Meet Anna - or rather, meet Lee Yumi, a poor girl who steals another woman's identity and lives it so perfectly that even she starts to believe it. Bae Suzy stars as Anna in this dark psychological thriller that will leave you questioning everything you think you know about right and wrong.
What starts as a desperate lie about passing college exams spirals into identity theft, marriage fraud, and ultimately murder. Anna shows how far someone will go when trapped by their own deceptions. This kdrama became the center of a major controversy when the original 8 episode version was cut down to 6 episodes without the director's consent, leading to a legal battle. Thankfully, the Director's Cut was later released, giving us the complete story as intended. Make sure to watch the extended 8 episode Director's Cut version - it's essential for understanding the full psychological journey and ending. The 6-episode version cuts out many parts and is very confusing.
The Story
The story starts with young Lee Yumi growing up poor. At age six, her American tutor Catherine teaches her to keep a "poker face" when things get tough. By 1999, Yumi is a top student at a prestigious Seoul high school with a bright future ahead. Everything falls apart when a scandal hits her school. Her music teacher is caught having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student. The scandal creates a huge uproar that ruins the school's reputation. Even though Yumi did nothing wrong, university admission officials and classmates look down on all students from that school. She's forced to transfer schools, destroying her chances at a top university.
Ashamed and desperate, Yumi tells her first big lie: she claims to her parents that she passed the college entrance exam when she actually failed. This single lie becomes the foundation for all her future deceptions. In Seoul, Yumi pretends to be a university student while working multiple jobs to survive. She even joins a student journal to keep up the act. But her lies catch up with her when her boyfriend's mother finds out the truth. He breaks up with her, and worse news follows: her father has died of cancer and her mother is developing dementia. Returning home heartbroken, Yumi promises to live honestly from now on, wanting to honor her father who always believed in her.
Years pass, and Yumi works as a low-level assistant at Marais, a fancy art gallery owned by the wealthy Lee family. Her boss is Lee Hyun-ju, who goes by Anna - a privileged woman who just returned from studying in America. For three years, Yumi does terrible jobs to support Hyun-ju's rich lifestyle. She runs errands, handles travel plans, shopping trips, and even manages Hyun-ju's important documents. Yumi grows angry as Hyun-ju's father insults her and won't let her take breaks. During one holiday, Yumi reaches her breaking point. She secretly steals Hyun-ju's designer clothes, jewelry, and most importantly, her identity documents including her U.S. passport and university diploma. Then she quits her job and returns to her hometown with these stolen items.
When Yumi learns that Hyun-ju plans to marry and move to America permanently, she sees her chance. She legally changes her own name to "Lee Anna" and uses the stolen diploma and passport to erase her past completely. With Hyun-ju's educational background, she gets hired as a respected art professor. People admire her beauty and grace as she copies Hyun-ju's elegant behavior and style. During this time, she meets Choi Ji-hoon, a charming businessman with political dreams. They fall in love and marry, giving Yumi the wealthy, high-status life she always wanted. Everything seems perfect until Hyun-ju unexpectedly returns to Korea and runs into Anna. In a tense meeting, Hyun-ju realizes that "Anna" is actually Yumi - the woman who stole her identity. This leaves Yumi terrified that her secret will be exposed.
Living two lives becomes harder and harder for Yumi. Ji-hoon's political career grows more important, but scandals start coming out about his corrupt behavior and personal problems. The relationship between Yumi and Ji-hoon gets worse as more of his private life is exposed. Yumi feels guilty about what she did to Hyun-ju and scared of losing everything she's built. Her old friend Han Ji-won, who is now a newspaper reporter, starts to notice that something doesn't add up in Anna's story. Under her polished fake story, Yumi becomes more and more anxious, knowing her lies might soon be discovered.
Ji-hoon becomes suspicious of Anna's strange behavior and secretly starts planning against her. He decides Anna must be removed and arranges to have her sent to a remote mental hospital abroad where she'll be "cut off from the rest of the world". When Yumi finds out about this plan, she panics and tells her friend Ji-won, who helps her gather evidence for protection. But Ji-won keeps investigating Yumi's past, getting dangerously close to the truth about "Anna". Yumi feels intense fear and desperation, trapped between a dangerous husband and possible exposure.
Ji-won finds more information and confronts Anna directly, becoming more sure that "Anna" is living a lie. Yumi must face the results of her actions when Hyun-ju threatens to expose her. Suddenly, news breaks that Lee Hyun-ju has died in what looks like suicide. Yumi feels both shocked and relieved, but nothing is what it seems. Ji-hoon tells Yumi the horrible truth: he killed Hyun-ju and made it look like suicide. His cold confession shows how far he'll go to protect himself now that he's becoming a powerful politician. Faced with this horror, Yumi realizes she's trapped by both her own lies and her husband's evil plans. Ji-hoon has won his election and has complete power, while Yumi becomes determined to save herself.
In the end, Ji-hoon plans to finish Anna's fate. He takes Anna on what seems like a celebration trip to San Francisco after winning the election, but secretly plans to put her in a U.S. mental hospital and never let her return. While driving on a desert highway, a deer suddenly jumps into the road. Ji-hoon swerves to avoid hitting it, but this is exactly the moment Anna has been waiting for. She pulls the emergency brake hard, causing the car to lose control completely and crash into a roadside pole. What looks like a tragic accident is actually Anna's carefully planned murder. Ji-hoon gets trapped in the burning wreckage while Anna, who was wearing her seatbelt and prepared for the crash, walks away with only minor injuries. In a flashback, we see that Anna had earlier placed her purse in the car. The purse was full of items (combustibles) that would catch fire easily, designed to make sure Ji-hoon wouldn't survive even if he lived through the crash. The deer just gave Anna the perfect cover to pull the emergency brake without raising suspicion. Anna has transformed from a passive victim into someone who actively takes control, using clever planning to murder her dangerous husband.
The final scenes jump forward 1 year: Yumi is living under a new identity in a remote place in North America, looking calm and peaceful. Free from her husband's control and her old life of lies, she seems to be living a normal life, finally released from the fake stories that once controlled her world.
My Review
Throughout the kdrama, Yumi's inner journey is just as important as the main plot. Bae Suzy's acting, shows her character's huge change from a poor, honest high school girl to a beautiful and elegant woman of high society. At first, Yumi tries to stay honest and kind, but as she becomes Anna, she must constantly hide her fear and guilt behind confidence. The kdrama highlights how the privileges Yumi wanted, can corrupt people: as she rises in status, she slowly becomes like the selfish, powerful people she once envied. By the end, Yumi has become much tougher and more calculating than when we first met her - a survivor willing to commit extreme crimes to stay free.
The kdrama also serves as a sharp criticism of South Korean society's focus on status, education, and wealth. Yumi's willingness to steal another person's entire identity shows the extreme pressure faced by poor people trying to escape their situations. The kdrama suggests that a society that values status more than character will inevitably create people willing to commit terrible acts to move up in the world.
In the end, Yumi finds a bitter kind of freedom. Living alone abroad, she appears more relaxed and even truly happy than before. We cheer for Yumi even as we watch her make morally wrong choices, because the kdrama carefully builds understanding for her desperate situation. Anna (Yumi) ends with the image of a woman who lost her original identity and family because of a single lie, but gained hard-fought independence in return - knowing exactly what she wanted and what she had to sacrifice to get it. The kdrama asks difficult questions about what people are willing to give up and who they're willing to become in pursuit of the life they think they deserve.
Bae Suzy delivers a remarkable performance that is completely different from her usual romantic roles. She shows incredible range in portraying Yumi's transformation from an innocent, desperate girl into a cold, calculating woman willing to commit murder. Suzy's acting is particularly powerful in her eyes - you can see Yumi's fear, guilt, and growing darkness even when she's putting on Anna's polished mask. What makes her performance so effective is how she made me both hate and feel sorry for Anna at the same time. This is the first time I hated her character in this kdrama. Despite Anna's terrible choices, Suzy makes you understand why Yumi does what she does. Her ability to show the internal struggle between Yumi's original honest nature and Anna's ruthless survival instincts proves she can handle much more complex roles than her previous kdramas like Start-Up.
This role earned her a well deserved nomination for best actress at the 2022 Baeksang Awards, marking Anna as a career-defining performance that showcases her true acting skills.
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