The new Korean thriller Dear X has arrived with a powerful and disturbing story. The show, which released its first four episodes on November 6, 2025, follows the life of Baek Ah-jin, a top actress with a dark secret past. Played by Kim Yoo-jung, Ah-jin is not the sweet star she appears to be. She is a complex character who uses manipulation and calculation to survive, shaped by a childhood filled with terrible abuse.
The series starts by showing how a young girl, broken by her parents, learns to turn her trauma into a weapon. She grows up to become a famous actress, but the path she takes to get there is both shocking and terrifying.
A Childhood Built on Pain and Survival
To understand Baek Ah-jin, you must first understand her past. The show begins with a heartbreaking scene from her childhood. She lives with an alcoholic mother who abuses her and a father who does nothing to protect her. The situation becomes even more tragic when her father pushes her mother down a flight of stairs, an event that young Ah-jin witnesses.
After her mother’s death, Ah-jin’s father moves in with his new partner, who becomes Ah-jin’s stepmother. This new home is not a safe place. Her stepmother, Hwang Ji-seon, sees Ah-jin as a burden and even attempts to drown her in a bathtub. It is during this attack that Ah-jin’s childhood friend, Yoon Jun-seo, witnesses his mother’s cruelty. This event creates a powerful, tragic bond between the two children that lasts into their adult lives.
Through these experiences, Ah-jin learns a hard lesson: she cannot rely on anyone, and she must use her intelligence and charm to control the people around her to survive.
She walks away, kind of making her an accomplice? By this time, Ah-jin’s father, Sun-Gyu, has already found a new wife.
The Master Manipulator Emerges in High School
As a high school student, Ah-jin’s skills for manipulation become even sharper. She presents herself as a kind and generous person, but underneath, she is ruthlessly eliminating anyone who stands in her way. Her main rival in school is a girl named Sim Sung-hee, who is jealous of Ah-jin’s popularity and academic success.
When Sung-hee begins to bully her and spread rumors about her poor background, Ah-jin does not respond with anger. Instead, she responds with a calculated plan to destroy Sung-hee’s reputation. She frames Sung-hee for theft and exposes a scandal involving her family. Ah-jin’s two allies, the devoted Jun-seo and another friend from a troubled home, Kim Jae-oh, help her in these schemes.
Another key moment shows Ah-jin’s cold nature. She publicly humiliates a teacher for a past insult by exposing the teacher’s affair. At the end of the first episode, she confesses that her first “X”—the people she targets for destruction—was her own mother, confirming her deeply twisted mindset.
The Final Break: Setting Up a Father’s Death
As Ah-jin grows older, her father continues to be a source of terror and abuse. He steals her university tuition money after violently beating her, shattering her chance at a normal future. This appears to be the final event that pushes Ah-jin over the edge. She decides to permanently remove her father from her life.
Ah-jin begins working at a cafe owned by a kind ex-baseball player, Choi Jeong-ho. She wins his trust, seeing him as the perfect pawn in her next scheme. When her father shows up again to demand money, Ah-jin sets an elaborate trap. She frames her father as a stalker who has been threatening her and manipulates events so that Jeong-ho arrives just as her father is attacking her.
During the tussle, Jeong-ho cries out Father while hitting her with a bat, which leads to the death of his father. Cool as a cucumber, Ah-jin tidies up the crime scene, gets rid of evidence and silences them both.
In the chaos, Jeong-ho hits Ah-jin’s father with a baseball bat. While the father is initially stunned, it is later revealed that Ah-jin herself delivered the final, fatal blow. She then coolly cleans the crime scene and manipulates the evidence to frame her father completely and make herself look like an innocent victim.
A New Star is Born From the Darkness
With her father gone, Ah-jin seizes the opportunity to completely reinvent herself. Jun-seo, still blindly devoted to her, even confesses to the murder to protect her, but the police do not believe him. The case is eventually ruled as self-defense, and Ah-jin walks free.
At this pivotal moment, she is approached by Seo Mi-ri, a scout from Longstar Entertainment. Mi-ri had noticed Ah-jin’s potential before and now offers her a deal: she will use her influence to clear Ah-jin’s name in the public eye in exchange for Ah-jin joining her entertainment company and becoming an actress.
Ah-jin agrees without hesitation. In a cold-hearted final act, she severs all ties with Jun-seo, telling him that his kindness only makes her weak. The first part of her story ends with her stepping into the spotlight, ready to become a star, having left a trail of destruction behind her.
The episode closes with Ah-jin severing ties with Jun-seo. She tells him his kindness weakens her and vows to advance alone. The final scene shows her stepping toward a new career in show business.
A Chilling Performance Anchors a Dark Story
The success of these first episodes rests largely on the performance of Kim Yoo-jung. She portrays Baek Ah-jin with a chilling precision, moving between a fragile victim and a ruthless manipulator in seconds. Her ability to show the character’s cold calculations with just a glance makes Ah-jin both terrifying and fascinating to watch.
The show does not present Ah-jin as a simple villain. Instead, it carefully shows how years of abuse and neglect shaped her into this person. The supporting characters, especially Jun-seo and Jae-oh, represent different parts of her damaged psyche and the consequences of her actions.
The series is visually striking, contrasting the grim, muted colors of Ah-jin’s past with the bright, glamorous world she seeks to enter. This sharp contrast highlights the two different lives she is trying to manage.
Dear X is not an easy show to watch, but its powerful story and outstanding acting make it a compelling psychological thriller. The next two episodes will be released on November 13, 2025, on the streaming service TVING.
