Characters / Because This Is My First Life

Main Characters

Yoon Ji-ho

Played by: Jung So-Min (adult), Lee Chae-Yun (young teen), Gam So-Hyun (child)

Jung So-min as Yoon Ji-ho

"Don’t worry too much. Just because you lived through yesterday doesn't mean you know everything about today."

Ji-ho, an Assistant Drama Writer, finished her latest job only to find that her younger brother, with whom she shares a house, had gotten married while she was gone and is expecting a son. Not eager to share a house with a pair of newlyweds—or getting stuck babysitting—she sets out to find her own place. Through a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, she is put in contact with See-hee, a quiet, older woman with a cat who is looking for a tenant for only $300 a month. The arrangement seems perfect and Ji-ho eagerly accepts, finding that she and her slightly eccentric landlady get on rather well, despite never seeing each other.

She meets another odd stranger at a restaurant, a reserved man who lets her watch soccer with him on his phone and listens to her talk about her crush. When things don't go well, he comforts her with an odd monologue about how cats don't bind themselves to the concept of time, and neither should she. Caught up in the moment, she kisses him, thinking that she'll never see him again. The next day she finds out that the "neocortex guy" and her "landlady" See-hee are the same person.

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• All Love Is Unrequited: Ji-ho thinks that See-hee isn't in love with her until after he kisses her at the beach.
• Bad Liar: Ji-ho is bad at lying, unable to consistently remember to refer to See-hee as her husband instead of her landlord or hide her emotions well.
• Birds of a Feather: Ji-ho and See-hee are incredibly compatible, according to See-hee's statistics. Ji-ho has gotten the highest livability score by far of any of his previous tenants—a near-perfect score. Prior to them developing tangible feelings (as it's mentioned that they already had some feelings before their marriage), they work perfectly together.
  • See-hee mentions how compatible they are several times. He tells Won-seok that he married Ji-ho because there were no uncomfortable parts of their relationship. He also mentions their compatibility a few other times, such as at the dinner with the families.
    See-hee: I knew it would be this easy because we work so well together.
• Broken Bird: Ji-ho spent her childhood being demoralized by her father, according to her mother, and says that she learned very quickly that there was no time for her to make wishes in a patriarchal society. As an adult, she deals with a boss that doesn't care about her enough to remember anything about her, and her co-worker who attempts to sexually assault her, essentially kicking her out of the last place she had to go.
• Calling the Old Man Out: She plans to tell her father that she won't be treated like a free-loader and watch her brother take the house he never took care of, simply because he got married. She gives up when Ji-seok's wife announces she's pregnant with a boy.
• Distracted by the Sexy: After See-hee kisses her on the beach, she can't stop thinking about it, fantasizing about it at work while she's scrubbing table. When See-hee asks her on a date, she gets distracted watching his mouth.
• Fake Relationship: Ji-ho and See-hee act like a married couple when they are around people they know.
• First Kiss: She has hers with See-hee.
• Gender-Blender Name: The reason See-hee thought she was a man was that he knew someone in his unit with the same name.
• Hidden Depths: Ji-ho seems like someone who would never get in trouble, but she can be impulsive when the mood strikes her.
  • When her father refused to let her study literature at the University of Seoul, Ji-ho registers in secret and runs away to Seoul without telling her family. She kisses a man she had just met, simply because she wanted to try it at least once and the mood seemed right. Moments before her bus departs, she gets off and asks See-hee if he wants to get married.
  • She also turns out to be excellent at darts.
• It's for a Book: When she asks Ho-Rang about what a man should tell the father of the woman he wants to marry. While she doesn't use this excuse herself, she jumps to agree with it when Ho-Rang assumes this is why she's asking.
• Meet the In-Laws: She is introduced to See-hee's parents in the third episode. A later episode revolves around her dealing with them as her in-laws for the first time.

Nam See-hee

Played by: Lee Min-Ki

Lee Min-Ki as Nam See-hee

"Words are born from people's mouths and die in their ears. But some words don't die. They go into people's hearts and survive."

See-hee, a social media app designer, is in need of a new housemate to move in immediately. Until then, he refuses to work overtime, even if it means not meeting deadlines, because he has to separate the trash and feed his cat. His boss and best friend, Sang-goo, manages to find Ji-ho, a handsome man who doesn't smoke and will move in immediately. Ji-ho meets the conditions of the tenancy contract flawlessly and See-hee rushes to sign a contract.

While at a restaurant for a company dinner, he sneaks out to watch the soccer game and is joined by a young woman who watches the game with him and giddily tells him about her crush on her coworker. When things don't work out, he comforts her with a speech about how cats don't have a neocortex and don't experience time. He is surprised when she kisses him and ends up missing the bus. The following Saturday, he finds her in his apartment. When she tries to leave in embarrassment, he calls Ji-ho, revealing to him that Ji-ho was a woman all along.

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• Beware the Quiet Ones: He is a quiet, introverted person who just wants to lead an uneventful, peaceful life with his cat. He also beats up Ji-ho's co-worker when he later finds out the she was almost sexually assaulted by him, and that he was the main reason she was walking around homelessly that night.
• Birds of a Feather: Ji-ho and See-hee are incredibly compatible, according to See-hee's statistics. Ji-ho has gotten the highest livabirelity score by far of any of his previous tenants—a near-perfect score. Prior to them developing tangible feelings (as it's mentioned that they already had some feelings before their marriage), they work perfectly together.
  • See-hee mentions how compatible they are several times. He tells Won-seok that he married Ji-ho because there were no uncomfortable parts of their relationship. He also mentions their compatibility a few other times, such as at the dinner with the families.
• Broken Bird: See-hee had a falling out with his father after he rejected See-hee's original choice for a wife because she was poor, and the woman in question then dumped him after they lost the baby and told him never fall in love again. See-hee spent the next 12 years alone, believing he was undeserving of love. When he does fall in love again, he is unable to tell her before she leaves.
• Cynicism Catalyst: See-hee's cynical feelings towards marriage and meddling parents all started 12 years prior to the show, when his father threw him out of the house.
• Gender-Blender Name: Ji-ho assumed he was a woman because of his name.
• I Gave My Word: See-hee promised Ji-ho's mother that he wouldn't stand in the way of Ji-ho's dreams. Later, when he thinks she might be holding back from a great opportunity because of their marriage, he reminds her of this and tells her to go for it.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: After Ji-ho asks to terminate their contract, See-hee gives up on telling her he loves her or giving her the book he bought for her because he's afraid doing so after they've separated will weigh her down.
• Introverted Cat Person: He rarely goes out and is usually at home or work, and most of his social needs are filled by his cat, Kitty.
• Mistaken for Gay: Prior to his engagement, See-hee's coworkers made bets on his sexuality, with over half of them betting that he was gay. Ho-rang also suggests he may be gay, due to his certainty that he would never marry and never fall in love with Ji-ho.
• My Beloved Smother: See-hee's mother regularly sets him up with women he has no intention of dating and shows up in his home unannounced, rifling through all the drawers as if she lived there. It goes to the extent that See-hee changes the passcode on his apartment to prevent her from barging in.
• My Greatest Failure: His feelings toward how his relationship with Jung-min ended. This also the reason he is convinced that he is undeserving of love... that is, until Ji-ho comes along.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: On two occasions throughout the series:
  • He is willing to knock over Beok-nam's very expensive bike when he believes she is in danger from him.
  • When the two of them divorce, See-hee gets very drunk, something he has been careful to avoid, and takes all of his vacation days at once.
• Parental Abandonment: His father threw him out of the house and the two are so emotionally distant that they only communicate through See-hee's mother. After the ancestral ritual, See-hee tells Mr. Nam that their relationship is so cold and distant that he might as well not have a father. Becomes even more heartbreaking when See-hee reveals that he looked up to his father a LOT in the past, but that trust was brutally shattered due to the aforementioned incident.

• Second Love: Ji-ho, though since See-hee refers to her as his "one and only love," he might not count Jung-min.

Woo Soo-ji

Played by: Esom

Esom as Woo Soo-ji

"It's easier to be crazy than to explain something that people can't understand. It's more convenient that way. It's better to be crazy than pathetic."

Raised by her single disabled mother, Woo Soo-ji learned to be tougher than the people who tried to bring her down. She doesn't date, tells her friends to stand up for their rights, and hates normalcy. She is best friends with Ho-rang and Ji-ho and often gives them advice.—-

• Affectionate Nickname: Ma calls her "baby" and she calls him "Oppa."
• Alone Among the Couples: Of the three girls, it takes her the longest to enter and official relationship.
• Broken Ace: Soo-ji is intelligent, beautiful, and driven, but Ji-ho sadly notes that she has become the person who runs at the beck-an-call of her bosses.
• Broken Bird: Soo-ji, having been raised by her single, disabled mother and not knowing her father, suffered rumors and gossip all throughout high school. She managed to study hard and make it to a prestigious university and then a prestigious company, only to suffer sexual harassment from her male co-workers. The experience has left her bitter to the world and rebellious against normalcy, afraid to hope for better.
• Cynic–Idealist Duo: Has this dynamic with both Ma and Ho-Rang in regards to relationships.
• Disappeared Dad
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Part of the reason she is initially hostile against Ma is that she feels he pities her.
• The Dutiful Son: Her future plans revolve around taking care of her disabled mother.
• Emotional Crutch: Her mother. Soo-ji saves up all her money so she can buy a penthouse to live in with her mother. She uses this as a way to avoid confronting the emotional scars from her father's absence, sexual harassment, and social ostracization at school that prevent her from seriously considering marriage.
• Ice Queen: Justified. Soo-ji is a female executive in what is very much a hostile environment. She has to contend with male coworkers who sexually harass her daily and undermine her.
  Soo-ji: Yes, I am mean and terrible. That's how I've made it this far.
• Insecure Love Interest: Soo-ji is sure that Ma only thinks he wants to be with her because he underestimates the stigma associated with her parentage and non-nuclear family. She spends much of their relationship pushing him away because of this.
• Leg Focus: The camera frequently focuses on her legs.
• Odd Friendship: With the feminine, marriage-minded Ho-Rang.
• Secret Relationship: Her relationship with Ma is kept secret from everyone. By the end of the series, they've gone public with it and they're married in the epilogue.
• Single Tear: She sheds one while listening to her mother's speech about how much she loves Soo-ji and wants her to be happy and live her life to the fullest.