Another Way—A wintry pact between two strangers who choose connection over oblivion
Introduction
The first time I saw them lock eyes in the snow, I caught my breath as if the air in the theater had thinned. Have you ever wandered into a season of life where everything feels iced over—where even hope sounds like a word other people use? Another Way invites us into that season, not to glorify despair but to study it up close, like a frost pattern on glass, until warmth begins to seep back in. It is a tender, sometimes raw journey about two strangers who meet in an online forum and decide to die together, only to discover the subtler courage of staying. Along the way, the film brushes against things many of us recognize—family wounds that won’t close, the ache of caregiving, the lure of anonymous spaces, and the relief that can come from mental health counseling or even just one honest conversation. If you’ve ever needed a reminder that a single connection can re-route a life, this story will sit with you gently, then nudge you toward the light.
Overview
Title: Another Way (다른 길이 있다)
Year: 2017
Genre: Romance, Drama
Main Cast: Kim Jae-wook (as Soo-wan), Seo Yea-ji (as Jung-won), Kang Ae-shim, Jo Young-jin
Runtime: 89 minutes
Streaming Platform: Currently not available on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Viki, or Kocowa in the United States (availability changes).
Director: Cho Chang-ho
Overall Story
It begins with a message. In the hush of winter, a man and a woman meet through an online forum built around the darkest of agreements: a joint suicide. He is Soo-wan, a police officer who’s been living with the slow-burn trauma of watching his mother die when he was a child. She is Jung-won, a young woman juggling a part-time job while caring for her paralyzed mother, exhaustion threaded through every hour. They are not romantic idealists but ordinary people who have grown tired, drifting toward the same ending from different directions. The pact is practical, almost businesslike: a date, a place, and a method they won’t talk about too clearly. And yet even in the first exchanges, their sentences soften, making room for the possibility of being seen.
Soo-wan chooses Chuncheon as their meeting point, a city whose winter feels honest about what it is: cold, bright, and unforgiving. When they finally meet, there is an awkward courtesy between them, as though embarrassment and relief have arrived together. Have you ever stood with someone and felt both the urge to run and the urge to stay? The film lingers on that trembling edge. Chuncheon’s stillness mirrors their numbness, and snow seems to muffle the city’s noise so their silences can speak. We sense that neither came here to be saved; they came to be accompanied to the end. But the presence of another person changes how “the end” looks, even before anyone admits it.
Backstories seep in, not as exposition but as weather. At work, Soo-wan wears authority like a borrowed coat; off duty, he is the son of a father whose grief has drifted into delusion, a man who believes his late wife was the Virgin Mary. The son has learned to manage chaos by compressing it, but compression eventually splits at the seams. Jung-won’s world is smaller, limited by bus routes, shifts, and the intimate routines of caregiving—turning her mother in bed, washing hair, coaxing food past lips that don’t always obey. The camera lets the chores speak: this is love, this is strain, this is a young woman learning that devotion and depletion can live in the same body. Both characters are believable not because they make dramatic speeches but because they move like people carrying invisible weight. And each recognizes that weight in the other without judgment.
They make a plan to pass the days before their deadline together, almost as if auditioning for companionship they assume they won’t need for long. They walk through a small winter festival, watch vendors sell smelt by steaming grills, and for a few minutes pretend they are just another couple braving the cold for something warm. He buys her a snack and looks surprised when she smiles back with something like appetite. She asks what it’s like to be the one called when people are at their worst; he asks what it’s like to carry a home on your shoulders at her age. The answers are simple and unsentimental, softened by the kind of humor you use when tears are too close. In these stretches, the movie lets time thaw them.
One afternoon, Jung-won invites Soo-wan to her home. The caregiving scene that follows is quiet, practical, and devastating in its dignity. We see how carefully she preserves her mother’s personhood, narrating each step in a steady voice, as if words could knit together what illness has frayed. Soo-wan helps without fuss, his hands learning a tenderness his uniform doesn’t require. Have you ever discovered that the work you’re doing for someone else is also repairing something in you? He doesn’t say it, but you can see it: to support another body is to remember your own has a purpose. And for the first time, the pact looks less like an escape and more like a betrayal of all this care.
As their deadline approaches, the film folds in moments that suggest other ways life can be navigated. They stumble upon a small wedding for a blind couple, the room warm with music and the ordinary bravery of vows. The two outsiders stand at the edge watching joy declare itself, not because circumstances are easy but because someone chose another kind of promise. Later, they argue—not about whether to die, but about how to spend their remaining hours. The quarrel sounds like a rehearsal for staying alive: what to eat, where to go, what to see. And when they fall into a shared silence afterward, it’s no longer a void; it’s a rest note between uncertain measures.
Soo-wan finally talks about his father, about living in a house where grief turned into myth and pressed on him like a ceiling. He doesn’t ask for pity; he asks to be believed. Jung-won admits to the loneliness of being “the strong one,” the reliable daughter whose breakdowns must be scheduled around bus timetables and doctor’s calls. The film understands how anonymity online can feel safer than intimacy in real life—why people reach for forums, private messages, or even a best VPN just to breathe without being watched. But as the two speak face to face, we feel the difference between being unseen and being truly seen. Conversation, in their hands, becomes a form of mental health counseling neither of them had allowed themselves to try.
Night before the pact. The motel room is small. They turn off the lights and wait for the end they chose, but now waiting feels like a confession. The film refuses to make the moment lurid; it stays with their faces, their breaths, the tiny flinches that betray doubt. In the hush, Soo-wan remembers his mother, not her death but the way she once tucked in a blanket; Jung-won remembers her mother’s hand squeezing back, the way muscle memory sometimes surprises you. These are the kinds of memories that root a person, even when everything else is sliding. And roots can hold.
Morning. The light through the thin curtains is gray but undeniably new. What they decide next is not shouted from rooftops; it’s chosen in the modest grammar of action—opening a window, making a call, buying porridge, rescheduling a shift. The film does not pretend that one night undoes a lifetime; it does not romanticize recovery. It simply tells the truth that often saves people: there is another way to move through pain, sometimes one inch at a time, sometimes with help from online therapy, sometimes with the steadying hand of a stranger who has seen your worst and stayed. The ending breathes, and so do we.
In its final stretch, Another Way circles back to where it began: two people facing the ordinary world that once felt unbearable. They are not cured of sorrow, and the movie does not ask them to be. What changes is their posture toward it—and toward themselves. In a culture where stoicism can be misread as strength and asking for help can feel like failure, this story quietly redefines bravery as the willingness to keep choosing. It’s an invitation I felt in my bones. And it’s why, long after the credits, I found myself whispering, Have you ever felt this way—and could today be the day you try a different path?
Highlight Scenes / Unforgettable Moments
The First DM: The movie opens with a short, almost clinical exchange in an anonymous forum, and it’s chilling precisely because it feels so ordinary. There’s no melodrama, only logistics—date, place—handled with the hollow efficiency of people beyond exhaustion. The scene captures how online spaces can become holding rooms for private despair, but it also shows how even one reply can change the temperature of a life. Their cautious politeness hints at a need stronger than oblivion: the need to be witnessed. It’s the first time the film lets us feel the human tenderness hiding inside a nihilistic plan.
Chuncheon in Winter: Their first walk through icy streets is all white breath and unspoken calculations about exits. The camera falls in love with small things—snow caught in eyelashes, the sound of boots on frozen pavement—until the city feels less like a backdrop and more like a third character. He buys her something warm at a street stall, she says it’s too much, and then she accepts it anyway. That tiny arc is the movie in miniature: reluctance softening into trust. For me, it’s the moment the pact starts to loosen, almost imperceptibly.
The Caregiver’s Ritual: Jung-won bathing and feeding her mother is filmed with reverence, never pity. She narrates each motion so her mother is always a participant, never an object; it’s a masterclass in love that refuses to vanish just because life hurts. Watching Soo-wan help, learning by doing, I felt something in him unlock—the part that remembers he’s useful to the living. The scene also threads in the practical weight of unpaid caregiving and the isolation it breeds, particularly for young adults. If you’ve ever shouldered more than people know, you’ll feel this one thrum under your ribs.
The Blind Couple’s Wedding: Stumbling onto a modest reception for a blind bride and groom, they stand as quiet witnesses while vows reframe what resilience can look like. The room is ordinary and radiant at once—no grand speeches, just hands finding hands and a community saying “we’re with you.” Both outsiders are moved, not by spectacle, but by the way joy is chosen anyway. It’s one of those scenes that make you ask yourself: what kind of promises am I still capable of making? The answer matters more than they realize.
Father and Son: Soo-wan visits his father, a man whose grief took a strange turn—insisting his late wife was the Virgin Mary. The conversation is tentative, edged with old misunderstandings, and yet it cracks open the past just enough to let oxygen in. Trauma doesn’t leave cleanly; it fades like a bruise, then flares under certain light. This scene gives that truth a face and shows how belief, even misdirected, can be a raft and a prison. The performances here are spare and piercing, lowering the film’s voice so we lean in.
The Night of the Pact: The motel sequence could have been sensational, but the director chooses restraint. We aren’t guided by the mechanics of death; we’re steered by the tremor in a laugh, the way a hand hovers and then drops, the shared silence that suddenly feels crowded with memories. It’s the opposite of a tutorial and the essence of a reckoning. When morning arrives, it doesn’t solve anything, but the light looks like a question they’re finally willing to answer. The scene earns every breath afterward.
Memorable Lines
“We met to disappear, but for the first time in a long time, I feel seen.” – Jung-won, recognizing that witness can be a lifeline It’s a line that reframes the entire journey, turning their pact into a mirror for their deeper hunger. You can sense how caregiving had shrunk her world to tasks and timetables, leaving little room to be perceived as a person. This admission isn’t a love confession; it’s a human one. And once it’s spoken aloud, the ending they planned begins to unravel in the best way.
“I’m trained to enter chaos, not to survive my own.” – Soo-wan, naming the paradox of his uniform It’s both wry and heartbreaking: a professional first-responder who can’t seem to respond to himself. The line lands because we’ve watched him keep order at work and drift at home, pressed under a father’s unhealed grief. It also speaks to how many of us compartmentalize pain until the walls crack. Hearing him say it makes the possibility of seeking mental health counseling feel not just reasonable but brave.
“If there’s another way, even a narrow one, show me how to take the first step.” – Jung-won, asking for practice instead of promises I love this because it refuses magical thinking and asks for something doable. The movie keeps insisting that better paths are often small and practical—a phone call, a meal, a walk, online therapy, a friend who won’t flinch. In context, this line isn’t sentimental; it’s logistical hope. And logistical hope is the kind we can actually live.
“Your mother’s hand still remembers you.” – Soo-wan, after helping with caregiving He offers this quietly, almost embarrassed, after Jung-won’s mother squeezes back during a routine. It’s a simple sentence that shines a light into a tired daughter’s heart. The film’s best truths are like that—low-voiced, grounded in touch and time. It suggests that love can persist in the body even when the rest has gone dim.
“I thought invisibility would save me.” – Jung-won, on why anonymous forums felt safer The confession captures why people retreat into digital shadows when life feels unsafe, and why some eventually need to come back out. She doesn’t demonize the internet; she admits it sheltered her until it didn’t. The moment also nods to how we protect our privacy in those spaces—and why some lean on tools like a trustworthy VPN—while reminding us that healing usually requires being known somewhere. By the time she says it, we understand the cost of staying unseen too long.
Why It's Special
If you’ve ever stared out a winter window and felt that tug between giving up and beginning again, Another Way meets you right there. As of March 2026, availability varies by region: it’s surfaced as a digital purchase/rental on Apple TV in some markets, and an English‑subtitled Region 3 DVD is sold by YesAsia; in the U.S., storefront listings on Google Play appear but can fluctuate, so check your preferred retailer before pressing play. However you find it, this quiet, frost‑edged romance invites you into the lives of two strangers who dare each other to keep going when it would be easier not to.
Another Way opens not with fireworks but with the hush of a city in cold light. A police officer and a young woman connect online and set a date with oblivion, then choose the lakeside city of Chuncheon for their final journey. Have you ever felt this way—like a place can cradle the ache you can’t say aloud? Here, the town’s muted bridges, snow‑numbed streets, and measured silences become companions to two people who believe they are out of options.
What sets the film apart is how it refuses melodramatic shortcuts. Director‑writer Cho Chang‑ho lets conversations stall, lets the air between lines thicken, and trusts your patience. Instead of explaining feelings, the film observes them—how grief looks when you carry it into a motel lobby, how hope sounds when you don’t have a word for it yet.
The cinematography by Lee Sung‑jae absorbs the blue‑white chill of midwinter until the cold feels personal. The camera doesn’t plead for tears; it lingers, respectful and restrained, as if afraid to scare away the smallest, shyest spark of relief. Even a cup of convenience‑store coffee or a fogged car window becomes a kind of fragile warmth.
Cho’s writing is tender toward brokenness. Rather than diagnosing his characters, he accompanies them, sketching two private histories of harm that rhyme without matching. The film’s premise—strangers forming a suicide pact—could have tipped into exploitation, yet here it is handled with unblinking compassion and a deliberate, patient gaze.
Acting does the rest. The way their eyes avoid and then bravely meet, the way small jokes arrive like sunbreaks—these are not grand gestures but human ones. As the pair circle the question of whether life is survivable, the movie keeps its promises small and real: a seat across from you on the train, a room with a space heater, a walk long enough to say the thing you have never said.
Sound is spare and considerate. Street noise, shoe‑soles on ice, and the muffled thud of a closing taxi door carry more weight than a dozen violins. When music does arrive, it does so like breath on glass—present, fleeting, and gently necessary.
Most of all, Another Way understands what it costs to change your mind at the edge. It is a film about learning to ask for time when you think you’ve run out of it, and about recognizing that the smallest kindness—offered at the right hour—can reroute an entire life. Have you ever needed someone to sit beside you until the night ended? This movie knows that feeling.
Popularity & Reception
Another Way premiered in the Korean Cinema Today: Vision strand at the 20th Busan International Film Festival in October 2015, an early sign that its intimate scale and winter‑bright images would resonate on the festival circuit. That placement also aligns it with a tradition of Korean indies willing to look directly at pain without spectacle.
Its South Korean theatrical release followed on January 19, 2017, quietly slipping into cinemas and finding an audience ready to talk about the things we’re often afraid to name. The timing placed it in conversation with news and social concerns of the day, but its heartbeat is timeless—the cost of loneliness, the courage of staying.
Korean press coverage made space for the film’s purpose. In interviews around release, the director spoke of wanting to “share pain” in order to light even the faintest path back to hope; cast members described physically risky, practical‑effects shoots that grounded the emotion in lived texture rather than digital safety. That honesty—on set and onscreen—became part of the film’s identity among Korean viewers.
Internationally, critics noted the film’s icy elegance and the disciplined restraint of its storytelling. Screen International highlighted the wintry setting, praised the cinematography, and singled out the lead actress’s performance as a lasting impression—observations that helped the film travel beyond language to viewers who recognize grief by sight and sound.
Over time, Another Way has drawn a steady trickle of discovery from global fans of its leads. Film‑community hubs like Letterboxd show viewers calling it “quiet,” “slow,” and “devastating” in the best sense—code words, in cinephile circles, for a story that trusts you to meet it halfway. That long‑tail affection, more than any trophy case, explains why the movie still finds new hearts to haunt years after release.
Cast & Fun Facts
Kim Jae‑wook plays Soo‑wan, a police officer whose calm façade masks a childhood ruptured by loss. He moves through the frame like someone who has learned to be functional without quite being alive, and the film lets you feel what that costs minute to minute. Watch how his posture loosens in small increments around a stranger who mirrors his ache; it’s acting that believes in inches, not miles.
Beyond performance, Kim’s commitment shows up in the physical reality of the shoot. Korean media reported he stood on actual river ice for key moments—no greenscreen escape route—so the creak of frozen water and the stillness of his breath are documentary details inside a fiction. That risk lends the film a faint, bracing edge; you sense danger at the margins, the way people who are barely hanging on sense it everywhere.
Seo Yea‑ji is Jung‑won, and her work here marks her first film lead—a performance both raw and meticulous. She plays a woman who has learned to make herself small in order to survive, then dares to speak up to a stranger when it matters. It’s not a “big” turn in terms of volume; it’s a big turn in terms of consequence, the kind that redefines what a career can be.
Seo’s dedication also meant stepping into unnervingly real spaces. One sequence places her in a sealed car with a burning charcoal briquette—a staging choice the team executed practically. You can feel the fear because it isn’t faked; the scene makes the audience complicit in the stakes without ever sliding into exploitation, a fine line she walks with formidable grace.
Kang Soo‑jin appears as Hye‑mi, a supporting presence who brings the outside world’s texture into the film’s cocoon of two. Even with limited screen time, Kang’s performance gives shape to how ordinary life keeps happening around grief—work shifts are covered, texts go unanswered, and someone always notices more than they say.
Kang’s Hye‑mi also acts as a quiet counterpoint: a reminder that compassion doesn’t always announce itself. The way she listens, the way she softens a room without drawing focus, helps the film avoid the trap of treating despair as an island. There are ferries to shore, the movie suggests, and they often look like a friend who refuses to let go.
Jo Yeong‑jin, as Soo‑wan’s father, brings the history of a wound rather than just its symptoms. His scenes carry the ache of what wasn’t said years ago, adding generational weight to a story many films keep only in the present tense. He doesn’t overplay remorse; he leaves space for the audience to feel the bruise.
In later moments, Jo’s presence reframes Soo‑wan—not as a man who “should know better,” but as a son who never had the tools. That shift is one of the film’s kindest gifts: it trades blame for context, so healing becomes plausible.
Director‑writer Cho Chang‑ho builds on a festival‑honed filmography (The Peter Pan Formula; Lovers Vanished) to find a tone that’s both austere and merciful. Critics at Busan noted how the icy setting mirrors the story’s emotional climate; Cho pairs that restraint with tactile, practical‑effect set pieces so we feel the cold, the weight of breath, the danger of a bad decision made in an enclosed space.
Conclusion / Warm Reminders
If you’ve ever needed a film to sit with you instead of speaking over you, Another Way is the kind of companion that changes a night. Track it down on whatever platform your region supports, cue it up on that 4K TV you’ve been saving for, and let a good home theater system catch the smallest sounds of winter breathing back. As you weigh which subscription is the best streaming service for your household, make room for stories like this—small, patient, and unexpectedly life‑giving. When the credits roll, text the friend who might need to hear “stay” today.
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