KBS2’s weekend melodrama “A Love Other Than Yours” has fallen into the 1% range. According to Nielsen Korea, the October 11 broadcast of episode 8 recorded 1.9% nationwide, down 0.4 percentage points from episode 7’s 2.3% — the drama’s lowest rating to date and its first time below the 2% line.
The start had not looked alarming. The series premiered September 12 at 2.6% and climbed to its peak of 2.8% with episode 2. Since then it has been unable to build momentum, drifting in the low 2% range before episodes 6 and 7 both stalled at 2.3%. Financial News noted that the drama had been holding the 2% floor until tvN’s “100일의 거짓말” began airing in the same time slot with rising momentum. The series airs Saturdays and Sundays at 9:20 p.m. KST, with six episodes remaining.
Episode 8 marked the story’s boldest turn yet. After a mudflat accident and an explosive confrontation in which both confessed the resentments they had buried for a decade, Lee Mi-do (Ahn Eun-jin) proposed that each of them date someone else for a month: she approached Han Tae-seung (Lee Joo-ahn), the lawyer she has been drawn to, while Namgung Ho (Seo Kang-joon) asked Park Soo-ah (Jo A-ram), his junior colleague with a long-buried connection to him, the same question.
Korean entertainment press has pointed to relatability as the core problem. As one report put it, the process by which the couple drifts into boredom was never drawn with enough care for viewers to follow their emotional lines, and the new romances arrive too late to earn deep empathy — a verdict now reflected in the numbers.
Expectations had been high. Seo Kang-joon and Ahn Eun-jin were dubbed a “melodrama visual couple” from the moment their casting was announced, and Ahn Eun-jin in particular arrived with momentum: her 2023 MBC drama “My Dearest” peaked at 12.9%, cementing her reputation as a dependable lead. The series is written by Yoo Soo-ji and directed by Hwang Seung-gi and Lee Ga-ram, and it streams internationally on Prime Video.
With the “one month of other dating” premise now fully in motion, the remaining episodes will decide whether the drama can convert its most dramatic story turn yet into the rebound its ratings desperately need.
