While You Were Sleeping ~ Do Bad Dreams Always Come True?

By cmoneyspinner - July 25, 2024

“While You Were Sleeping” is a 2017 drama series, with 16 episodes, and can be categorized as Crime, Legal Drama, Romance, and Fantasy.

SUMMARY: Three people from different walks of life meet – a young woman who helps her mother run a pork restaurant, a young man who works as a prosecutor, and another young man who is a police officer. When the realize they have the ability to dream of tragic events and prevent them from happening they work together to solve crime. A romance also develops.

♦ If You Dream It, Can You Change It?

In “While You Were Sleeping”, Nam Hong-Joo is a young woman who dreams. But it’s more like her dreams are nightmares. And if she tries to prevent something bad that happened in her dreams from happening in real life, she doesn’t seem to be able to prevent it. How horrible is it to know that something horrible is going to happen and you can’t stop it from happening? In Nam Hong-Joo’s dream, her mother died. When she was younger she dreamed of her father’s death and it happened just as she saw it. Now she dreamed of her mother’s death and is panicking because she wants to stop it!

Jung Jae-Chan is a new neighbor who just moved in next door. She tried to greet him as a friendly neighbor but he brushed her off. But there’s something strange about him. He dreams too. But he doesn’t want to believe he has the power to see future events in his dreams.

First of all, because nobody is likely to believe him.
Second, he thinks he’s the only one with the gift or curse.
Third, he does not want to accept the responsibility because if he does not succeed in preventing a terrible event from happening, it will weigh heavily on his conscience. So it’s best not to take action. Just say to yourself: “It’s just a dream.”

But Jung Jae-Chan had a dream that people died. One of the people in that dream was his new next-door neighbor, Nam Hong-Joo. There was a tragic car accident. Jung Jae-Chan took action and changed what he saw in the dream by causing the accident himself. By doing so he saved several lives. Of course, when he tried to explain why he deliberately caused the accident, nobody believed him. Nobody except Nam Hong-Joo. She was shocked. There was somebody else who was just like her. She said she believed him.

The two of them kept dreaming. In another dream, Jung Jae-Chan’s little brother was going to be arrested for murder. Nam hong-Joo’s dream was similar. They worked together to stop the death from happening. So? It is possible to change the outcome of their dreams.

That wasn’t all. There was a young police officer named Han Woo-Tak who also had dreams. The night Jung Jae-Chan caused the accident, he had actually saved the young officer’s life. As wild as his story was about having a dream, the police officer found that he too was having dreams. He wondered if he could change what he saw in his dreams. In his dream, he changed one thing and hoped it would change the outcome. According to the dream, he went to a restaurant with a fellow police officer. But in real life, instead of going to the restaurant with the police officer, he invited Jung Jae-Chan. To his surprise, the outcome did change and what would have been a tragedy had a more positive outcome.

Han Woo-Tak told Jung Jae-Chan that he invited him to the restaurant because of his dream. Then he explained that things worked out differently because he invited Jung Jae-Chan instead of his fellow police officer. Jung Jae-Chan pointed at Nam Hong-Joo and told his new friend that she also had the ability to see the future in her dreams.

Nam hong-Joo lives with her mother and helps her run a restaurant.
Jung Jae-Chan is a rookie prosecutor.
Han Woo-Tak is a police officer.

Since these three all have the same gift and they now know each other, imagine what they can do if they work together to ensure law, order, and peace. While they are sleeping, they can foresee tragic events and stop them from happening. But will they always be able to stop bad things from happening?

Main Characters:

Jung Jae-Chan (played by Lee Jong-Suk, “Big Mouth”, “W: Two Worlds Apart”, “Pinocchio”, “Decibel”)
Nam Hong-Joo (played by Bae Suzy, “Doona”, “Anna”)
Lee Yoo-Beom (played by Lee Sang-Yeob, “Eve”)
Shin Hee-Min (played by Ko Sung-Hee, “My Holo Love”, “King Maker: The Change of Destiny”)
Han Woo-Tak (played by Jung Hae-In, “Snowdrop”, “Connect”, “D.P. 1 and 2”, “The Three Musketeers”)

Where to Watch

Viewership and Rating:

IMDb: 8.3 out of 10 stars
My Drama List: 8.7 out of 10 stars
Common Sense Media: 4 out of 5 stars
Google users shared a public rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars
Viki viewers rated this series 9.6 out of 10 stars

My personal rating is the same as the Viki viewers.

This series had several of my favorite South Korean actors who played likable characters. Their gift of dreams either helped them solve crimes or prevent crimes. I have watched many K-dramas that involved prosecutors and law officers working together. But this is the first time I watched one with such an interesting fantasy storyline. Aren’t there some dreams you don’t want to come true?