What was the recipe behind the 2010 Webtoon Cheese in the Trap’s unprecedented popularity that got more than a million views per episode? Contrary to the typical romance stories, Cheese in the Trap features a subtle but dominant theme of thriller. While holding butterflies about who HongSul, the main female character, may be loving, the seemingly bipolar nature of her lover constantly keeps the readers on the their toes. As such, by placing the audience on a tightrope between tingly romance and chilling thriller, Soonkki, the author of Cheese in the Trap most fittingly traps the love of the readers all for her own.
Thanks to the popularity, in 2016 this unique romance thriller traps their audience once again through a TV series with the same name. The TV series inevitably has some deviation from the actual story line, but it is ultimately commended for its ability to accurately reenact the dynamic but two-dimensional characters to real life.
Motivated by its second success, Cheese in the Trap will once again be brought to the thriller-craving romantics the third time as a movie. This interpretation of the webtoon will carry the same storyline as the previous two mediums. Indeed, showing the audience the same story for the third time may be boring but the movie preempts this concern with accurate casting and a fast-paced story development.
Appropriately released on Korea’s uniquely celebrated romance holiday, White Day, the third interpretation of Cheese in the Trap was released in the theaters on March 14th. As March is also when campus romance begins to blossom with the warmth and familiarity of fellow students, the timing of this movie release could not be better.
However, with two different platforms for comparison available, many lovers of this story expressed major concerns for the movie. Compressing 160 episodes of the original comic or 16 hours of drama into less than two hours seemed unreasonable. The delicate changes in emotion were what attracted its audience—this running time would not guarantee such trivial details.
Cheese in the Trap’s endless march in newer interpretations of the unique story waits to trap more lovers into falling in love with the dynamic characters.