'Run On' K-drama Ending Explained: Did Dan-ah, Yeong-hwa get a happily ever after? Here's the hilarious twist
'Run On' the Korean show starring Im Siwan, Shin Se-kyung, Kang Tae-oh, and Sooyoung in lead roles ended on a happy note for its lead couple Mi-joo (Shin Se-kyung) and Seon-gyeom (Im Siwan), who managed to overcome the class divide, but Yeong-hwa (Kang Tae-oh) and Dan-ah (Sooyoung) had us waiting with bated breath to see if they will really break up. You see, at the end of episode 15, Dan-ah had heard about her father being sick and admitted to the hospital.
So she was aware of what her future would hold -- a fight for the top post which her younger stepbrother is eyeing is not going to leave her with a lot of time to date Yeong-hwa, not even when she is desperate to experience love and sharing care and affection. When her father does die, she doesn't meet him for days, and even when she comes to see him, it is clear from the look on her face that she wants to break up with him and remain on good terms.
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Of course, Yeong-hwa doesn't agree and instead even tells her that he is going to leave and she shouldn't try and convince him otherwise because that would make him angry enough to hurt himself. She does allow him that much and later, after much thought, Yeong-hwa also decides to let her off. He gifts the painting of her that he had worked on and proposed to her, and tells her to keep his heart safe with her and not to return it to him. In what is the most heartbreaking and yet beautiful moment, Yeong-hwa tells her she should remember that his heart always belongs with her until one day, it disappears.
For someone who is not very expressive when it comes to her emotions, she ends up in tears. In minutes, she realizes how much of a weight it is to let love as good as what she had with Yeong-hwa go would be. So she ends up sobbing her heart out. At this point is when we think that this relationship was probably meant to end on this note. In the end, she does promise him to live a long happy, and healthy life and he leaves to not disturb her again.
She is heartbroken but she succeeds in becoming the Vice President of the company just as she had aimed and is also able to accept her second younger stepbrother, who is an idol in training with more affection. However, she continues to feel hollow inside, something that she tries to fill up by wearing the shoes that Yeong-hwa had gifted her. It is coincidentally, that she attends a painting exhibition where she comes across his painting. Another one that screams at her of how much he misses her and loves her, and just as she says 'I miss you too', he arrives.
It is not a dramatic reunion, and for that we are grateful. Just like everything else in their relationship that is built on slow-burning passion, their reunion is too. The painting features Dan-ah, the way he had seen her that one time in the cafe when she had in turn been looking at his painting. She is reminded of all of that and the moments that they had spent together so when she ends up seeing him at that exact moment, she gives in. She is after all the Vice President now, and she believes that she can now be with him, who is less a student and more an artist. So that's how the two of them use her 'real birthday' as an excuse to get back together.
A promise that she had made when the two were together, was to celebrate her unregistered real birthday with him and she keeps it too. Seon-gyeom and Mi-joo on the other hand have managed to teach Seon-gyeom's father a lesson by reporting to his mother about how he had used his daughter to purport a scandal to help him get approval. And with that, everyone gets their happily ever after. Of course, it is their version of a happy ending and not yours, so that makes the show even better. So did the apology from Dan-ah to Yeong-hwa's gay friend. You see, she had claimed to be a lesbian to her father and stepbrother. She apologized to him for using a situation that is a hard choice for many to get out of marrying someone.
'Run On' episodes air on Wednesdays and Thursdays on JTBC in Seoul, South Korea and can be streamed on Netflix in the US.