Don’t let promotions fool you this is not a ROMANTIC drama, it would be better described as a political drama, and by the lack of romantic scenes in all 16 episodes, it should hardly ever be considered a romance.

In terms of plot (not going to discuss the controversies, I believe there are better articles that explained it pretty well), I consider the first 2 to 3 episodes and the last 3 as the best ones in this big mess. The first episodes show us a glimpse into the life of Koreans in the 80s, especially the university/dorm life, and for me, that was captivating and interesting. However the drama loses its train of thought the moment the hostage situation begins and we spend the next 10+ episodes stuck in a loop, where the story sort of repeats - Main characters just look at each other, the north and south talk on the phone, somehow Young Ro starts crying, and in the end we see all the politics betraying just to save their skin.

All of this is amplified by the running time of each episode, after seeing the same repeating plot, patience starts to become short to continue. Because of this, the story starts to show its flaws, one of them being the introduction of already known character's hidden/past life, in most cases, they weren’t needed and it only created a new story line that by the end we didn’t get all the answers we wanted to it. After a dull plot for most of the running time, it appears the writers remember that they have to finish the drama, so they rush every good aspect in terms of action and character development to the last 3 episodes, which makes the ending feel very much rushed and while a lot of the questions got a response, the last 2 episodes created even more questions to arise - what happened to the students, the friendship of the roommates of room 207, the blooming friendship of Boon Ok and Pi, what happened Kim Man Dong's son,where did doctor Kang go…
One positive, I appreciate how humor scenes were done, it helped at times to pick the flow back again, even if most scenes were over the top. I feel this drama would benefit if it had a smaller running time.

The performances by the cast were phenomenal with Jung Hae In, Soo In Na, Jang Seung Jo, Yoon Se Ah and Kim Hey Yoon giving everything to their characters, we could see their growth and emotions very well represented, especially Jung Hae In. The actresses that played the students were well cast, giving their all, in particular the roomates of 207. One character that I did not like was Nam Tae, for me he became a very annoying presence.
Jisoo's performance wasn’t a bad one for a rookie actress, however in terms of development, her character barely had any, she spent most of the drama crying, and at times not only would she barely appear on screen but her story would be overshadowed by other characters life. In the end, I feel that Young Ro was not used by the writers to the full potential, in particular in the scenes with Sooho as both actors had great chemistry, and I feel that in a way Jisoo was mostly used to attract audiences to see a drama that even before its premiere was already in hot waters in South Korea.

Finally, for me, the only aspect of the drama that was executed to the point of perfection was the OST, which gave the drama a different dimension. The SET, maybe because almost 90% of the drama was spent in the same location, the production/design team gave it all in the details and you could see the high quality on-screen.

To the question would rewatch this drama, my answer is NO.
(English is not my first language, so I apologize if something is wrong or hard to read)