Some Goodbyes Burn Forever: A Reflection on Mr. Sunshine
The Story That Stays Behind
*Mr. Sunshine* is no mere drama — it's history infused with poetry and pain. The series, based in Korea's tumultuous early 1900s, chronicles the life of Eugene Choi, a Joseon-born slave who escapes to America, enters as a soldier, and returns years later — not for revenge, but as a stranger to the country that had abandoned him.He meets Go Ae-shin, ladylike in demeanor but a steel-hearted lady, fighting for the freedom of her country in silence. Impossible but profound love. History unfolding itself around them — tastefully, silently, brutally.
What I Carried With Me
I never saw a drama on which I sat in silence through every episode. Not because I was confused — but because I felt too strongly. *Mr. Sunshine* did not try to entertain me. It placed me in opposition to remembering something that I never really experienced—but felt so irresistibly proximate. There is this one line Eugene says,' "You were my country'." That line killed me. It wasn't romantic — it was the sound of a man who had found home in another human being after living his whole life and being homeless. And that's something that I get; sometimes we find home not in locations but in human beings. Sometimes history rips home from us, and love is where we can find shelter. That hit close to home. Someone who has always questioned where she fits in, torn between tradition and innovation, between other people's ideas and one's own dreams — *Mr. Sunshine* was like a quiet mirror held up to my soul.
Korea and Bangladesh—A Shared Pulse
Watching *Mr. Sunshine* reminded us of not only Korea's past but also our own. Bangladesh, too, has had the sound of foreign boots on its soil, the dread of opening one's lips and uttering a word, and the cost of revolution. We've forgotten names too — martyrs never mentioned. Ae-shin described the resiliency that I have seen in women of Bangladesh — fragile on the outside, impenetrable when it matters. And Eugene's sadness, this feeling of never quite being "enough" in either world, spoke to the identity crisis many of us feel when we take a path no one understands. Even our values as a family — honor's gravity, pain's stoicism — seemed so too-familiar. Korean and Bangladeshi culture employs the same emotional vocabulary: duty instead of desire, sacrifice instead of self, love proclaimed through action.
In Comparison to Other K-Dramas
It wasn't one of those kisses of love like *Crash Landing on You* or *Business Proposal*. It wasn't soothing, nor hilarious, nor sweet. It was haunting. Like a lot of its antecedent *Goblin*, it did have elements of death, fate, and tragedy — but there was more of reality in *Mr. Sunshine*. Less fantasy, more history. Less fairy tale, more brutalism. Where every other drama left me grasping for the edge of my seat, this one put me in a hurt that was never spoken but lingered long after the final episode. It didn't sting me to want a happy ending to be shared. It made me think about hurt that was concealed within our current moment.
Why Stories Like This Matter in Korea—and to Me
There is a profound craving in Korea to ensure memory endures — in drama, in cinema, in artwork. A colonized nation torn and remade learns to value remembering. *Mr. Sunshine* is a greater-than-patriotism drama. It is about desiring, about fighting to be heard, and about what happens when individuals must make compromises between love and survival.
I think that's why it resonates with me. Because as a Bangladeshi, I know that history does not happen the way it does in books. It stays within us the way we speak, the way we love, the way we protest, and the way we keep quiet. That play shook something within me — a profound respect for our ancestors and sadness for those lost to history.
I didn't smile when I watched *Mr. Sunshine*. I did smile when I watched it with my throat tied in a bow. Every goodbye made me cry. Every subdued glare an eternity. And when it ended, I didn't feel empty — I felt full. Full of questions, full of thanks, full of wonder. It taught me that the toughest stories aren't the ones that are yelled. They are the ones that are spoken to softly, *"Remember us."*
And I will.
Some Goodbyes Burn Forever: A Reflection on Mr. Sunshine
The Story That Stays Behind
*Mr. Sunshine* is no mere drama — it's history infused with poetry and pain. The series, based in Korea's tumultuous early 1900s, chronicles the life of Eugene Choi, a Joseon-born slave who escapes to America, enters as a soldier, and returns years later — not for revenge, but as a stranger to the country that had abandoned him.He meets Go Ae-shin, ladylike in demeanor but a steel-hearted lady, fighting for the freedom of her country in silence. Impossible but profound love. History unfolding itself around them — tastefully, silently, brutally.
What I Carried With Me
I never saw a drama on which I sat in silence through every episode. Not because I was confused — but because I felt too strongly. *Mr. Sunshine* did not try to entertain me. It placed me in opposition to remembering something that I never really experienced—but felt so irresistibly proximate. There is this one line Eugene says,' "You were my country'." That line killed me. It wasn't romantic — it was the sound of a man who had found home in another human being after living his whole life and being homeless. And that's something that I get; sometimes we find home not in locations but in human beings. Sometimes history rips home from us, and love is where we can find shelter. That hit close to home. Someone who has always questioned where she fits in, torn between tradition and innovation, between other people's ideas and one's own dreams — *Mr. Sunshine* was like a quiet mirror held up to my soul.
Korea and Bangladesh—A Shared Pulse
Watching *Mr. Sunshine* reminded us of not only Korea's past but also our own. Bangladesh, too, has had the sound of foreign boots on its soil, the dread of opening one's lips and uttering a word, and the cost of revolution. We've forgotten names too — martyrs never mentioned. Ae-shin described the resiliency that I have seen in women of Bangladesh — fragile on the outside, impenetrable when it matters. And Eugene's sadness, this feeling of never quite being "enough" in either world, spoke to the identity crisis many of us feel when we take a path no one understands. Even our values as a family — honor's gravity, pain's stoicism — seemed so too-familiar. Korean and Bangladeshi culture employs the same emotional vocabulary: duty instead of desire, sacrifice instead of self, love proclaimed through action.
In Comparison to Other K-Dramas
It wasn't one of those kisses of love like *Crash Landing on You* or *Business Proposal*. It wasn't soothing, nor hilarious, nor sweet. It was haunting. Like a lot of its antecedent *Goblin*, it did have elements of death, fate, and tragedy — but there was more of reality in *Mr. Sunshine*. Less fantasy, more history. Less fairy tale, more brutalism. Where every other drama left me grasping for the edge of my seat, this one put me in a hurt that was never spoken but lingered long after the final episode. It didn't sting me to want a happy ending to be shared. It made me think about hurt that was concealed within our current moment.
Why Stories Like This Matter in Korea—and to Me
There is a profound craving in Korea to ensure memory endures — in drama, in cinema, in artwork. A colonized nation torn and remade learns to value remembering. *Mr. Sunshine* is a greater-than-patriotism drama. It is about desiring, about fighting to be heard, and about what happens when individuals must make compromises between love and survival.
I think that's why it resonates with me. Because as a Bangladeshi, I know that history does not happen the way it does in books. It stays within us the way we speak, the way we love, the way we protest, and the way we keep quiet. That play shook something within me — a profound respect for our ancestors and sadness for those lost to history.
I didn't smile when I watched *Mr. Sunshine*. I did smile when I watched it with my throat tied in a bow. Every goodbye made me cry. Every subdued glare an eternity. And when it ended, I didn't feel empty — I felt full. Full of questions, full of thanks, full of wonder. It taught me that the toughest stories aren't the ones that are yelled. They are the ones that are spoken to softly, *"Remember us."*
And I will.
