South Korea · Drama · 2014
The Best Future
Binge Brief
- Five episodes, roughly 75 minutes in total, all released at once on 28 October 2014. The whole thing is shorter than one standard drama episode.
- Seo Kang Joon plays the male lead, Choi Go. This is not a cameo, and the year is 2014, not the 2016 that many listings give.
- Samsung's second web drama, after Infinite Power (무한동력) in 2013, and it was shot inside real Samsung buildings.
- A "musicom": the cast perform covers of 1980s and 1990s Korean hits inside the episodes.
- It reportedly passed ten million views by 1 December 2014, though the figure comes from the sponsor's own reporting.
- No official streaming window survives. The original uploads on all four launch platforms are gone.
Synopsis
Choi Go wants to be an idol, but for now he works part-time jobs and covers rent alone while auditions go nowhere. Mi-rae has the opposite problem: newly hired at Samsung, with a desk, a badge and a target on the company's overseas specialist programme, and no time at all. A chain of events puts them in the same flat.
They almost never see each other. He works nights and sleeps through the morning; she leaves before he is awake and comes home after he has gone out. The flat is shared, but the two lives inside it run past each other, and the pair communicate through notes left on a board for the other to find. Most of what they learn about each other, they learn in handwriting.
The Korean title is a joke that only works in Korean. 최고의 미래 can be read as "the best future". It can equally be read as "Choi Go's Mi-rae", because the man is named 최고 and the woman 미래. The show is built on that double meaning: a story about two people chasing separate futures, told as a story about two people slowly becoming each other's.
The format is unusual even by web-drama standards. The production called it a 뮤직콤, a "musicom", meaning a sitcom with songs, and rather than commission an original soundtrack it had the cast perform covers of Korean hits from the 1980s and 1990s, dropped into the episodes as numbers. Samsung funded it, and the company's offices, research campus and museum appear on screen as themselves.
Why it still gets watched
Almost everyone who finds this now finds it backwards, through Seo Kang Joon. It was made a year after his debut, before Cheese in the Trap and Are You Human?, and it is one of the few places to see him carrying a story rather than filling out an ensemble.
The other draw is Minah. In 2014 she was a Girl's Day member taking early acting work, two years before Beautiful Gong Shim, and pairing two performers at the same point in the same climb gives the thing an ease a more polished production would have sanded off.
And then there is the oddity of the object itself: a consumer electronics manufacturer paying for a romantic comedy about its own graduate intake, shot inside its own buildings, with 1990s ballads in it. Very little else in Korean drama looks like this.
The Best Future cast
Filming locations
Every location in this production belongs to the company that paid for it, which is why the list is unusually specific for a web drama of this size. The trade paper 이투데이 named four, and all four are working Samsung facilities rather than sets.
- Samsung Electronics Seocho building, Seoul (삼성전자 서초사옥). The head office in Seocho-gu. It doubles as Mi-rae's workplace on screen, and it is also where the press showcase was held on 27 October 2014, in the fifth-floor multipurpose hall.
- Samsung Digital City, Suwon (삼성 디지털시티). The vast Yeongtong-gu campus that houses the company's Korean R&D operation. Outdoor sequences use its grounds.
- Mobile R&D Centre, building R5, Suwon (모바일연구소 R5). One of the research buildings on that campus, and the closest the drama comes to showing work that is not administrative.
- Samsung Innovation Museum, Suwon (삼성이노베이션뮤지엄). The company's corporate museum, which had opened earlier the same year.
The point of the exercise, from the sponsor's side, was access. These are interiors a drama crew would normally never be let into, and part of the production's pitch to a 2014 audience was the chance to look round them. No source names a commercial studio for any part of the shoot.
Themes and messages
Two definitions of a future. Choi Go's is a stage. Mi-rae's is a posting abroad on a corporate development programme. Neither is treated as the serious one and the other as the frivolous one, which is a slightly unusual position for a drama funded by the employer in the story. The comedy comes from the two of them being equally single-minded about goals that share nothing.
Living alongside someone you never meet. The home-sharing arrangement is not a meet-cute; it is a scheduling accident, and the drama keeps the pair apart far longer than the format would suggest. Their relationship is built in written notes before it is built in conversation, which makes the first proper scene between them land differently than it would in a standard rom-com.
What the sponsor wanted said. Samsung was explicit in its press material about the message: work, love and relationships as the 2030 generation experiences them, and the company as a "young Samsung" and somewhere people might want to work. It is branded content and does not pretend otherwise. Recognising that is part of watching it honestly, because the office is never a bad place and nobody in it is unhappy for long.
Old songs for new problems. The covers are not decoration. Putting Shin Hae-chul's 나에게 쓰는 편지, a letter written to oneself, into a story about a man who cannot say what he wants out loud does a job that dialogue would have laboured at. The 1980s and 1990s catalogue the show draws on belongs to the parents of its target audience, which quietly widens who the thing was made for.
Interesting facts
The title is a pun and the translation loses it
최고의 미래 works two ways. Read as ordinary Korean it means "the best future". Read as names, 최고 is Choi Go and 미래 is Mi-rae, so it becomes "Choi Go's Mi-rae". English-language sources split over this. AsianWiki files the drama under A Better Tomorrow and nothing else, which is why searching the English title sometimes turns up nothing at all.
Seo Kang Joon had one NG in the entire shoot
At the showcase on 27 October 2014, Choi Sung-kook was asked who had spoiled the most takes. He named Minah, then added that Seo Kang Joon had managed exactly one NG across the whole production. He was quick to say that nobody minded Minah's, because she was too endearing to be cross with. Hong Kyung-min added that they had shot at midnight and that it had not felt like work.
Six episodes were planned. Five were made.
Pre-production coverage in September 2014 described a sixty-minute drama in six ten-minute parts. Everything published from the showcase onwards says five, and the total running time reported on the day was seventy-five minutes. Five is the figure to use. The six-episode number that circulates online is a plan that changed.
Samsung's second attempt at the form
The company had made one web drama before, 무한동력 (Infinite Power) in 2013. The Best Future was the follow-up, produced by 6ixpack for Cheil Worldwide's SBC unit. Choi Sung-kook, asked at the showcase how it felt to try a web drama, said he had assumed he was the first Korean actor to do one and had only then discovered the genre already existed.
The music is a cover album
The production called itself a 뮤직콤, a sitcom with musical numbers, and the numbers are remakes of Korean hits from the 1980s and 1990s rather than new songs. The soundtrack album on Bugs carries twelve tracks, among them Shin Hae-chul's 나에게 쓰는 편지, 높은음자리's 바다에 누워 and 들국화's 슬퍼하는 모든 이를 위해. The music director was Jang Ho-il of the band 015B. There is no Spotify release.
Who made it, beyond the two obvious credits
Han Chang-geun directed; his background is music videos, for 4Men, Kim Jung-min and Can. Kim Won-jin wrote it, having previously written SBS's Witch Yoo Hee. Kim Jong-jin shot it, Kim Young-taek lit it, and Lee Je-du produced. MyDramaList lists no director or writer at all for this title, which is why those two names are missing from most English-language entries.
The ten-million-view claim
The reported trajectory was a million views in three days, five million in ten, and ten million by 1 December 2014, alongside roughly 2,500 comments on the Samsung blog and about 11,000 Facebook likes. 이투데이 wrote it up as the first Korean web drama to pass ten million views. That framing rests on the sponsor's own count across four platforms, so it is worth reading as a claim made at the time rather than a settled record.
An actor's name that English sources keep getting wrong
The supporting cast includes 이선진, Lee Seon-jin. At least one English aggregator rendered this as "Lee Seo Jin", a different and considerably more famous actor who has nothing to do with this production.
Minah's own prediction
Asked at the showcase how many views she expected, she said fifty million. The final reported figure was a fifth of that, which by the standards of 2014 branded web drama was still an unusually good result.
Episodes
| Ep | Title | Air date | Status | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hang In There, Youth! (굳세어라 청춘!) | 2014-10-28 | Aired | |
| 2 | Between Good Ties and Bad Ones (인연과 악연 사이) | 2014-10-28 | Aired | |
| 3 | The Art of Push and Pull (밀당의 기술) | 2014-10-28 | Aired | |
| 4 | The Best Fate (최고의 운명) | 2014-10-28 | Aired | |
| 5 | The Law of Win-Win (윈윈의 법칙) | 2014-10-28 | Aired |
Soundtrack
| Track | Artist |
|---|---|
| 우리의 미래 | Hong Kyung-min, Minah, Seo Kang Joon, HEX, Ju-hee and Ji-hoon |
| 슬퍼하는 모든 이를 위해 | Seo Kang Joon |
| 날아라 | Minah |
| 남겨진 시간을 위하여 | Minah |
| 아름다운 이름 그대 | Hong Kyung-min and Minah |
| 나에게 쓰는 편지 | Seo Kang Joon |
| I'll Be On Your Side | Minah |
| 나만의 바램 | Hong Kyung-min |
| 바다에 누워 | Hong Kyung-min and Seo Kang Joon |
| 우리의 미래 (Piano Ver.) | Bella Piano |
| 날아라 (Piano Ver.) | Bella Piano |
| Don't Stop | HEX |
Frequently asked questions
What year is The Best Future from?
2014. It premiered on 28 October 2014 and a press showcase was held the previous afternoon at Samsung's Seocho building in Seoul. A number of English-language listings put it at 2016, including an earlier version of this page; that is wrong.
Is Seo Kang Joon the lead in The Best Future?
Yes. He plays Choi Go, the male lead, opposite Minah's Mi-rae. It is a starring role and not a cameo, which matters because the drama is sometimes described as an early bit part in his filmography. It came a year after his 2013 debut in After School: Lucky or Not.
How many episodes does The Best Future have?
Five. A sixty-minute, six-part plan appeared in September 2014 pre-production coverage, but the finished work is five episodes running roughly eleven to nineteen minutes each, about seventy-five minutes in total.
Where can I watch The Best Future?
There is no working official window. It launched simultaneously on the Samsung Group blog, YouTube, Naver TV Cast and Daum tvPot. Daum tvPot closed in 2019 and the other three pages are gone. Episodes have since reappeared on a YouTube channel carrying the production company's name, but this site has not been able to confirm that the channel belongs to 6ixpack, so it is not listed here as an official source.
What is The Best Future about?
Choi Go is an idol hopeful working part-time jobs to stay afloat. Mi-rae is a new hire at Samsung aiming for a place on the company's overseas specialist programme. Circumstances put them in the same flat, but their schedules are opposites and they barely meet; they communicate by leaving each other notes on a board, and the relationship forms in writing before it forms in person.
Why is it also called A Better Tomorrow?
AsianWiki indexes the drama under that English title and no other, so English-language searches often surface A Better Tomorrow instead. The Korean title, 최고의 미래, is a pun that neither English rendering carries: it reads as both "the best future" and "Choi Go's Mi-rae", because those are the two leads' names.
Who plays the female lead?
Bang Min-ah, professionally Minah, then a member of the group Girl's Day. She plays Mi-rae, the Samsung new starter. This was early in her acting career, two years before Beautiful Gong Shim.
Is The Best Future connected to Samsung?
Yes, directly. Samsung sponsored and funded it, Cheil Worldwide's SBC unit handled the agency work and 6ixpack produced. It was shot inside real Samsung facilities: the Seocho head office in Seoul, Samsung Digital City in Suwon, the Mobile R&D Centre building R5 there, and the Samsung Innovation Museum. It was the company's second web drama, after Infinite Power in 2013.
What is a "musicom"?
It is the production's own coinage, 뮤직콤, from "music" plus "sitcom". The show is structured as a short-form sitcom with musical numbers dropped into it, and the numbers are covers of Korean hits from the 1980s and 1990s performed by the cast rather than original songs.
Is there an OST for The Best Future?
Yes, as an album on Bugs with twelve tracks, several of them the covers heard in the show. Among them are Shin Hae-chul's 나에게 쓰는 편지, 높은음자리's 바다에 누워 and 들국화's 슬퍼하는 모든 이를 위해. Jang Ho-il of 015B was music director. There is no Spotify or Apple Music release, and no release date for the album could be confirmed.
If you liked this drama
Matched on genre, country and era. Closest first.
