Fight for My Way

Fight for My Way is a 2017 South Korean drama about four childhood friends in Busan who are running out of time to make their early dreams work. Ko Dong-man once competed in taekwondo but now fights in mixed martial arts under no one's name, while Choi Ae-ra works the information desk at a department store while chasing a job as a television announcer.

Dong-man and Ae-ra have known each other since childhood and still bicker like teenagers, even as the people around them start pairing off and settling into careers. His ex-girlfriend Park Hye-ran, now a well-known anchor recovering from a divorce, keeps circling back into his life just as his own fighting career finally starts to move.

Their two closest friends carry a separate half of the story. Kim Joo-man has a stable job at a home shopping network and a six-year relationship with Baek Seol-hee, who works alongside him at the same company. Both of them are quietly less sure of that relationship than they let on, and a new colleague at Joo-man's office becomes the pressure point that forces the question.

The four share a run-down villa in Busan's Munhyeon-dong, and much of the show plays out in that neighborhood rather than in a more polished part of the city: a boxing gym doubling as a workout space, a corner bar the group treats as a living room, and the beach where a first kiss happens far from any studio backlot. KBS2 aired the series every Monday and Tuesday from 22 May to 11 July 2017.

None of the four are given an easy shortcut to what they want. Dong-man has to prove himself in the ring against fighters with better records, Ae-ra keeps failing broadcaster tryouts before she gets closer to one, and Seol-hee has to decide what she actually wants from Joo-man rather than what six years together has made comfortable. The show stays with their day-to-day setbacks rather than skipping ahead to a tidy resolution.

Fight for My Way holds a 9.6 out of 10 audience rating from more than 108,000 votes on the streaming platform Viki, well above the average for a 2017 KBS2 slot. A separate webtoon adaptation of the same story, also called Ssam Maiwei, appeared on Kakaopage and Ridibooks after the drama finished airing, a project built from the show's popularity rather than the other way around.

Fight for My Way keeps a following years after it ended because its four leads read as actual friends rather than a curated cast, and its two on-screen pairings both took the Best Couple Award at the 31st KBS Drama Awards. The series also ended Produce 101's eleven-week hold on South Korea's TV popularity chart in June 2017, an unusual feat for a Monday-Tuesday drama that season. For viewers who want a K-drama built around adults stuck in unglamorous jobs rather than another palace or hospital, the MMA gym and department store setting still stands out.