perfect if they trimmed the fat with the episode length and didn’t have such a rushed ending. I couldn’t believe they could spend most of the series with some episodes so long they were movie length, but then have no time to wrap up the end of the series well.
The other series wouldn’t exist without Reply 1997. It’s the series that not only built tvN but changed the landscape of Korean TV. The number of screenwriters and PDs that left the big 3 public networks they had been working with exclusively for years to go to tvN. It all happened because of the success of that show featuring a team that was working on 1D2N prior to that. All the movie stars that decided to come back to doing dramas and the prestige dramas that followed after that, the rise of cable networks, and the public networks having to improve the quality of their dramas to compete all happened because Reply 1997. They wanted the creative freedom that network was giving. And to think, Reply 1997 was cast with mostly singers who were rookie actors. No one expected it to be the hit that it was. That show will never get enough flowers for me.
Loved Reply 1988 so much!
Omg Yes to this. My favorite drama! I can’t wait.
Love the vibe of all the Replies, have kept them to re-watch.
The one actor that I ended up seeking out other stuff is Jung Woo, from the less popular Reply – 1994. He’s really good and does interesting characters/dramas.
I visited Korea in 1988 for a week, the one and only time, specifically to go to the Olympic Games, so got a nostalgia kick out of the Olympic-related stuff in 1988 Reply. Must go back, sometime, and spend longer.
I’d like to see another Reply series (although I guess it gets darker and less pop-culture-ish in the 1980s). A decade had already passed, so it would not seem so repetitive, plus I’d be curious to see if another cable drama can still hit 20% ratings.