📺 K-Drama Guide · Comedy · Drama · Slice of Life
Work Later, Drink Now (Season 1)
술꾼도시여자들 · 2021
✅ Completed · 12 eps 🎬 TVING · Prime Video ⭐ 8.3 / 10 MDL 🔞 19+
⚡ Updated · Aug 31, 2026
📋 Drama Overview
Everything you need to know before you hit play.
CompletedFRIENDSHIP & SOJU PICK
Work Later, Drink Now (Season 1)
술꾼도시여자들 (Sulkkun Dosi Yeojadeul) · 2021 · South Korea
TVINGPrime Video
FriendshipOffice RomanceDrinking CultureThirty-Something LifeWebtoon Adaptation
A bad Christmas Eve blind date ends the only way it can for Ahn So-hee (Lee Sun-bin): a phone call to her two best friends and an order of dakbal and soju. That ritual is the entire premise of Work Later, Drink Now — overworked broadcast writer So-hee, unbothered yoga instructor Han Ji-yeon (Han Seon-hwa), and no-nonsense origami YouTuber Kang Ji-goo (Jung Eun-ji) processing every bad date, bad boss, and bad day the only way their thirty-something lives have taught them how: together, and with a drink in hand.
The season’s other engine is So-hee’s running war with her PD, Kang Book-goo (Choi Si-won) — an enemies-to-lovers dynamic built on budget disputes and office pettiness that neither of them is fooling anyone about. Work Later, Drink Now spends its first eight episodes as a genuinely funny hangout comedy before tipping into something heavier in its back half, and the show is confident enough in its own premise to let both halves coexist without either one undercutting the other.
Episode Progress 12 / 12 ✅ Completed
⚡ Quick Verdict
Everything that matters, at a glance.
⭐ Worth it?Yes — a specific, well-cast friendship comfort watch
⏱️ Commitment12 episodes · ~35 min each
💛 VibeThree best friends, a table full of soju, and a slow-burn office romance on the side
📺 Skip if…You want your romance plots resolved by the finale, not left for a sequel
⭐ 8.3 / 10 · MDL Score · 8,420 ratings
🎭 Cast & Characters
The trio, their circle, and everyone who shows up for one round too many.
Lee Sun-bin
Ahn So-hee
Lead
Han Seon-hwa
Han Ji-yeon
Lead
Jung Eun-ji
Kang Ji-goo
Lead
Choi Si-won
Kang Book-goo
Lead
Kim Jung-min
Hwang Dong-bae
Supporting
Jung Eun-pyo
Ahn Cheol-hwa
Supporting
Lee Soo-min
So-hyun
Supporting
Yoon Shi-yoon
Mr. Nice Paper
Supporting
Yoo In-young
Kim Sun-jung
Supporting
Joo Eo-jin
Kim Sun-kook
Supporting
Jung Hae-na
Writer A-young
Supporting
Son Ho-jun
Ahn Sung-soo
Supporting
🍿 Where to Watch
Stream Work Later, Drink Now (Season 1) on these platforms.
📺 Episode Guide
Enough per episode to jog your memory, nothing more.
EP 01
Drinking Soju on a Dakbal Christmas
Oct 22, 2021
Work Later, Drink Now opens by introducing its trio through the exact ritual that defines them: a Christmas Eve blind date goes sideways, and instead of sulking, So-hee just calls Ji-yeon and Ji-goo for dakbal and soju. The premiere doesn’t waste time on subtlety — overworked writer, unbothered yoga instructor, no-nonsense YouTuber — but it earns the shorthand fast, because watching these three debrief a bad date over chicken feet is funnier than the date itself.
EP 02
The Reason Why We Drink
Oct 22, 2021
Episode two backs up to explain why drinking together means this much to all three of them, and the answer isn’t complicated: work is exhausting, dating is worse, and a round of soju with people who already know your whole deal is cheaper than therapy. It’s a thesis-statement episode more than a plot one, and the show is smart enough to make that thesis funny instead of preachy.
EP 03
The Dangers and Powers of Alcohol
Oct 29, 2021
The show leans into its own premise here, treating alcohol as both the problem and the solution in the same breath — a few too many rounds cause exactly the kind of chaos you’d expect, and yet the fallout is what actually pushes the friendship, and a few budding office dynamics, forward. Work Later, Drink Now never moralizes about the drinking; it just lets the consequences play out as comedy.
EP 04
Bottle of Alcohol and Ambush
Oct 29, 2021
So-hee and Book-goo’s running budget war — the kind of petty office conflict that’s really about something else entirely — tips into an actual ambush this episode, and Choi Si-won plays the escalation with just enough smugness to make the enemies-to-lovers setup land. It’s the clearest signal yet that their workplace bickering isn’t going to stay professional for long.
EP 05
Alcohol Buddies’ Friendship Tested
Nov 5, 2021
Every friendship built on a nightly ritual eventually has the night it doesn’t work — someone’s not in the mood, someone says the wrong thing, and the usual dakbal-and-soju fix doesn’t fix anything. Work Later, Drink Now uses the strain well, treating a bad night out as a real rupture rather than a sitcom misunderstanding that resolves by the next scene.
EP 06
Why We Quit Our Job – Part 1
Nov 5, 2021
The show’s workplace half finally gets its own arc: one of the three hits the exact breaking point every overworked employee recognizes, and the episode doesn’t rush past it for a joke. Whatever comes next for her job, this is the episode where Work Later, Drink Now proves it’s willing to sit in the exhaustion instead of just narrating around it.
EP 07
Why We Quit Our Job – Part 2
Nov 12, 2021
Part two follows through on the setup instead of walking it back, and the decision that gets made here changes the shape of the friend group’s daily routine going forward. It’s a rare two-parter that actually needed both halves — the first episode earns the crisis, the second earns the choice, and neither one shortcuts the other for the sake of a faster resolution.
EP 08
The Jerks We Loved in the Past
Nov 12, 2021
An ex resurfaces — theirs always do — and Work Later, Drink Now uses the reunion to look backward at exactly the kind of relationships these three have survived and, mostly, laughed off. It’s less about romantic closure than about the specific comedy of watching your friends roast a bad ex you’ve clearly heard about a hundred times already.
EP 09
Last Festival
Nov 19, 2021
This is the episode the show has been quietly building toward — the light workplace comedy gives way to something genuinely heavier, and ‘Last Festival’ earns the shift instead of ambushing the audience with it. Work Later, Drink Now has spent eight episodes establishing exactly how these three lean on each other; here’s where that groundwork finally gets tested for real.
EP 10
Talk After Drunkenness
Nov 19, 2021
The emotional weight from the previous episode gets processed the only way this show knows how — one more round, and one long, honest conversation that wouldn’t happen sober. It’s the most vulnerable the three of them get all season, and the show trusts the drinking-as-therapy premise enough to let the scene breathe instead of cutting away.
EP 11
When Respect is Stronger Than the Alcohol
Nov 26, 2021
With the heaviest stuff behind them, the show starts tying off its threads — the So-hee/Book-goo standoff, the fallout from the job decision, the friendship strain — and does it by having its characters actually talk to each other like adults instead of drinking past the problem. The title says it plainly: this is the episode where sobriety, for once, does the heavy lifting.
EP 12
Avengers
Nov 26, 2021
The finale earns its title honestly — everyone who’s mattered across the season shows up for one last round, and Work Later, Drink Now closes the way it opened: three friends, a table full of drinks, and no problem that can’t at least be survived together. It’s a soft landing rather than a big twist, which is exactly the right instinct for a show this grounded in its own premise.
🏁 Ending Explained
Full spoilers ahead — everything that happens in the finale and what it all means.
⚠️ Spoiler Warning — This section covers the full finale of Work Later, Drink Now (Season 1). Stop here if you haven’t finished the series.
What actually happened The season closes with everyone who’s mattered to the trio gathering for one last round together — the finale doesn’t manufacture a dramatic cliffhanger so much as let every thread the season built (So-hee and Book-goo’s charged office rivalry, the fallout from the job-quitting arc, the friendship strain from episode five) settle into place around the same table. Nobody gets a clean romantic resolution yet; what they get instead is proof that the friendship survives everything the season threw at it.
Why the show resists a tidy romance ending Work Later, Drink Now keeps So-hee and Book-goo’s relationship exactly where enemies-to-lovers setups are supposed to leave you wanting more, rather than rushing them into a finale-episode confession. That restraint is deliberate — Season 2 exists specifically to keep pulling that thread, complications with the intern So-hyun included — so Season 1 closes on tension instead of resolution, and it’s a stronger finale for not forcing the issue.
The real arc was never the romance What the season actually resolves is the friendship, not the will-they-won’t-they. The rupture from ‘Alcohol Buddies’ Friendship Tested’ and the heavier stretch through ‘Last Festival’ and ‘Talk After Drunkenness’ all feed into the same place: three women who’ve now been tested by exhaustion, heartbreak, and a genuine falling-out, and chose each other anyway. That’s the actual payoff Work Later, Drink Now was building toward the whole time.
The job-quitting arc gets a real consequence The two-part ‘Why We Quit Our Job’ arc doesn’t get quietly forgotten by the finale either — whichever direction that decision pushed her life, the season follows through on it instead of resetting the status quo for a tidy ending. It’s a small thing, but it’s the detail that keeps Work Later, Drink Now from feeling like a sitcom where nothing actually changes.
The KDW verdict Season 1 ends less like a finale and more like a really good night out — nothing is fully resolved, everything that matters got said, and there’s clearly another round coming. For a show built entirely around the idea that the right people and the right drink can get you through anything, that’s exactly the right note to end on.
✍️ KDramaWorlds Editor’s Take
Here’s our real take, and exactly who this one’s for.
🍶 Soju Therapy 💼 Enemies to Lovers 👯 No Interchangeable Friends 🎢 Comedy That Turns Serious
What sells Work Later, Drink Now isn’t the drinking gimmick, it’s how specific the friendship feels. So-hee, Ji-yeon, and Ji-goo don’t read as three interchangeable single women written to fill an ensemble quota — each has a distinct job, a distinct coping mechanism, a distinct way of being drunk. It’s the same specificity that made Thirty-Nine work as a friendship drama rather than a lifestyle ad — you believe these people would actually pick up the phone for each other at 2 a.m.
The workplace half of the show, particularly the So-hee/Book-goo dynamic, gives Work Later, Drink Now a second engine besides the friendship — enough plot to keep individual episodes moving without the drinking sessions ever feeling like padding between them. It’s a similar trick to what Hospital Playlist pulls off with its own ensemble: the job gives the hangout scenes somewhere to come from.
It’s not a flawless season — a couple of the guest-star episodes lean harder on stunt casting than actual character work, and the tonal swing into episodes nine and ten works better in retrospect than it does in the moment, arriving almost without warning after eight episodes of comedy. But the show’s central bet, that watching three believable friends drink and vent is compelling television on its own, pays off far more often than it doesn’t.
👍👍👍 BEST FOR 👍👍👍
🍻 Anyone who wants a comfort-watch built around real friendship, not a love triangle 💼 Fans of workplace-adjacent slow-burn romance without the melodrama 🥂 Viewers who’d rather watch a hangout show than a plot machine
⚖️ Final Verdict
What works
•A trio of distinct, believable friends instead of interchangeable ensemble types
•The So-hee/Book-goo enemies-to-lovers dynamic gives the season a real second engine
•A tonal shift into episodes 9-10 that earns its weight instead of ambushing the comedy
What to know first
•A couple of guest-star episodes lean on stunt casting over character work
•The central romance is deliberately left unresolved for Season 2
•This is a hangout show first — plot-driven viewers may want more momentum
8.3 / 10— A specific, well-cast friendship dramedy that earns its comfort-watch reputation without coasting on the drinking gimmick alone.
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