KBS 2TV | Romance Anthology | 10 Episodes × 30 min | Aired Dec 14–28, 2025
Love Track is a KBS romance anthology — ten standalone episodes, ten different love stories, each about 30 minutes long. You don’t need to watch them in order. Each one stands on its own. And Episode 6, “Kimchi,” hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting.
This isn’t a romance. This is about a mother’s love — and whether that love is truly unconditional.
The Setup
Park Young Mi
Kim Sun Young
Gets diagnosed with cancer. She tells her husband she doesn’t want their son to know. She wants to protect him from it. So far, so maternal.
Her son Oh Min Woo
Kim Dan
Comes home to visit and asks her for $1,000 for tuition fees. Normal enough. But during the night, after he’s gone to bed, she stays up. She answers his phone. And she finds out the money isn’t for tuition at all.
He’s being blackmailed. Because he’s gay.
The Confrontation
When Min Woo gets up in the middle of the night, she confronts him. And instead of asking if he’s okay — instead of asking who’s blackmailing him, instead of being angry at the BLACKMAILER — she tells him he’s not gay. He’s just made a mistake.
She says to him — what did I tell you when I first got your stepdad and your granddad? You should make a mistake once but NEVER twice. So this is a mistake. That’s all it is. A mistake. And it won’t happen again.
She’s in complete denial. Her son is being extorted by someone and her response is “you’re not really gay, you’ve just messed up.”
And THEN — the emotional blackmail. She tells him he can’t be gay because she’s got cancer.
Let that sink in. She weaponises her cancer diagnosis — the one she was trying to protect him from — to try and make him be straight. She’s using her own illness as a tool to control who her son is.
So now this man is being blackmailed by a stranger for money AND emotionally blackmailed by his own mother to deny who he is. He’s trapped from both sides. So he does the only thing he can — he runs. He disappears for two weeks.
The Search
Young Mi goes to where he lives. Twice. She’s looking for him, she’s worried, but she’s still not ready to accept the truth. She meets a female friend of his who basically tells her straight — your son is gay. You need to accept this.
And she’s still saying no. No no no. My son is fine. My son is normal. My son just made a mistake.
This woman is standing in front of someone telling her the truth about her own child and she STILL can’t hear it because hearing it would mean accepting something she’s decided is unacceptable.
My Take
This episode showed me that this mother’s love had a price on it. And that’s the part that hurt the most.
Her son loved her unconditionally. He didn’t put conditions on his love for her. He didn’t say “I’ll love you as long as you accept me.” He just loved her. Even when she was denying who he was. Even when she was using her cancer to manipulate him. Even after he ran away — he still came back because he loved his mother.
But HER love? Her love came with terms and conditions. She loved her son as long as he was the version of himself she approved of. As long as he was straight. As long as he was “normal.” As long as he didn’t embarrass her. She was more worried about what PEOPLE would think about her and her son than what her son was actually GOING THROUGH.
That’s not unconditional love. That’s love with a price tag.
In the end, she did come through. She got there eventually. But the journey she put him through to get there — the denial, the emotional blackmail, the disappearance, the pain — that doesn’t just disappear because you eventually say “okay, I accept you.” The damage was done. The message he received was clear: my mother’s love depends on who I am, and if I’m the wrong version of myself, that love gets taken away.
I’m glad she came around. I am. But I can’t pretend the way she handled it was anything other than cruel. A mother should have unconditional love for her child. This mother didn’t. She put a price on hers. And her son paid it.
Quick Stats
Series Love Track (러브 : 트랙) — KBS Drama Special 2025
Episode 6 of 10 — “Kimchi”
Aired December 21, 2025
Duration 30 min
Network KBS 2TV
Genre Drama, Family
Director Lee Young Seo
Writer Kang Han
Cast
Kim Sun Young
Park Young Mi — the mother with conditional love
Kim Dan
Oh Min Woo — the son who loved unconditionally and got conditions in return
He was being blackmailed by a stranger for money. He was being blackmailed by his mother to be someone he’s not. One wanted his wallet. The other wanted his identity.
Love shouldn’t come with terms and conditions. But hers did.
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