Ha Seok-jin and Ahn Hee-yeon's New Romance Already Has Viewers Hooked: Here's Why Ratings Jumped After One Week

KBS 2TV's weekend drama Love Is Coming posted a 13.8% national rating in its second episode, up 1.8 percentage points from the premiere, confirming that the show's early buzz is translating into real viewership pull. For a KBS weekend slot, clearing 13% inside two episodes is a meaningful threshold: it places the drama well ahead of where most of this year's competitors stood at the same point in their runs.

The first two episodes, which aired on July 25 and 26, laid out the tangled family dynamics at the story's core: the Han siblings and their parents carry a web of grievances and shared history that the show is in no hurry to untangle. What hooked viewers early, though, was the central romance between Kim Mujin (Ha Seok-jin) and Han Gyurim (Ahn Hee-yeon), which moved from push-and-pull tension to a genuine emotional breakthrough before the second episode closed.

For most of those opening hours, Gyurim kept Mujin at arm's length, retreating behind practical excuses every time the relationship threatened to deepen. Mujin's response was to stay steady rather than retreat, and that patience eventually broke through her defenses. The moment the two finally acknowledged their feelings, complete with the kind of long-held tears that weekend dramas do particularly well, was enough to push anticipation for Episode 3 noticeably higher.

Production photos released on July 31 showed the couple in a lighter register: two people early in a first love, visibly distracted by the fact that the other person exists. The chemistry between Ha Seok-jin and Ahn Hee-yeon in those images reads as easy and warm, which makes the mood shift that follows feel more disruptive by contrast.

Because the sweetness does not last. Mujin is shown alone, expression hardened, carrying something he has not said out loud. His silence around whatever that truth is will clearly be the engine of Episodes 3 and 4, and the show seems confident enough in its audience to let that pressure build slowly.

The other thread worth watching involves Gyurim sitting across from Kim Yunjin (played by Miram), Mujin's older sister, in what the stills frame as a tense, deliberate meeting. Gyurim appears to hand Yunjin a voice recorder, and the contents of that recording are the drama's most pointed open question heading into the weekend. Whatever is on it connects the two women in a way that the main romance plotline has not yet explained.

Episode 3 of Love Is Coming airs Saturday, August 1, at 8 p.m. KST on KBS 2TV, with Episode 4 following Sunday, August 2. At the current ratings trajectory, the show is on pace to become one of the stronger-performing weekend dramas KBS has had this year. Circle the date: if the secret lands the way the setup promises, this is where the word-of-mouth goes from warm to loud.