# Private Lives (2020)

> Con artists expose a government and corporate surveillance scheme in a world where personal data is no longer private.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/89721

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 16
- Episode runtime: 70 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: crime, mystery, drama
- Network: JTBC
- Cast: Seohyun, Go Kyung-pyo, Kim Young-min, Kim Hyo-jin, Tae Won-seok, Lee Hak-ju, Song Seon-mi, Yoo Hee-je
- TMDB rating: 6.5/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12560270/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: brisk
- Intensity: moderate
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: mild
- Tone: tense, playful, paranoid, slick

## Synopsis

Private Lives (2020) is a South Korean scripted crime thriller series created for JTBC, a single-season run of sixteen episodes with runtimes of about seventy minutes each. Seohyun plays Cha Joo-eun, a con artist drawn into a conspiracy, alongside Go Kyung-pyo as Lee Jung-hwan and Kim Young-min as Kim Jae-wook, with Kim Hyo-jin as Jung Bok-ki and Tae Won-seok as Han Son rounding out the principal cast. The engine is a team of swindlers who uncover a sinister surveillance scheme run by the government and a greedy corporation, forcing them to pit their cunning against powerful institutions that treat personal data as a commodity. Each stretch of the story is built from elaborate cons, shifting alliances, and mounting pressure as the group digs deeper into the scheme. The show unfolds in a contemporary, data-saturated society where privacy has largely disappeared, giving the drama a tense, paranoid undercurrent. Its tone mixes slick, playful caper energy with a darker, suspicious atmosphere. Viewers who enjoy the surveillance paranoia of Mr. Robot, the morally flexible grifting of Leverage, or the Korean techno-thriller mood of Stranger will find resonance here.

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