Ahn Pan-seok built a career on a stubborn idea: romance does not need a chaebol heir to be dramatic. His final drama, Between Steps, moves that idea into a graduate robotics lab and lets it unfold across 12 quiet episodes.
The ENA Monday and Tuesday series premiered on October 5, 2026, and finished its run on November 10. It is the last completed work from the director behind Something in the Rain and One Spring Night, and it doubles as the clearest example of what his style looks like on screen: small rooms, ordinary jobs, and feelings that arrive through glances instead of plot twists.
What ‘Between Steps’ Is About
Choo Young-woo plays Park Min-jae, a doctoral student in a university robotics lab. He was a high school swimmer before an illness cost him his right leg, and the loss of that path left him cautious, anxious about his health, and slow to trust.
Kim So-hyun plays Im Yu-jin, a master’s student who left clothing and textiles behind to study engineering. She pursues him first, and he pushes her away with a line that tells you plenty about him: “You’re too hot, like the sun.”
Supporting roles include Kim Min-seok as Yu-jin’s older brother Im Yu-seong, Lee Chang-hoon as the lab’s professor, and Im Jin-hyo as lab mate Kim Se-jin. The script comes from Min Hyo-jung, whose early credits include Attic Cat and Full House, and producers have described the project as a reunion between writer and director roughly 25 years after they first worked together.
One structural choice is worth flagging early. Min-jae’s disability is built into the premise, not saved as a late reveal. That decision shapes who gets to carry a romance, and it frames everything that follows.
No Rich Heirs, No Fantasy: The Ahn Pan-seok Rule
Ahn was known as a master of hyperrealistic directing, and his shows followed working people: doctors, academy instructors, pharmacists, librarians. His romances were always employment stories too, because the job shaped what the characters could say and when they could say it.
Executive producer Kim Hyun-jung, of KT Studio Genie, explained the lab setting in plain terms. “An engineering research lab is a place where people find studying the easiest thing to do and romance the hardest,” she said. She added that Ahn wanted to capture “the amusing irony of these characters growing through relationships.”
That method shows up in two scenes that would pass by unnoticed in another drama. In one, Yu-jin tears up while helping Min-jae put a sneaker on his prosthetic leg. In the other, Min-jae gets an email offering a postdoctoral position at a US university, finds Yu-jin, and hugs her with his face full of conflicting emotion. Neither scene leans on dialogue. Kim described his approach as building each episode’s climax “solely through the playful exchanges of feelings between characters.”
Why the Robotics Lab Is More Than a Backdrop
In Ahn’s filmography, love never solved the practical problem. Secret Love Affair paired a foundation director with a young pianist across a class divide. Something in the Rain put a franchise manager in love with her best friend’s younger brother. One Spring Night matched a librarian with a single father facing family judgment. The Midnight Romance in Hagwon set a star instructor opposite a former student inside an admissions academy.
Between Steps keeps the frame and changes the generation. Its leads are students without job security, ranked by a hierarchy of professors, doctoral candidates, and master’s students. Career pressure sits in every conversation, and the romance grows inside those constraints rather than escaping them.
The obstacles follow the same logic. When Yu-jin’s older brother learns about Min-jae’s disability, he demands that Min-jae stop seeing his sister. Min-jae gives up his chance to go to the United States, and Yu-jin refuses to let him abandon his future because of her. Nobody gets rescued here, and the show treats that as the honest version of a love story.
How Kim So-hyun and Choo Young-woo Built a Quiet Chemistry
The leads are the same age, but Kim has the longer career, and the two kept using honorifics well into filming. Choo said the formality helped their early scenes, when the characters are still circling each other. The distance between them on set became part of the story rather than something to act around.
Choo’s physical preparation was specific. A consultant who uses a prosthetic leg stayed on set throughout, teaching him how to move, how to put the prosthesis on and store it, and how it has to be charged. He said that guidance shaped the performance, including the smaller moments.
Kim credited Ahn with breaking habits she had carried for years. He noticed her fixed ideas about a scene and pushed her to try it another way. “He helped me break out of many of my own molds,” she said. “He was like a teacher who introduced me to the joy of acting again.”
A Final Drama, Completed Before Goodbye
Ahn was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2025. In July 2026 he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was hospitalized, and he died in August at 65, less than two months before the premiere. Filming and editing were already finished, and the production presentation in Seoul on October 2 opened with a tribute video.
Executive producer Kim said the director had been recovering and had enjoyed the shoot, and she described the shock of losing him. The cast’s comments were equally personal. Choo said, “I miss him so much,” and Kim So-hyun called him the teacher who reintroduced her to the joy of acting.
Kim also relayed what Ahn said about them while editing. He admitted Choo was right about his portrayal of a current doctoral student, and he kept saying of Kim So-hyun that she was doing well and that he missed her.
Where to Watch and What the Show Leaves Open
In Korea the drama ran on ENA on Mondays and Tuesdays at 10 p.m. KST and streamed through KT Genie TV. Internationally it is carried on Disney+, and viewers in the United States can also find it on Hulu, where it is listed as a Hulu Original. Availability varies by region and account. FlixPatrol tracking cited in Korean coverage placed it at No. 1 in Korea and No. 5 worldwide in the Disney+ TV show category during its run, a snapshot rather than a permanent milestone.
- Title: Between Steps in English-language listings, while some Korean-language pages have used a name that translates to “Love Doctor”
- Length: 12 episodes, released weekly
- Run: October 5 to November 10, 2026
What the story leaves open is not whether Min-jae and Yu-jin love each other. It is whether he takes the postdoctoral path, how the objection from Yu-jin’s brother settles, and whether a romance with no villains and no rescue can hold a viewer for 12 episodes on conversation alone. Ahn spent a career betting that it could, and this is the last time he made that bet on screen.