Live Your Own Life

Everything you need to know before you hit play.

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Live Your Own Life

효심이네 각자도생 (Hyosimine Gakjadosaeng) · 2023 · South Korea

WriterJo Jeong-seon

DirectorKim Hyeong-il

Episodes51 eps · ~80 min each

Where to Watch✅ OnDemandKorea, Kocowa, Viki, Apple TV

⏱️

Binge Time68h 0m

AiredSep 16, 2023 – Mar 17, 2024

GenreFamily · Romance · Melodrama

Content Rating15+

KBS2OnDemandKoreaKocowaVikiApple TV

Family SacrificeChaebol RomanceSelf-DiscoveryMissing Person MysteryFilial Piety

One box. Everything you need to decide.

A breadwinner, a chaebol heir chasing his grandmother’s disappearance, and the family that finally starts pulling its own weight.

Uee

Lee Hyo-sim

Lead

Ha Jun

Kang Tae-ho

Lead

Go Joo-won

Kang Tae-min

Supporting

Kim Doh-yon

Lee Hyo-do

Supporting

Nam Sung-jin

Lee Hyo-seong

Supporting

Lee Kwang-gi

Yeom Jin-su

Supporting

Nam Bo-ra

Jung Mi-rim

Supporting

Im Ji-eun

Yang Hee-ju

Supporting

Seol Jung-hwan

Lee Hyo-jun

Supporting

Lee Ga-yeon

Lee Ru-bi

Supporting

Lee Joo-won

Lee Phil-lip

Supporting

Jung Young-sook

Choi Myeong-hee

Supporting

Spoiler-light recaps — enough to remember where you left off, nothing that ruins the ride.

EP 01

The Trainer and the Heir

Sep 16, 2023

Lee Hyo-sim gets a well-earned promotion at TS Fitness, but the good news barely survives her mother’s first phone call of the day. Kang Tae-ho, meanwhile, flies back from the U.S. convinced his grandmother’s disappearance wasn’t an accident. Their first meeting — a tense late-night run — reads less like a meet-cute than a warning shot. Two people used to controlling everything around them just collided, and neither backs down.

EP 02

Wrong Trainer, Right Match

Sep 17, 2023

Tae-ho shows up at the gym before opening hours, already irritated that his assigned trainer is a woman he doesn’t recognize as competent. Hyo-sim, unfazed by his dismissiveness, takes the assignment anyway — competence over ego, on brand for her. Across town, Tae-min walks out of prison into a wall of cameras and questions about his future at Taesan Group. Two family sagas that don’t know they’re about to merge just got their first quiet handshake.

EP 03

Three Years, One Escape

Sep 23, 2023

Hyo-sim’s professionalism doesn’t budge even when Tae-ho leads with sexist remarks about female trainers — she’s heard worse from her own brother. Elsewhere, Myung-hee slips away from three years of captivity, drugged and hidden by Jang Sook-hyang, setting off the investigation Tae-ho has been chasing blind. Back home, Hyo-do’s reckless spending remains Hyo-sim’s problem to solve, as it always has been. One woman just escaped a cage; another doesn’t yet realize she’s been living in one.

EP 04

A Car Crash and a Villa

Sep 24, 2023

Hyo-do’s unaffordable new car turns into a genuine disaster when he hits Myung-hee mid-escape and, not knowing who she is, brings her back to Uicheon Villa. Sook-hyang’s panic escalates — the one person who could unravel her secret just resurfaced under her own roof. Tae-min, oblivious to the stakes, hands Tae-ho a work project that pulls him deeper into the family’s internal politics. The accident that should have ended things just restarted the clock.

EP 05

Rooftop Noise

Oct 07, 2023

A chance meeting at TS Fitness puts Hyo-sim in a room with both Taesan heirs at once, though she has no idea yet what that overlap will cost her. A strange sound on the villa rooftop leads staff member Kkeut-soon straight to Myung-hee, who collapses and is rushed to the hospital. The call for help goes, almost by accident, to Hyo-sim. She’s about to become useful to a chaebol family in exactly the way she never wanted to be — needed.

EP 06

Bedside Manner

Oct 08, 2023

Tae-ho injures himself resisting Hyo-sim’s training regimen, which tells her everything about how he handles being told what to do. Myung-hee’s hospital stay puts her in Hyo-sim’s orbit for real this time, and Hyo-sim’s instinct to care for people — the same instinct her family has been exploiting for years — kicks in without hesitation. There’s no calculation in it. She’s about to become someone’s ally without ever meaning to audition for the role.

EP 07

Cousins at War

Oct 14, 2023

Tae-ho’s refusal to drop the search for his grandmother puts him on a collision course with Tae-min, and the fight that follows has the specific ugliness of money and blood mixed together. Hyo-sim, tending to Myung-hee, gets pulled further into the middle of a feud she didn’t sign up for. Neither cousin seems to notice they’re using her as a buffer. The Taesan war has found its first civilian casualty, and she doesn’t even know she’s in it yet.

EP 08

The Isolated Ones

Oct 15, 2023

Tae-min’s parents fight around him constantly, and for a man with a company waiting for him, he’s remarkably short on people who actually have his back. Hyo-sim clocks something off about her mother Seon-soon — a vagueness about her health that doesn’t add up — and files it away with the rest of her family’s problems. Both plots are quietly circling the same idea: people who look surrounded and aren’t. Neither of them notices it yet.

EP 09

What Seon-soon Isn’t Saying

Oct 21, 2023

Hyo-sim’s radar for her mother’s evasiveness only sharpens — Seon-soon is hiding something, and Hyo-sim, exhausted from carrying everyone else’s problems, doesn’t have the bandwidth to chase this one down gently. Tae-ho’s investigation turns up threads pointing to a conspiracy bigger than one missing grandmother. Two searches for the truth are running in parallel, neither of them easy. They don’t know yet they’ll end up needing each other to finish either one.

EP 10

Evidence and Escalation

Oct 22, 2023

Tae-ho gets rid of his father Jin-bum’s car — evidence of something he isn’t ready to say out loud yet — while Jin-soo works just as hard to see him locked up for it. The legal maneuvering inside Taesan Group stops being background noise and starts being a real threat. Hyo-sim, oblivious to all of it, is still doing arithmetic on her family’s expenses. The stakes on one side of this drama just got a lot higher than gym memberships.

EP 11

Two Suitors, One Ledger

Oct 28, 2023

Tae-ho stops showing up to the gym entirely, which says more about where his priorities sit than any speech could. Tae-min, still carrying a torch for Hyo-sim, asks her out again — and the fact that he doesn’t register how little bandwidth she has for romance is very on-brand for a man used to getting what he wants. A love triangle starts to take shape, less because Hyo-sim wants one and more because two rich men have decided she’s worth fighting over.

EP 12

The Weight of Everyone Else

Oct 29, 2023

Hyo-sim’s family keeps treating her like an ATM with feelings, and the strain of it is starting to show in ways she can’t laugh off anymore. Tae-ho, meanwhile, edges closer to the truth about his grandmother with each new piece of evidence. Neither storyline resolves this episode — they’re both just quietly building pressure. Something in Hyo-sim’s life is about to give, and it isn’t going to be subtle.

EP 13

Hyo-sim Says No

Nov 04, 2023

For the first time, Hyo-sim actually says it out loud to her family: she’s done being the answer to every problem they create. It’s not a speech, and it’s not triumphant — it’s tired, which reads more honest than triumphant would have. Meanwhile Tae-ho’s investigation lands on a witness who ties Sook-hyang directly to his grandmother’s disappearance. Two people find their spine on the same day, in completely different rooms.

EP 14

Backlash

Nov 05, 2023

Sook-hyang goes on offense, working to discredit Tae-ho’s findings before they can go anywhere near a courtroom or a headline. Hyo-sim’s family, unhappy with a version of her that has boundaries, pushes back hard — and she holds the line anyway. It costs her something to do it, and the drama doesn’t pretend otherwise. Tae-ho gains ground against a genuinely ruthless opponent; Hyo-sim gains ground against people who are supposed to love her, which is the harder fight.

EP 15

What Myung-hee Remembers

Nov 11, 2023

Tae-ho and Hyo-sim’s dynamic softens into something closer to partnership, two exhausted people who’ve found each other useful in ways that have started to feel personal. Myung-hee, safe for now, begins recovering fragments of memory that could finally sink Sook-hyang. The romance and the mystery are converging on the same timeline. It’s a good episode to be a fan of either.

EP 16

A New Scheme, A Small Step

Nov 12, 2023

Sook-hyang, cornered but not finished, launches a fresh plot to knock Tae-ho out of position before her husband’s succession is locked in. Back at the Lee household, money problems finally force an honest conversation about spending habits nobody wanted to have. It’s a small, undramatic scene by chaebol-thriller standards, but it’s the first real crack in the family’s dependence on Hyo-sim. Villainy and healing, running on parallel tracks.

EP 17

The Ledger

Nov 18, 2023

Tae-ho finds it — a hidden ledger documenting Sook-hyang’s embezzlement, the kind of paper trail that ends careers and, with luck, ends hers. It’s the strongest evidence he’s had yet, and the episode treats it with the weight it deserves. Meanwhile Seon-soon takes a part-time job, a modest move that matters more than its size suggests. Two women are about to be held accountable for very different things — one for years of theft, one for years of over-giving.

EP 18

Running Out the Clock

Nov 19, 2023

Sook-hyang tries to flee the country the moment her embezzlement surfaces, and Tae-ho’s allies scramble to make sure she doesn’t get the chance. Back home, Hyo-seong and Hyo-do finally have to reckon with consequences they’ve spent years outsourcing to their sister. Nobody in this episode gets away with anything, which is the point. The reckoning that’s been building since episode one has arrived for almost everyone at once.

EP 19

Myung-hee, In Public

Nov 25, 2023

Myung-hee steps back into public view, and the moment does more damage to Sook-hyang than any courtroom filing could — some lies only die when the person they were told about shows up alive. Hyo-sim keeps helping her family through their mess without letting them slide back into old habits. She’s not hardened. She’s just no longer available on demand.

EP 20

Arrested

Nov 26, 2023

Sook-hyang is finally arrested, and the relief on Tae-ho and Myung-hee’s faces reads earned rather than cheap after this many episodes of chasing her. Hyo-sim starts scouting new career opportunities, a small gesture that means she’s actually planning a future instead of just surviving her present. One antagonist’s arc closes here. Hyo-sim’s is only just opening up.

EP 21

A Quiet Stretch

Dec 02, 2023

With Sook-hyang behind bars for now, Tae-ho and Hyo-sim get something the show has mostly withheld from them: an easy stretch of time together. It doesn’t last, but it’s not supposed to — every long family drama needs a breather before the next complication. The Lee household shows small, uneven signs of adjusting to life without leaning entirely on Hyo-sim. Progress here looks less like a montage and more like everyone just trying a little harder.

EP 22

A New Threat, A New Job

Dec 03, 2023

Just when the Taesan Group’s troubles seem contained, a fresh threat surfaces — evidence that the rot went deeper, or wasn’t Sook-hyang’s alone to begin with. Hyo-do, of all people, lands a real job and seems to actually want to keep it. The two threads don’t touch this episode, but they’re doing the same work: proving nothing stays fixed for long in this family, for better and worse.

EP 23

Digging Deeper

Dec 09, 2023

Tae-ho realizes the corruption inside his family’s company runs wider than one scheming aunt by marriage, which is a genuinely unwelcome thing to learn about your own last name. Hyo-sim, for her part, enrolls in classes to build skills beyond gym-floor training — a decision made entirely for herself, which is still new enough to notice. Support and self-interest coexist for once instead of competing.

EP 24

Tae-min’s Turn

Dec 10, 2023

Tae-min offers to help Tae-ho finish what he started, a genuine bid at atonement from a man who’s spent most of this drama on the other side of every fight. It’s not forgiveness yet, just an opening. Back home, Hyo-seong finally starts carrying real weight at home, taking pressure off a sister who’s spent this long carrying his share too.

EP 25

Unlikely Allies

Dec 16, 2023

Tae-ho and Tae-min actually start working together, which would have sounded impossible twenty episodes ago and now plays as the natural next step for two cousins tired of fighting each other instead of the people actually responsible. Seon-soon, meanwhile, finds real joy in her new part-time work — not just income, but purpose that has nothing to do with being someone’s mother. Everyone in this episode is discovering they’re more than the role they were assigned.

EP 26

What the Chairman Did

Dec 17, 2023

The investigation lands on the original chairman himself, and the scale of what Taesan Group has been built on top of gets a lot uglier than embezzlement. Back at the Lee house, there’s an actual, uncomplicated moment of the whole family pulling together — rare enough that it visibly catches Hyo-sim off guard. One family’s rot goes back generations. The other’s healing is just getting started.

EP 27

Confrontation

Dec 23, 2023

Tae-ho puts the evidence in front of the chairman directly, demanding an accounting for decades of deceit that everyone else in the family was apparently willing to live with. It’s the kind of confrontation the show has been building toward since the premiere, and it doesn’t flinch from letting it be uncomfortable. Hyo-sim, on a much smaller stage, gets offered a genuinely better job at a different fitness center. Both plots are about the same question: what do you do when the truth finally has nowhere left to hide?

EP 28

Retaliation

Dec 24, 2023

The chairman doesn’t go quietly — he uses what’s left of his influence to make Tae-ho’s life difficult, proof that cornered power is still dangerous power. Hyo-sim weighs the job offer seriously, thinking through what it means for her family’s fragile new independence rather than just grabbing at the first exit. It’s a smaller decision than anything happening at Taesan, and the show gives it just as much room.

EP 29

Turning the Tables

Dec 30, 2023

With Tae-min’s help this time, Tae-ho counters the chairman’s retaliation and turns up even more of what he’s been hiding — the alliance is paying off exactly the way it should. Hyo-sim says yes to the new job, a clean, decisive move that reads like the moment she stops just reacting to her life. Two people, choosing to stop playing defense.

EP 30

The Fall

Jan 06, 2024

The chairman finally faces real legal consequences, and the power structure at the top of Taesan Group shifts for good. Hyo-sim starts her new role and, refreshingly, the show lets her just be good at it without complication. A major antagonist’s story ends here. Hers is just getting interesting.

EP 31

Reform

Jan 07, 2024

Tae-ho steps into a bigger role at Taesan Group, less interested in the throne itself than in actually fixing what he’s spent this many episodes exposing. At the Lee house, the family — genuinely, this time — starts looking for ways to support each other instead of defaulting to Hyo-sim. Watching them try, even clumsily, lands better than watching them succeed easily would have.

EP 32

The Café

Jan 13, 2024

Tae-ho and Hyo-sim start talking openly about a future together, the kind of conversation that only works because both of them have actually done the work to get here. Seon-soon takes the boldest swing of her arc yet, opening her own small café. It’s a modest business by drama standards and a genuinely large personal victory.

EP 33

The Question Tae-ho Has to Ask

Jan 14, 2024

Tae-ho finally asks Tae-min, point blank, whether he knew the full truth about their fathers — no more circling, no more half-answers. Hyo-sim stays close through the conversation without trying to soften it for him, which is its own kind of support. A mystery that’s been simmering since episode one finally gets a direct question aimed at it.

EP 34

Reunion

Jan 20, 2024

Tae-ho and Myung-hee finally get the reunion the show has been withholding for over thirty episodes, and it plays exactly as emotional as that math suggests it should. Hyo-do, meanwhile, starts showing real remorse and actually tries to make it right with his family instead of just apologizing and moving on. Grandmother and grandson close one gap; brother and family start closing another.

EP 35

A Trap, Renewed

Jan 21, 2024

Hyo-sim quits the gym entirely, a clean, symbolic break from the job — and the version of herself — she’s spent this whole drama outgrowing. Sook-hyang, down but evidently not out, sets a serious trap for Tae-ho, proof that villains in this genre rarely stay defeated on the first try. One door closes cleanly. Another one, dangerously, reopens.

EP 36

Framed

Jan 27, 2024

Sook-hyang’s trap lands: Tae-ho gets arrested on embezzlement charges she engineered herself. He’s not caught off guard, exactly — he’s clearly expected something like this was coming. Hyo-sim rallies support around him fast, which tells you plainly how far their relationship has traveled from that first contentious morning run.

EP 37

Vindicated

Jan 28, 2024

Tae-ho, with help from his allies, clears his name and turns Sook-hyang’s own scheme back on her — the kind of reversal the show has been setting up patiently since the arrest. Back home, Hyo-sim’s family finally, actually sees what she’s built and says so out loud. It’s overdue, and the show lets the moment breathe instead of rushing to the next crisis.

EP 38

New Developments

Feb 03, 2024

Tae-min tracks down Myung-hee, who uses the moment to make sure he stays committed to protecting Taesan Group rather than avenging himself. At the Lee house, Hyo-seong’s girlfriend Mi-rim gets pregnant and moves in, which changes the house’s dynamic overnight. Two families, expanding in very different ways.

EP 39

Ceasefire

Feb 04, 2024

Myung-hee pushes Jin-bum to turn himself in, less out of mercy than exhaustion with watching Tae-ho and Tae-min circle each other. Hyo-sim keeps showing up for her mother’s café, finding real satisfaction in supporting Seon-soon’s independence instead of managing her decline. Peace, on two fronts, starts to look possible.

EP 40

Brothers

Feb 10, 2024

Myung-hee drops the episode’s biggest bomb: Tae-min learns Tae-ho is his biological younger brother, a revelation that reframes every fight they’ve had since episode one. Sook-hyang, finally, is taken into custody for embezzlement — the arrest that’s been building for twenty-plus episodes lands with real weight. One truth rewrites a family. One arrest closes a chapter.

EP 41

What the Brothers Do With It

Feb 11, 2024

Tae-ho takes in the news that Tae-min is his biological brother and, after the shock, both of them choose the harder, better option: staying allies instead of enemies over it. Hyo-sim picks up part-time work at her mother’s café while Mi-rim, now a lawyer, starts using her connections to track down Hyo-sim’s long-missing father. A new mystery opens just as an old family war ends.

EP 42

Looking for Her Father

Feb 17, 2024

Hyo-sim throws herself into the search for her father with a stubbornness that will be familiar to anyone who’s watched her carry this family for forty-one episodes. Tae-ho and Tae-min, meanwhile, keep building the brotherhood they never knew they had, working side by side for Taesan’s future. Both storylines are, in their own way, about family you didn’t choose but have to figure out anyway.

EP 43

Leads

Feb 18, 2024

Mi-rim calls in police contacts to chase down real leads on Hyo-sim’s father, turning a decades-cold question into something that might actually get answered. Tae-ho and Hyo-sim, meanwhile, talk seriously about a shared future — no more hedging, no more waiting for the next crisis to pass first. Two searches move forward at once: one for a missing parent, one for a settled life.

EP 44

A Second Deception

Feb 24, 2024

Tae-hee starts openly needling Sook-hyang, convinced she had something to do with Tae-ho and Tae-min’s parents’ deaths — and she’s not being subtle about it anymore. A DNA test meant to confirm her own parentage with Mr. Yeom comes back negative instead, opening up a deception nobody saw coming. Sook-hyang’s web turns out to have more strands in it than anyone had mapped.

EP 45

The Truth About the Crash

Feb 25, 2024

Tae-hee lays it out for Tae-min plainly: Sook-hyang goaded Jin-bum into the collision that killed both their parents, with Mr. Yeom standing by to finish the job if Jin-bum lost his nerve. It’s the answer the show has been circling since episode one, delivered without ceremony. Tae-min, in the same breath, tells Tae-ho to step back and let him handle what comes next — and wishes him well with Hyo-sim, which is as close to peace as this family gets.

EP 46

Building the Case

Mar 02, 2024

Tae-min turns up more evidence against Sook-hyang and Mr. Yeom, tightening a case that’s now airtight in every way that matters. Tae-ho, on a gentler front, works to win Seon-soon’s approval for his relationship with Hyo-sim — a courtship that matters to him as much as the legal case does. Justice and family-building proceed in the same episode, at very different volumes.

EP 47

The Proposal

Mar 03, 2024

Tae-ho and Tae-min secure the final piece of evidence from Jin-myung, enough to guarantee Sook-hyang doesn’t walk away from any of this. Then Tae-ho proposes to Hyo-sim, and the show earns the tonal whiplash — one relationship ending in prison, another beginning in a promise.

EP 48

Old Wounds

Mar 09, 2024

Hyo-sim finally tells Chu-ryeon who she really is, closing a misunderstanding that’s been quietly sitting in the background for a long stretch of episodes. Hyo-seong, separately, learns the real reason his father walked out on the family years ago. Two long-buried truths surface in the same hour, and both families are a little lighter for it.

EP 49

Not Yet

Mar 10, 2024

Hyo-sim asks Tae-ho to postpone their wedding, and he doesn’t take it well — mostly because she doesn’t fully explain why. The reason is achingly familiar by this point: she still can’t let herself be fully happy while she feels her family isn’t stable yet. Forty-eight episodes of growth, and the old instinct still has a grip on her.

EP 50

One More Time

Mar 16, 2024

Hyo-sim goes through with a surgery for her family’s sake, a last act of self-sacrifice that costs her something the show doesn’t rush past. Seon-soon takes it hardest, struggling to reconcile the daughter she’s leaning on with the daughter she’s supposed to be protecting. Tae-ho, kept in the dark about where Hyo-sim’s gone, spends the episode sick with worry. It’s a rough hour to end a rough life pattern on — which is exactly why the finale needs to answer it.

EP 51

Living Her Own Life

Mar 17, 2024

A year passes with Hyo-sim living quietly at a villa on her own, rebuilding herself on her own schedule for the first time in the show’s run, while her family — finally, actually — respects the distance instead of chasing after her. Tae-ho waits, without pressuring her, which is its own quiet proof of how much he’s changed since that first contentious gym encounter. Hyo-jun passes the bar, Seon-soon finds peace, and Hyo-sim’s brothers grow into people who don’t need her to function. When Hyo-sim and Tae-ho finally reunite and marry, it plays less like a fairy-tale ending than like a woman finally getting to keep something for herself.

Full spoilers ahead — everything that happens in the finale and what it all means.

Who actually killed Tae-ho and Tae-min’s parents The crash wasn’t an accident. Sook-hyang goaded Jin-bum into causing the collision that killed both fathers, with Mr. Yeom standing by to step in if Jin-bum’s nerve failed — a plot the drama has been circling since its first act. Tae-hee’s discovery, and the confrontation that follows, finally puts a name and a motive to a tragedy the show had treated as unfinished business for forty-five episodes.

Sook-hyang’s downfall, finally complete Between the embezzlement ledger Tae-ho uncovered earlier and her role in the crash, Sook-hyang runs out of road entirely — she’s incarcerated for both crimes, closing out the show’s central villain arc without any last-minute mercy. It’s the most straightforward piece of the finale: she did it, she’s caught, she pays for it.

Why Hyo-sim postpones the wedding — and what the surgery really means Hyo-sim asks Tae-ho to wait, not because she’s changed her mind about him, but because she still can’t fully let go of feeling responsible for her family’s stability first. That old instinct costs her directly: she goes through a serious surgery for her family’s sake without telling Tae-ho where she’s gone, one last act of self-sacrifice before the show finally lets her stop.

A year of living for herself The year that follows is the point of the whole title: Hyo-sim moves to a villa alone, rebuilds on her own schedule, and — critically — her family lets her, instead of calling her back the moment they need something. It’s the only way the ending could prove she’d actually changed instead of just saying so.

The reunion, the marriage, and what “living her own life” means by the end Tae-ho waits without pressuring her, Hyo-jun passes the bar, Seon-soon finds peace, and Hyo-sim’s brothers finish becoming people who don’t need her to function. When Hyo-sim and Tae-ho finally reunite and marry, it lands less as a fairy-tale bow and more as confirmation that she gets to keep this life for herself. Fifty-one episodes later, the title finally means what it says.