My Lovely Boxer

Everything worth knowing, distilled into one box.

The faces behind My Lovely Boxer’s ring drama.

Lee Sang-yeob

Kim Tae Young

Lead

Kim So-hye

Lee Kwon Sook

Lead

Park Ji-hwan

Kim Oh Bok

Antagonist

Kim Hyeong-mook

Lee Cheol Yong

Supporting

Yoon In-Jo

Lee Young-ae

Supporting

Ha Seung-lee

Jung Soo Yeon

Supporting

Chae Won-been

Han Ah Reum

Supporting

Kim Sang-woo

Go Sun Jae

Supporting

Do Eun-ha

Jo Ah-ra

Supporting

Lim Young-joo

Park Hye-jin

Supporting

Kim Hee-chan

Choi Ho-jung

Supporting

Kim Jin-woo

Han Jae Min

Supporting

12 episodes · spoiler-light recaps for every episode of My Lovely Boxer.

EP 01

Find the Ghost

Aug 21, 2023 · KBS2

Kim Tae Young operates his sports agency with one rule: extract maximum value, then walk away before the burnout hits. His next assignment is unusual — track down Lee Kwon Sook, a once-unbeatable female boxer who vanished from the sport three years ago at seventeen. Tae Young locates her living under a different name in a small town, running an ordinary life she has carefully constructed. She has no interest in being found — and even less in returning.

EP 02

The Weight of the Ask

Aug 28, 2023 · KBS2

Tae Young refuses to give up, and his persistence begins to reveal what is actually at stake — someone important to him depends on Kwon Sook’s return. She remains guarded, and the first hints of why she left begin to surface: something happened at seventeen that she has not shared with anyone. Their dynamic is already established — he is relentless and calculating, she is stubborn and self-protective — and the friction between them starts to carry emotional weight neither of them expected.

EP 03

Before She Was Seventeen

Sep 4, 2023 · KBS2

Kwon Sook’s backstory begins to open up — her rise as a teenage boxing prodigy, the intense public pressure that came with early fame, and the emotional fractures underneath the wins. Tae Young digs deeper and starts to understand what he is actually asking her to return to. The episode also introduces match-fixer Kim Oh Bok in a more concrete way, establishing the corrupt network that has quietly controlled Korean boxing for years.

EP 04

Back in the Gym

Sep 11, 2023 · KBS2

Kwon Sook agrees — reluctantly and conditionally — to return to training. Their working relationship begins on uneasy terms, but the moment she steps back into a gym, something shifts: her raw talent is still there, undiminished. Tae Young watches and, quietly, recalibrates. Kim Oh Bok tightens his grip on the sport in the background, and the episode establishes the gap between Kwon Sook’s genuine ability and the rigged world waiting to exploit it.

EP 05

Mothers and Old Wounds

Sep 11, 2023 · KBS2

Kwon Sook’s mother reappears, adding a layer of complicated family history to her character’s portrait. Training intensifies ahead of her first comeback fight, and the episode splits its emotional focus between the physical preparation and the psychological weight she is still carrying. Tae Young begins showing signs of genuine concern that have nothing to do with his professional interests — a subtle but meaningful shift in how he relates to her.

EP 06

The Comeback Fight

Sep 18, 2023 · KBS2

Kwon Sook steps into the ring for her first official comeback bout. The outcome matters less than what the fight itself reveals about her — she can still do this, and she knows it. Media attention reignites around her name. Behind the scenes, Tae Young’s entanglement with Kim Oh Bok’s match-fixing operation grows more complicated, and the tension between his obligation to that world and his growing protectiveness over Kwon Sook begins to pull in opposite directions.

EP 07

Scrutiny

Sep 18, 2023 · KBS2

Kwon Sook’s rising momentum draws attention from two directions — legitimate fans who remember who she was, and the corrupt match-fixing ring that sees a new asset. Tae Young is caught in the middle: honour his obligations to Kim Oh Bok or protect the woman he is no longer managing from a purely professional distance. The romance between them develops more openly in this episode, even as the danger around them tightens.

EP 08

Space Between Them

Sep 25, 2023 · KBS2

A quieter episode that uses the relative calm before the storm to let the relationship between Tae Young and Kwon Sook breathe and deepen. She forms a friendship with rival boxer Han Ah Reum that adds warmth and complexity to her world beyond the main couple. Tae Young makes careful moves to extract himself from Kim Oh Bok’s criminal network, but finds every exit blocked or watched.

EP 09

The Cost

Sep 25, 2023 · KBS2

The drama’s emotional turning point. Kim Hee Won — the client whose situation motivated Tae Young to find Kwon Sook in the first place — meets a devastating end. The loss forces Tae Young to face what his way of operating has actually cost the people around him. Kwon Sook becomes an anchor for him in grief, and what has been growing between them consolidates into something neither of them can ignore anymore.

EP 10

Before the Grand Slam

Oct 2, 2023 · KBS2

Note: this episode was delayed from September 19 to September 25 due to South Korea vs. Kuwait soccer coverage for the Asian Games. The Grand Slam match is approaching, and Kim Oh Bok’s network exerts escalating pressure to ensure the fight is predetermined. Tae Young tries to shield Kwon Sook from the full truth while engineering a way out of the system he is trapped inside. Kwon Sook senses something is being concealed from her and begins to push back.

EP 11

Where Did He Go

Oct 2, 2023 · KBS2

The match-fixing conspiracy reaches its boiling point. Kim Oh Bok’s enforcers confront Tae Young directly — there are threats, there is violence, and then there is silence. Tae Young disappears under circumstances that leave Kwon Sook and everyone around her desperate and frightened. The Grand Slam fight is imminent, and the man who was supposed to be in her corner is gone. The episode closes on a cliffhanger that earns its tension.

EP 12

Not the Belt — Final

Oct 2, 2023 · KBS2

The finale brings every thread together in an emotionally honest conclusion. Kwon Sook fights the Grand Slam match without Tae Young beside her — coached instead by her estranged father Lee Cheol Yong in an unexpected reconciliation. She gives everything she has. She loses. The corrupt network around Kim Oh Bok collapses through the combined fallout of Tae Young’s earlier efforts to expose it. Tae Young — shot, missing for months — reappears after recovering, and the drama closes on a beginning rather than a triumph. Her real victory was never about the title.

Full spoilers from this point — what happened, and why.

The Fight Without Her Corner. Kwon Sook walks into the Grand Slam match without Tae Young — he has been shot, disappeared, and is not coming. What fills that void is something the drama has been quietly building toward: her estranged father Lee Cheol Yong steps in as her coach. The reconciliation is not grand or sentimental. It is just a man and his daughter standing in the same corner again, after years of distance neither of them fully chose. She fights. She loses. And the defeat is handled with a rare kind of honesty — the show lets her lose without softening it, without a dramatic comeback in the final seconds, without the fairy tale.

What the Loss Actually Means. The drama’s central argument is embedded in that result. Kwon Sook did not return to boxing to win a belt. She returned to reclaim authorship of her own story — to choose boxing on her terms, after years of having the sport weaponised against her. The loss does not undo that. She stepped into the ring voluntarily, with her father beside her, fighting clean in a sport that had been rigged around her. That is not defeat. That is self-determination. The corrupt match-fixing structure around Kim Oh Bok collapses in the aftermath of the fight — exposed through the fallout of Tae Young’s earlier work — and the criminal network that controlled Korean boxing is dismantled.

Tae Young Returns. Several months later, Tae Young reappears. The show does not dramatise his recovery — it simply delivers him back to her, changed and quiet. The reunion is handled gently. Both of them have been through something irreversible, and what they built together during the drama’s run is treated as the foundation of what comes next. The drama ends not at a championship press conference but at a beginning — two people finding each other after the worst of it is over.

What the Drama Was Really About. My Lovely Boxer uses boxing the way the best sports dramas do — as a container for something larger. Kwon Sook’s journey is about the difference between performing for others and competing for yourself. Her original disappearance from the sport was an act of self-protection that looked like failure from the outside. Her return is not a redemption arc. It is a clarification — she is not the person the sport made of her at seventeen, and she is not the person Tae Young’s commercial agenda needed her to be. She is the boxer she chose to be, and that was always enough.