All Kinds of Daughters-in-Law—Twin sisters marry into sworn‑enemy families and learn that forgiveness is the bravest kind of love
Introduction
The first time I watched Eun‑byul set a rice bowl in front of her new mother‑in‑law, my chest tightened the same way it does before a difficult family dinner—have you ever felt that, too? She’s trembling, not from fear of the food going cold, but from the weight of history: years of being the overlooked twin and now the daughter‑in‑law to an enemy clan. Across town, her sister Geum‑byul adjusts a designer scarf, determined to win every room the way she’s always won their mother’s approval—only to learn that marriage doesn’t erase old scores, it audits them. I found myself rooting for both sisters, even when they made messy choices, because the drama keeps asking a universal question: are we destined to repeat our parents’ hurts, or can we become the generation that heals? By the time the families argue over an old hanok and the past that lives in its beams, I realized I wasn’t just watching a K‑drama—I was recognizing my own grudges, softened at last by people trying to do better.
Overview
Title: All Kinds of Daughters-in-Law (별별 며느리)
Year: 2017
Genre: Family, Romance, Melodrama
Main Cast: Ham Eun‑jung, Lee Joo‑yeon, Kang Kyung‑joon, Cha Do‑jin
Episodes: 100
Runtime: 30–35 minutes per episode
Streaming Platform: Viki
Overall Story
We begin with twins who are anything but identical on the inside: Hwang Eun‑byul, a quiet publishing assistant and ghostwriter who has learned to survive by lowering her voice, and Hwang Geum‑byul, a PR star at a fashion company who walks the world like it owes her a spotlight. Their mother’s favoritism has always tilted toward Geum‑byul, and Eun‑byul has been taught to give way—at the table, in arguments, and even in dreams. Marriage seems like a doorway to separate lives, a chance to stop competing for the same sliver of love. Eun‑byul falls for Choi Han‑joo, a warm‑hearted taekwondo instructor with a painful past; Geum‑byul marries Park Min‑ho, an executive prince of a fashion conglomerate. Then the twist lands like a gavel: Han‑joo’s family and Min‑ho’s family have been enemies for years, with a taekwondo match‑fixing scandal and an old property dispute fusing rage to memory. Suddenly, the twins aren’t just sisters; they’re sisters‑in‑law on opposite sides of a war.
Early episodes hold up a mirror to Korean family culture—jesa (ancestral rites), the expectations placed on a myeoneuri (daughter‑in‑law), and the way in‑law hierarchies can amplify old wounds. Eun‑byul, now a newlywed, tiptoes through traditions with a tenderness that makes you want to hug her; she’s determined to be good, to be useful, to be loved. Geum‑byul, used to applause, thunders into married life expecting the VIP lane, only to discover that money cannot buy her way out of a mother‑in‑law’s skepticism. Han‑joo’s modest home radiates warmth and honesty; Min‑ho’s world gleams with resources and reputation management. The show contrasts the textures of these households—the shared soups and scuffed floors versus catered dinners and cool marble—without mocking either. It asks who we become when our surname changes but our scars don’t.
The feud itself is layered, not cartoonish. Years ago, Min‑ho’s powerful father interfered in a national taekwondo final, shattering Han‑joo’s career and dignity; later, the families clashed over the stewardship of a treasured hanok, each side convinced history validates their claim. What I loved is how the drama lets those events echo through everyday life: a flinch when someone raises their voice, a refusal to share tea, a grandfather who still checks the locks twice. Have you ever noticed how old conflicts sneak into new conversations, changing the meaning of every sentence? That’s the air these characters breathe. The twins don’t just inherit rings; they inherit narratives. And marriage counseling would be cheaper than the emotional interest they’re paying on decades of silence.
At work, the sisters occupy parallel universes that occasionally collide. Eun‑byul’s ghostwriting gigs sharpen her instinct for truth; she sees how stories can rescue or ruin people, and that insight pushes her to decode the half‑truths running between the families. Geum‑byul, managing glossy campaigns, knows how to spin and win, but the PR sheen begins to crack when her in‑laws’ strategies treat relationships like press releases. The drama wisely positions career scenes as moral laboratories: every pitch meeting, manuscript, and boardroom slide becomes a dress rehearsal for the fights at home. As crises hit—plagiarism rumors, a leaked corporate memo, a disastrous family photo op—each sister learns where influence ends and integrity begins. Their rivalry evolves from “I must beat you” to “I must not betray me.”
Han‑joo is the emotional anchor, a man who has learned to breathe through anger one count at a time. He tries to forgive the theft of his youth, yet forgiveness without justice sours on his tongue. Min‑ho is trickier—raised to be strategic, he misreads love as leverage and respect as results. Watching these men navigate fatherhood expectations and son duties adds a tender, sometimes raw father‑son thread to the story. It also shows how men can be trapped by pride as tightly as women are trapped by tradition. When Han‑joo steps into a dojang again, not to reclaim medals but to teach kids what the sport gave him, you feel a private victory bloom. And when Min‑ho finally admits that his life has been a case study in “brand management over belonging,” you feel a door creak open.
The mothers are superbly drawn. Na Myung‑ja, the twins’ mother, is so sure she was “just being practical” with her favoritism that she cannot hear the hollowness inside Eun‑byul’s polite smile. Min‑ho’s family elders treat the hanok and the fashion empire as sacred trusts, convinced that moral authority flows from success and seniority. The show never demonizes them; it shows the cost of unexamined certainty—how “I did my best” can still leave fractures in the people you love. A family counseling session would call this generational transmission of trauma; the drama calls it dinner. When a rare apology arrives at a cluttered kitchen table, it’s not tidy but it’s true, and that is more healing than any grand gesture.
Midway through, secrets detonate. A buried witness to the taekwondo scandal resurfaces; a deed connected to the hanok proves that pride has rewritten memory; and a ghostwritten memoir threatens to blur the line between confession and exploitation. The sisters, who once weaponized each other’s weaknesses, begin to hold a shared line: no more lies, not for money, not for face. It’s a gradual thaw, not a miracle—one covers for the other at a rite, the other swaps a coveted meeting to take a late‑night grocery run for her sibling’s home. In a world fluent in “Who’s right?” they start practicing “What restores?” And restoration, we learn, can look like a handwritten note, a bowl of hot soup, or a public admission that risks a reputation to save a relationship.
The drama also understands financial stress as a character in the room. Min‑ho’s family counts assets while ignoring emotional liabilities; Han‑joo’s family counts blessings while managing bills. When debt, inheritance, and business risk enter the plot, the fights get real—because they always are. You feel why some people hide purchases, why others hoard receipts, and why a simple credit card becomes a proxy for power. I appreciated how the show uses money to ask moral questions without shaming class differences. Love doesn’t pay the heat, but compassion can change how we pass the winter. And sometimes the most radical budget line is “therapy,” even if the receipt just reads “time together.”
As the endgame approaches, truth works like antiseptic—stings first, heals later. The hanok dispute is reframed as stewardship rather than conquest; the taekwondo scandal is faced in daylight, naming the adults who stole a teenager’s future. The elders, confronted with the human cost of their choices, start to return what they took: not just deeds and apologies, but trust. Eun‑byul, once content to be quiet, learns to speak in declarative sentences; Geum‑byul, once loud to be heard, learns to listen until someone else finishes their story. Watching them practice new habits—simple, repeatable kindness—you realize the series isn’t arguing that families must be perfect to be good. It’s arguing that families become good by choosing repair over revenge.
The finale refuses fairy‑dust shortcuts. Not everyone gets exactly what they wanted, but everyone knows what they’re working toward. The twins stand together during a jesa, shoulders almost touching, a choreography of small reconciliations. Han‑joo teaches with joy instead of chip‑on‑shoulder grit. Min‑ho begins to love without keeping score, a terrifying and liberating math. The hanok, once a trophy, becomes a shared table again. And if you’ve ever wondered whether people can change, the closing minutes feel like an answer whispered, then spoken aloud.
If you’ve lived in a culture of hierarchy—be it a family, a company, or an entire community—you’ll recognize the show’s honest anthropology. Respect can be both shelter and shackle; tradition can preserve wisdom and also preserve harm. This drama doesn’t mock the past; it tests it. It invites viewers to imagine a home where elders apologize first, where spouses swap shame for candor, and where siblings refuse to be rivals. I found myself thinking about practical things like marriage counseling, family counseling, and even how life insurance forces families to map love and responsibility on paper. The series turns those “grown‑up” words into tender, necessary verbs: to protect, to plan, to keep.
Highlight Moments
Episode 1 Move‑in day turns strangers into referees as Eun‑byul arrives at Han‑joo’s home and immediately fumbles an ancestral rite, exposing the quiet panic of a new daughter‑in‑law. She apologizes until her voice trembles, and yet she notices who refills her tea without judgment. Across town, Geum‑byul nails her first greeting to her high‑status in‑laws, only to be sized up like a quarterly report. The parallel editing makes you feel the twins’ different temperatures—warm chaos versus cool control. It’s a sharp thesis statement: marriage is less a merger than a language course. And some households only teach in tests.
Episode 8 A dinner meant to thaw tensions explodes when Han‑joo recognizes Min‑ho’s father’s watch—the same one from the match‑fixing day. The camera lingers on Han‑joo’s clenched jaw as old humiliation floods back, and he leaves before he says words he’ll regret. Eun‑byul follows him into the night, not to fix him but to sit beside him until the shaking passes. Meanwhile, Geum‑byul realizes the past she never had to learn is the present she cannot escape. The scene reframes the feud as a wound with a date, not a myth without origin. From here on, love must be brave enough to look backward.
Episode 20 A ghostwritten memoir threatens to spill secrets for profit, forcing Eun‑byul to choose between career momentum and moral clarity. She decides to protect a victim’s anonymity, even as her editor dangles a bonus and a promotion. This is where the show’s heart glows: it rewards integrity with inner peace before outer success. Geum‑byul watches her sister’s choice and, for once, envies character over charisma. In a rare sister‑to‑sister moment, they talk like equals rather than competitors. Growth begins not with a grand vow but with a single honest conversation.
Episode 35 The hanok becomes a courtroom when elders from both families gather to “negotiate,” which really means to relitigate old slights. The set design turns beams and paper doors into witnesses; every footstep echoes. A forgotten ledger surfaces, proving that a previous generation altered the narrative to save face. Shock doesn’t automatically birth repentance, but it cracks the shell. After the meeting, Han‑joo bows to the house itself, a wordless promise to stop fighting over a symbol and start living up to it. The show’s cultural specificity here—history stored in wood and ritual—is breathtaking.
Episode 60 Geum‑byul, publicly humiliated by a corporate leak, shows up at Eun‑byul’s door in the rain, too exhausted to perform. Eun‑byul makes her ginger tea and says nothing for three full minutes. Instead of a tidy reconciliation, we get a halting exchange: confessions, small laughter, an old childhood game that briefly returns them to the same team. Their dynamic shifts from rivalry to reluctant alliance. It’s the kind of episode that made me think about relationship advice we ignore because it sounds simple—listen more, defend less, take turns being strong.
Episode 100 The finale brings both families to the hanok for a joint celebration that doubles as a truth‑telling. Min‑ho publicly names his father’s wrongdoing; Han‑joo acknowledges his own bitterness and how it bled onto others. The elders offer apologies as gifts, not bargains. The twins lead a small jesa with unforced grace—steps memorized not by fear but by love. Even the camera seems to exhale. This isn’t a fairy tale; it’s a blueprint for repair.
Memorable Lines
"I’m done being the quiet room where other people shout." – Hwang Eun‑byul, Episode 14 Said after a family dinner where she’s asked to “understand” yet again, it marks her first boundary spoken without a tremor. The line lands because it reframes politeness as a habit she outgrows, not a virtue she abandons. It also signals to Han‑joo that she wants partnership, not protection. From here, Eun‑byul’s voice becomes a plot engine, not just background music.
"Winning isn’t love; it’s loneliness with applause." – Hwang Geum‑byul, Episode 28 She whispers this in an elevator after a PR triumph that costs her a friend, and it’s the first time she admits the emptiness behind her shine. The sentence flips her worldview: attention is not the same as affection. It deepens her marriage arc with Min‑ho, forcing her to ask for care instead of credit. The show starts guiding her from performance to presence.
"If we can pass down recipes, we can pass down apologies." – Choi Han‑joo, Episode 41 He says it to an elder who insists “that’s not how things were done,” arguing that tradition can include repair. The metaphor is domestic on purpose—he’s proposing a practice, not a slogan. It nudges both families toward rituals of accountability. And it’s the kind of line you want to write on the fridge at home.
"Your truth isn’t a scandal; it’s the light we couldn’t find in the dark." – Eun‑byul, Episode 63 She tells this to a witness terrified of speaking about the match‑fixing, reframing disclosure as an act of care. The scene shows how her ghostwriter empathy becomes courage for others. It also threads a needle between justice and privacy, honoring healing over headlines. In a different story, she’d chase clicks; here, she chooses dignity.
"Let the house remember us for kindness, not conquest." – Park Min‑ho, Episode 97 On the eve of the final hanok decision, he finally rejects the family’s win‑at‑all‑costs ethos. This line signals a transformation from brand steward to relationship steward. It unlocks a path for the elders to change without pretending they were never wrong. And it’s the moment I realized this drama isn’t about who gets the house—it’s about who becomes a home.
Why It's Special
All Kinds of Daughters-in-Law is the kind of family melodrama that sneaks up on you: a brisk, 30‑minute daily that blossoms into a full‑bodied story about twin sisters who marry into rival households and must learn what love and loyalty really cost. Originally broadcast on MBC in 2017, it now circulates internationally through MBC’s global distribution and partner platforms; availability can rotate by region, so U.S. viewers typically keep an eye on KOCOWA and affiliated services that carry MBC catalogs. If you’ve ever juggled family expectations across time zones and generations, this one feels like coming home to a loud, loving dinner table.
Have you ever felt that a sibling got the sunshine while you learned to live in the shade? The show leans into that ache with empathy rather than cynicism. When the twins—one long favored, one long overlooked—enter marriage, the drama asks whether we repeat our childhood roles or rewrite them. The domestic squabbles are funny until they’re not, and the forgiveness arrives only after the characters earn it.
What makes the ride so watchable is the cadence. Director Lee Jae‑jin shapes each episode like a bite‑size chapter, ending just where tension crests, and around episode 40 the series confidently shifts from a daily slot to back‑to‑back Monday–Tuesday installments—proof it knows how to keep you pressing “next.”
Writer Oh Sang‑hee’s pages fold family comedy and soft‑edged romance into sharper questions about pride and class. A single misunderstanding rarely drives a plot here; it’s patterns—of favoritism, of stubbornness, of love withheld—that pull these families together and threaten to split them apart. When the reconciliation comes, it feels lived‑in, not perfunctory.
The acting deepens that emotional honesty. You can see the twins’ entire childhood flash behind a smirk or a swallowed apology. Scenes that could skew shrill instead land humane because the performers keep reaching for the small, true beat—an unguarded glance across the table, a laugh that breaks tension at exactly the right second.
Tonally, the series threads a nimble line: breezy enough to binge on a weeknight, sturdy enough to reward a months‑long commitment. Office politics, in‑law etiquette, and the choreography of Korean family celebrations bring color and texture without drowning the heart of the story.
Finally, it’s generous with cultural detail—how in‑law obligations can both nurture and strain a marriage—yet the questions are universal: Who gets to be the “good” child? What does fairness mean in a family? Have you ever felt this way and wished someone would say, “I see you”? The drama does. And with 100 episodes, you have space to breathe with it.
Popularity & Reception
In Korea, daily serials often build a steady ritual with viewers, and this one was no exception—word‑of‑mouth carried it from a dependable weekday favorite to a comfortably larger audience after its schedule shift. The move signaled that the show wasn’t just filling time; it was becoming a habit worth protecting.
Among international fans, enthusiasm has been sustained and affectionate. On long‑running drama hubs, viewers praise its “warm chaos” and the way it turns familiar in‑law tropes into something surprisingly tender. It’s the rare family drama that people recommend not just for plot but for company.
Industry peers noticed, too. At the 2017 MBC Drama Awards, Kang Kyung‑joon received an Excellence Award for his performance, while several castmates earned nominations—recognition that a weekday workhorse can still deliver standout acting.
The casting of beloved idol‑turned‑actors drew global K‑pop fandoms into the conversation and kept them there. Lee Joo‑yeon, for example, reflected after the finale that friends literally saved her contact as her character’s name—a charming sign of how deeply audiences associated her with the role. That blurred line between character and performer powered a lot of the online chatter.
Because MBC actively licenses its catalog abroad through KOCOWA and partner outlets, the title remains on many watchlists, resurfacing on platforms as rights windows reopen. It’s the kind of show fans recommend to newcomers when they ask for an in‑law story with heart, and they’re usually right.
Cast & Fun Facts
Hahm Eun‑jung plays Hwang Eun‑byul with a tenderness that never feels passive. Her Eun‑byul is the twin who learned to apologize first and speak second, and watching her claim room inside her marriage—without losing the softness that defines her—is one of the series’ quiet pleasures.
Beyond this role, Hahm Eun‑jung has an arc many international fans recognize: a T‑ara member who steadily built a screen career. 2017 marked a meaningful return to daily drama work for her, a season where variety‑show wit and idol polish softened into a convincingly lived‑in heroine.
Lee Joo‑yeon gives Hwang Geum‑byul the irresistible edge of a PR pro who knows her angles and isn’t afraid to use them. Geum‑byul can be infuriating, yes, but Lee layers vanity with vulnerability so the character never collapses into caricature.
Post‑broadcast, Lee Joo‑yeon laughed that people still called her by her character’s name—and even shared how fellow After School member Nana sent a coffee truck to set. When your off‑screen circle roots for your on‑screen alter ego, you know you’ve made an impression.
Kang Kyung‑joon anchors the series as Choi Han‑joo, a good man with a bruised past. The show lets him be both husband and son, caught between the pride of his family and the peace of his new home, and he plays those fault lines with an easy warmth that makes every setback sting.
That warmth didn’t go unnoticed: Kang Kyung‑joon earned an Excellence Award at the MBC Drama Awards, a nod to the grounded, everyman center he provides amid the domestic whirl. It’s the kind of performance that reminds you why daily dramas matter—they make ordinary decency feel cinematic.
Cha Do‑jin strides in as Park Min‑ho, a polished heir whose confidence can curdle into control. He isn’t a mustache‑twirling antagonist; he’s the tangible weight of a father’s expectations and a company’s legacy, and Cha makes that pressure readable in a glance across a conference table.
Across the run, Cha Do‑jin navigates Min‑ho’s ego and insecurity with crisp restraint—sharp enough to bristle, human enough to understand. His turn earned him awards‑season attention alongside his castmates, proof that even the “difficult” in‑law can become one of a drama’s most compelling portraits.
Behind the scenes, director Lee Jae‑jin and writer Oh Sang‑hee keep the storytelling nimble: 30‑minute episodes, clean hooks, and a mid‑season shift to a Monday–Tuesday block to let arcs breathe in paired hours. It’s a craftsmanlike approach that respects both the genre and the audience’s time.
Conclusion / Warm Reminders
If you’re craving a family saga that feels intimate, forgiving, and unexpectedly funny, All Kinds of Daughters‑in‑Law belongs on your queue. When it cycles onto your local platforms, slip it into whatever you consider the best streaming service for your household and let the twins’ journey keep you company after work. If you like to binge on the go, an unlimited data plan helps you keep pace with the two‑episode nights, and strong home internet will make those living‑room marathons blissfully buffer‑free. Have you ever wished a drama would see the messy, loving parts of family and still choose grace? This one does.
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