I enjoyed the movie overall and found the story quite gripping. There were some direction in terms of plot that I felt was a bit heavily handed and somewhat predictable but at least the choices made by the characters made sense as the scenario provided sufficient background story to depicts their motivation and inner turmoil.

The cast is overall excellent. I truly love Han Hyo Joo and she tackes brilliantly the role. You cannot help but feel for her character and the tragic elements of her life story. The other main role, played by So Ji Sub delivers a performance matching hers in quality, full of charisma, passion and dramatic moments.

The filmmaking was very good. Even watching it 13 years later, it is still very up to nowadays standard for pictures in that specific genre. There were so many particularly well filmed and beautiful romantic scenes (e.g. the staircase one, the river,...) as well as so many little details in the production allowing the build up of the characterization of the two main protagonists.

I would recommend this to people looking for a good romantic story full of turmoil and emotion as it is centered arount the encounter of two broken-by-life human beings. The story in itself is not without flaws but is quite poetic and the sincere performances of the two main leads brought up to a higher level the scenario.