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When the Phone Rings is a gripping new Kdrama that’s captured the attention of global audiences with its unique premise, stellar performances, and intense suspense. Starring Yoo Yeon-seok and Chae Soo-bin, the romance-mystery thriller has already achieved remarkable success, securing millions of views in its first week alone. As the series continues to unfold, fans are eagerly awaiting the next episodes. Here’s everything you need to know about the release schedule, plot, and where to watch When the Phone Rings.

Plot Overview:

When the Phone Rings revolves around the complex relationship between Baek Sa-eon (played by Yoo Yeon-seok) and Hong Hee-ju (played by Chae Soo-bin). Baek Sa-eon is a former war correspondent and hostage negotiator who now works at a broadcasting station, while Hong Hee-ju is a sign language interpreter at the same station. The drama dives into their “show window marriage”—a politically arranged union that serves only as a facade.

“Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way.” This is the beginning of author Han Kang‘s 2007 novel “The Vegetarian“, which was also her first work that was translated in the English language and paved the way for her international success. The story of Yeong-hye, who one day decides to stop eating meat, is divided into three parts, each of which narrated from the perspective of one of her family members showing how her decisions is met with ridicule, lengthy discussion and finally rejection. Only one member of the family, her sister, takes steps to understand Yeong-hye, respect her decision and its consequences, resulting in a touching finale expressing how true understanding stems from empathy, but also the way people find ways, often radical ones, to break a fatal cycle within their family, their generation even their culture.

The body is...

South Korean writer Han Kang, whose international breakthrough novel The Vegetarian was made into a film, has won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2024.

The Swedish Academy unveiled the honoree Thursday, lauding “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

Han’s 2007 novel The Vegetarian, her first novel to be translated into English, won the International Booker Prize in 2015. The story of Yeong-hye, a part-time graphic artist and homemaker, whose decision to stop eating meat leads to mental health struggles and problems in her familial life, was adapted as a feature film by Woo-Seong Lim and screened at Sundance in 2010.

The honor is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in 1895. The others are prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine, as well as the Nobel Peace Prize.

Han Kang is the first South Korean to win the literature Nobel.

When I decided to embark upon Korean literature, the most common suggestion I heard was “The Vegeterian”, which a number of people considered a masterpiece, and which had won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016. As I am not one to go against awards and suggestions, I did as “instructed” and the result was exactly as I hoped for. Let us take things from the beginning though.

“The Vegetarian” is a three-part novel that was initially three separate novelettes that were then compiled into a single title. The story follows Yeong-hye, a dutiful Korean wife, who, after watching a dream, decides to become a vegetarian, completely cutting off anything made of meat. This seemingly unwarranted decision breaks her life completely, leaving her husband perplexed and her family worried and enraged. Soon all her relationships start being based on violence, shame and desire and the consequences become dire for everyone.