Two weeks after its premiere, Jung Yong Hwa’s romantic comedy ‘Oh! My Guard’ is finding its audience across Asia. The Lifetime weekend drama has entered the top 10 in six Southeast Asian markets on the streaming platform Viu, and has reached No. 1 in Taiwan and Japan, according to a report from TV Report published on November 7.
The numbers come from Viu’s chart for the fifth week of October. In that ranking, ‘Oh! My Guard’ placed No. 2 in Indonesia, No. 4 in Hong Kong and No. 5 in Malaysia, putting it inside the top five in three markets. It also ranked No. 8 in Thailand, No. 8 in the Philippines and No. 10 in Singapore, giving it a top-10 finish in all six of Southeast Asia’s major markets in the same week. The show’s steady climb is reflected in independent tracking as well: FlixPatrol’s Viu top 10 data shows the drama holding the No. 2 spot in Indonesia and No. 8 in Thailand in recent days.
In Taiwan, the drama topped the MyVideo chart as soon as it was released on the platform. In Japan, it reached No. 1 in the Korea and Asia category on Lemino on November 4.
The drama’s director brings his own track record to the story. ‘Oh! My Guard’ is co-directed by Yoon Jong Ho, the director behind tvN’s hit ‘Lovely Runner,’ alongside Lee Seung Hoon, with a script by Byun Sang Soon. It is worth being precise about the numbers here: the often-quoted record of No. 1 in 109 countries belongs to ‘Lovely Runner,’ not to ‘Oh! My Guard.’ The earlier drama topped Good Data Corporation’s Fundex TV-OTT drama buzz survey for four consecutive weeks in 2024, held No. 1 in 109 countries including the United States on Rakuten Viki for six weeks, and topped Viu’s weekly charts in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.
The series, whose Korean title is ‘Understood From Beginning to End, It’s You,’ stars Jung Yong Hwa as Um Tae Bong, a top romance actor who refuses to film kissing scenes. His character carries a hidden reason: the moment lips touch, he is flooded with memories of a mysterious girl from his childhood, leaving him with a racing heart and difficulty breathing. Hong Seung Hee plays Oh Hae Ra, a reclusive chaebol heiress who has lived cut off from the world for 20 years and believes she is the heroine of a television drama. After an accident, she becomes convinced that she is Cha Hong Do, the female lead of Um Tae Bong’s debut drama, and appoints herself his secret bodyguard.
Hong Seung Hee plays both roles, switching between the fragile, mysterious Oh Hae Ra and the bright, outspoken Cha Hong Do. At the drama’s press conference, she said the two characters look different on the surface but are connected inside.
Episodes 3 and 4 marked the turning point. Um Tae Bong, troubled by threats from an unidentified stalker, hires Oh Hae Ra as his secret bodyguard. Living together, he discovers that she treats the life of Cha Hong Do as her real past. He denies her belief at first, then chooses to go along with the world she has created and to protect her. Their conversations repeatedly miss each other because they are standing in different realities, but the distance between them keeps narrowing. The stalker, and how that figure connects to the secret Um Tae Bong has hidden since childhood, remains the show’s open question.
For Jung Yong Hwa, the role is a return to romance after about nine years since JTBC’s ‘The Package.’ The singer and actor, best known as the leader of CNBLUE, has leaned into the part’s comic timing, shifting between broad humor and serious moments. Episode 4 gave him a showcase scene in which his character sang IU’s ‘Good Day’ badly on purpose in a live radio booth, a moment that circulated widely after it aired on November 1.
The show was licensed in 83 countries before its premiere, a wide rollout for a weekend cable drama, and it airs on Lifetime in Korea on Saturdays and Sundays at 10:50 p.m. KST. It is available on TVING and LG Channel in Korea, on Viu across Asia and on Lemino in Japan. The 16-episode run is scheduled to wrap on December 13.
Episode 5 airs tonight, November 7, at 10:50 p.m. KST on Lifetime. With the Viu rankings climbing and two No. 1 finishes already on the board, the question now is whether the show’s overseas momentum keeps building as the romance moves into its second half.
