Between Steps brings the understated romantic style associated with late director Ahn Pan-seok into an unusual graduate-school setting shaped by robotics, lost ambitions, and two highly educated people who know surprisingly little about love.
Led by Choo Young-woo and Kim So-hyun, the ENA drama turns career detours and emotional hesitation into the foundation for a deliberately grounded romance.
Park Min-jae is a former competitive swimmer who loses his right leg to osteosarcoma and eventually rebuilds his future through robotics, while Im Yoo-jin changes academic direction after her original plans collapse.
Their relationship develops among research deadlines, laboratory colleagues, physical vulnerability, and the uncomfortable business of beginning again.
Behind that restrained setup was a production process full of unusually personal preparation and a director determined to keep performances alive rather than polished into predictability.
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1. Choo Young-woo and Kim So-hyun Stayed Formal Until Halfway Through Filming
Being the same age did not automatically make the two leads casual with each other. Choo Young-woo continued using formal speech with Kim So-hyun until roughly the middle of filming because she had entered the industry much earlier and was his senior in experience.
Kim So-hyun admitted that the formality created a noticeable distance between them at first.
Instead of hurting the romance, that distance became useful. Choo Young-woo felt their initial awkwardness suited the early stages of Min-jae and Yoo-jin’s relationship, while their growing off-camera familiarity began matching the characters’ increasing closeness.
By the latter half of production, they had finally switched to informal speech.
2. Choo Young-woo Had a Prosthetic-Leg User Beside Him During Filming
Min-jae’s prosthesis was not treated as a prop that an actor could simply strap on and understand.
A man who actually uses a prosthetic leg regularly joined the production and taught Choo Young-woo practical details about movement, fitting, maintenance, charging, and storage.
The actor was able to learn what handling the device looks like when it is part of everyday life rather than a dramatic reveal.
The preparation went beyond mechanics. The adviser also shared personal stories about daily life and romantic relationships, giving Choo Young-woo behavioral context that could not be learned from a technical demonstration alone.
That makes the training one of the production’s most important behind-the-scenes details: the actor was studying not only how Min-jae moves, but how someone might live around the routines and emotions connected to a prosthesis.
3. Kim So-hyun Was Encouraged to Break Habits Built Over Years of Acting
A long career can create instincts that work almost too efficiently. Kim So-hyun, who began acting as a child, described Ahn Pan-seok as someone who helped her move beyond frameworks she had built over years of performing.
Instead of demanding that she arrive with every emotional beat already decided, he repeatedly gave her room to search for Yoo-jin inside the scene.
The director’s trust could be disarming. When she sought answers about how the character should behave, his approach was often to return responsibility to the actress and let her determine what Yoo-jin would know or feel.
Kim So-hyun later credited that process with reopening something in her as a performer and reminding her why she enjoyed acting in the first place.
4. Ahn Pan-seok Wanted Actors to Respond to What Was Actually Happening Around Them
The director resisted performances that felt assembled before anyone reached the location.
Choo Young-woo recalled that Ahn Pan-seok placed great importance on what an actor could actually see, hear, and feel within the circumstances of the set rather than asking them to manufacture every reaction in advance.
That freedom did not mean the production lacked structure. Kim So-hyun remembered the director constantly discussing the work with the crew and thinking carefully about how each element would reach viewers.
The balance was unusually specific: prepare the world thoroughly, then leave enough space for the actors to behave like people rather than performers executing a preset emotional diagram.
5. One Blunt Comment From the Director Stayed With Choo Young-woo
Not all of Ahn Pan-seok’s guidance came gently. Choo Young-woo remembered the director telling the cast during filming that if what they were doing did not feel like art or literature, they should go home. The remark jolted him.
For the actor, the line became less of a reprimand than a reminder of how seriously the director regarded the work.
Choo Young-woo later described Ahn Pan-seok as someone whose influence would remain with him long after the production ended.
A romance built from apparently mundane conversations was being approached with the same seriousness other filmmakers might reserve for far louder material.
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6. Their Chemistry Was Already Surprising Them at the First Script Reading
Before cameras rolled, the first table read produced a reaction Choo Young-woo had not expected.
Sitting opposite Kim So-hyun and reading Min-jae and Yoo-jin’s exchanges, he said he genuinely felt butterflies. He also described being more emotionally affected by the script reading than he had ever been during one before.
Kim So-hyun noticed their rhythm immediately too. It was her first meeting with Choo Young-woo, yet she felt that their conversational back-and-forth already worked naturally, and the room was filled with enough laughter that she anticipated an equally lively filming environment.
The later awkwardness between them was therefore not a lack of chemistry—it was the more interesting combination of strong acting rhythm and real social formality.
7. The Robotics-Lab Ensemble Built Scenes by Trading Ideas
The supporting cast did not operate as isolated performers waiting for the leads to arrive.
Choo Young-woo described the research-lab set as respectful and collaborative, with each character bringing a different energy to the ensemble.
He felt that the group’s natural chemistry translated directly into the laboratory scenes.
Kim So-hyun remembered plenty of laughter and active idea-sharing among the cast.
That collaborative atmosphere matters because the lab functions as a social ecosystem, not simply a convenient location for romance.
Its researchers needed to feel like people who had actually spent long stretches of time arguing, studying, joking, and working in the same room.
8. The Writer Built the Romance Around People Who Are Smart Everywhere Except Love
The research setting contains a deliberate joke. Writer Min Hyo-jung described the drama’s appeal in terms of highly educated people experiencing both the joy and despair of knowing very little about romance. Their academic intelligence does not give them emotional fluency.
That idea shaped more than the premise. The series favors ordinary situations because the characters cannot solve attraction with the tools they use to solve technical problems.
A robotics laboratory therefore becomes an ideal romantic arena: the people inside it are trained to analyze complex systems, yet another person’s feelings remain stubbornly resistant to calculation.
9. Ahn Pan-seok Was Still Deeply Engaged With the Set During His Recovery
Executive producer Kim Hyun-jung later recalled that Ahn Pan-seok was recovering during the filming period but remained energized by being on set.
She remembered the production trying to enjoy the work together, while his enthusiasm reinforced how naturally he belonged in that environment.
His engagement continued into the editing process. The production team relayed that he spoke admiringly about Choo Young-woo while reviewing footage and repeatedly praised Kim So-hyun’s performance.
That makes Between Steps especially poignant within his filmography: the drama carries not only his recognizable interest in quiet relationship dynamics, but some of his final direct creative responses to two younger actors finding their way through that style.
FAQ: Popular Questions About Between Steps
How many episodes does Between Steps have?
Between Steps has 12 episodes.
Who wrote Between Steps?
Between Steps was written by Min Hyo-jung.
Where can you watch Between Steps?
Between Steps airs on ENA in South Korea and is available on Disney+ in supported regions.
Final Thoughts on Between Steps
Between Steps treats rebuilding a life as something quieter than a triumphant restart. Min-jae and Yoo-jin carry different forms of interruption into their relationship, and the romance becomes meaningful because neither person can simply reason their way through fear, attraction, or uncertainty.
The series also carries particular weight as one of Ahn Pan-seok’s final works, preserving his preference for observation, conversational intimacy, and emotional detail over spectacle.
If Between Steps has already drawn you in, share the scene—or the smallest character moment—that has stayed with you most.
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