Series / Heartbeat 2023

Heartbeat is a Korean Series that ran for 16 episodes from June to August of 2023.

Woo-hyul (Tacyeon of boy band 2PM) is a vampire. At some point during the Joseon Dynasty era in Korea, he fell in love with Hae-seon, an aristocrat's daughter. Their love ended tragically when Hae-seon was killed by vampire hunters who were after Woo-hyul. A dying Hae-seon says that in another life she'll find him again, and urges him to drink her blood before it's too late.

Cut to the 1920s and Korea under the Japanese occupation. Woo-hyul and his vampire buddies Sang-hae and Dong-seob run a dance club. Woo-hyul is haunted by memories of his lost love Hae-seon and longs to be human so he can feel true love, the sort of love that makes your heart beat. Eventually Woo-hyul meets Yang-nam, a cat who transformed himself into a human being. Yang-nam tells Woo-hyul that to become a human, he must seal himself up in a hawthorn coffin for 100 years. Over the protests of his friends, Woo-hyul does just that.

Cut forward 100 years, to Joo In-hae, who is in a bit of a jam after a con artist "landlord" absconded with her housing deposit. Her housing problem is solved when she inherits a house from her father, who has been declared legally dead after being missing for five years. She goes exploring her new place, and finds a hawthorn coffin—and out pops Woo-hyul. And he's still a vampire, as she opened his coffin one day short of the 100 years he needed to become human.

Oh, and In-hae bears a startling resemblance to Woo-hyul's long-ago love, Hae-soon...

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Tropes:

• Alien Catnip:
  • Being woken up one day too early leaves Woo-hyul in a weird part human, part vampire hybrid state. He still hungers for blood but he can also eat human food. He has a bowl of ramen noodles in episode 2 and is so bowled over by the sensation of flavor that he gets drunk.
  • In episode 7 he gets drunk on shrimp.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: In-hae, still thinking that Hae-won is Woo-hyul's true love, still goes ahead and reveals at the end of episode 11 that she loves him. The Big Damn Kiss follows.
• Animated Credits Opening: Episodes open with a whimsical cartoon that shows, among other things, cartoon Woo-hyul getting into a coffin.
• The Atoner: In episode 11 Yang-nam the cat man reveals the reason why he has been looking after Woo-hyul and trying so hard to help him become human. It seems that back during the Joseon era, it was Yang-nam who somehow revealed that hawthorn arrows with silver tips can hurt vampires, leading to a lot of deaths.
• Cardboard Box of Unemployment: In-hae has to take her stuff out of the school in the standard cardboard box in episode 5, after she is fired from her job as a school nurse.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Man-hwi the evil vampire. The nice vampires are shocked to learn that Man-hwi feeds off of humans, and Rose calls him a monster. Man-hwi shoots back with "What are vampires but monsters?"
• Con Man: Joo Dong-Il, the "shaman" who supposedly rented In-hae an apartment. The lease document was fraudulent, and Dong-il routinely runs schemes where he pretends to be shamans, or monks, or Catholic priests.
• Daywalking Vampire: Vampires can go out and about in daytime, although it weakens them and increases their need for human blood.
• De-power:
  • In-hae's bad timing in waking Woo-hyul up one day too soon leaves him as an awkward de-powered vampire. He isn't human, as his heart still does not beat. But he can no longer fly or deploy his fangs, and he leaves a translucent, but not full, reflection in mirrors. Later it's revealed that this half-and-half status will be fatal, if he can't fully transform to human.
  • Drinking expired blood packs instead of fresh human blood has left most of the Friendly Neighborhood Vampires somewhat weaker than they used to be. Man-hwi the evil vampire, who still feeds on humans, taunts the good vampires with this truth in a fight in episode 13.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Hae-soon in episode 1, dying in Woo-hyul's arms after she's shot by a vampire hunter.
• Drowning My Sorrows:
  • In-hae gets plastered in Do-sik's wine bar in episode 5 after losing her job.
  • In a later episode Woo-hyul takes advantage of Alien Catnip to deliberately get drunk on human food, after he's depressed.
• Failure Montage: A montage in episode 6 shows In-hae getting rejected in several interviews at different schools. Eventually she gives upon the whole school nurse thing and decides to make a guest house out of the mansion she inherited from her father.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: Episode 3 ends with Woo-hyul swooping and saving In-hye from the chandelier that was about to fall on her. This demonstrates the psychic link that has been established between them.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Much comedy comes from Woo-hyul having to adjust after emerging from his coffin into 2023. In Episode 3 he maxes out In-hae's credit card buying clothes, because he doesn't understand how credit cards work. Later in that episode he's startled by a television set, and he has a lot of trouble boarding an escalator.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Woo-hyul and his circle of vampire friends. Vampires need only small amounts of human blood and don't need to kill, and most, including Woo-hyul, avoid doing so.
  • Dong-seop reveals that he hasn't fed from a human for some 73 years, since the Third Battle of Seoul.
  • Vampires in the modern day get blood delivered.
• Hangover Sensitivity: See Alien Catnip above. After getting drunk on shrimp in episode 8, Woo-hyul is hurting badly the next morning and gratefully accepts ox blood from the butcher lady as a hangover cure.
• Heal It with Blood: Do-shik the human has a hereditary heart condition that dooms men in his family to an early grave. The doctors can't help him, but according to family lore, he can be healed by cutting out the heart of a half-human, half-vampire, and drinking its blood. Half-vampires like, say, Woo-hyul.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: Heard from time to time, like when Woo-hyul goes into full badass vampire mode, or when he meditates on what humans call "love".
• Kubrick Stare: Woo-hyul in the first episode as he turns around and attacks the gang of vampire hunters that have been chasing him.
• Last Breath Bullet: Last breath arrow, as one of the vampire hunters that Woo-hyul has badly maimed in the first episode is able to squeeze off one last arrow, which kills Hae-soon.
• Meet Cute: In-hae opening up Woo-hyul's coffin in 2023.
  • Episode 3 reveals in a flashback that Hae-soon and Woo-hyul did this too; they met for the first time when he saved her from another vampire that was about to eat her.
• Missing Reflection: Vampires don't show up in mirrors, as shown in the first episode when Woo-hyul is getting fitted for a suit. After being woken up one day too soon and rendered a weird half-human, half-vampire hybrid, Woo-hyul does show up in mirrors, but out of focus.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires don't need to kill people and in fact can get along with pretty small amounts of blood, a few ounces at a time. They also can go out in the sunlight, although they don't like it as it weakens them and increases their need for blood. They can fly. Otherwise they have many of the usual characteristics of vampires, like a vulnerability to garlic, and not showing reflections in mirrors. They also can be hurt by a silver-tipped arrow, a weakness more commonly associated with werewolves. Vampires don't specifically need human blood; Woo-hyul is delighted to receive ox blood from a butcher.
• Pivotal Wake Up: Done in reverse, as Woo-hyul does a pivotal lie-down in his coffin before starting his 100-year wait.
• Pop-Up Texting: Seen in episode 3 between In-hae and the person she's trying to sell Woo-hyul's coat to—who turns out to be Woo-hyul's old vampire buddy Sang-hae.
• The Power of Love: Yang-nam the cat man tells Woo-hyul in episode 4 that he has to drink In-hae's blood to become human...but at the moment her blood is too cold. She needs to heat up her blood, by falling in love.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: A vampire's eyes glow red fire and the pupils contract, when vampires go into full attack mode.
• The Reveal: Episode 12 reveals that Man-hwi, the evil vampire, has a stock of humans that he keeps in a dungeon to feed on.
• Romantic False Lead: In-hae's old college friend Do-sik. Do-sik has in the years since college become an extremely rich businessman with his own real estate development company. He's handsome, and he's clearly into In-hae. But obviously he has no chance, since he is the second male lead in a Korean drama.
• Silver Bullet: Vampires can be harmed with arrows made of hawthorn wood and tipped with silver, and vampire hunters in the Joseon era used them. Towards the end of the series, Do-sik acquires a custom-made silver knife with hawthorn handle, for use in killing Woo-hyul.
• Spider-Sense: After In-hae bites him, the bite mark on Woo-hyul's neck throbs whenever she's in danger. In episode 3 this warns him to save her from a falling chandelier.
• Split-Screen Phone Call: Between Woo-hyul and In-hae in episode 8, as they have both vacated the mansion while it's being renovated. In-hae wonders how Woo-hyul's date with Ms. Na went.
• Super-Strength: Woo-hyul has the physical strength one might expect from a vampire. This however becomes a plot point later when his de-powering as a result of becoming half-human causes his super strength to fade.
• Taking the Bullet: How Hae-soon dies in episode 1, pushing Woo-hyul out of the way of a special silver-tipped vampire arrow, and getting shot herself instead.
• Vampires Hate Garlic: Played for comedy in a scene where Woo-hyul, who has an idea of "dying" and thus becoming human, starts shoveling a bunch of garlic cloves into his mouth. His friends stop him.
• Vampires Own Night Clubs: In the 1920s sequence, Woo-hyul owns Shaded Oasis, a nightclub that is frequented by both vampires and humans.
• Vampires Sleep in Coffins: Woo-hyul sleeps in one for 100 years in an attempt to become human. In the modern day, he briefly has a job at a funeral home, but gets fired when he is caught snoozing in a coffin.
• Weakened by the Light: While vampires like Woo-hyul can go out in sunlight it weakens them and increases their need for blood.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Woo-hyul wants to become a human specifically so he can experience real human love, the kind that makes your heart beat fast—his heart does not beat at all because he's a vampire.