Yaongyiโs True Beauty (์ฌ์ ๊ฐ๋ฆผ) is a romance webtoon that opened with a prologue on Naver Webtoon on April 2, 2018. Its heroine, Lim Ju-kyung, is a high school student who has been mocked for her looks. She teaches herself makeup, transfers to a new school, and is suddenly called a goddess. Hiding her bare face, she becomes entangled with two boys, Lee Su-ho and Han Seo-jun. At the center is her fear that nobody would recognize her without makeup, and the slow process of letting that fear go. Set in a school where judging appearance is routine, it tackles self-esteem head-on, which is a large part of why it resonated with teenage readers.
First, the publication record. The main story posted its final episode on September 5, 2022, followed by 33 side-story episodes that ended on May 1, 2023 with a final chapter and afterword. That makes 261 episodes on Naver Webtoon. Cumulative global views stood at 6.4 billion as of a February 2025 report. As of January 2022, the English edition had 6.6 million subscribers and 825.9 million views, and in 2019 it was the third most viewed series on all of WEBTOON. A print edition has been published by Young Com since October 29, 2020.
The drama aired on tvN from December 9, 2020 to February 4, 2021 as a sixteen-episode Wednesday-Thursday series, directed by Kim Sang-hyeop and Park Ji-hyun and written by Lee Si-eun. Moon Ga-young played Lim Ju-kyung, Cha Eun-woo played Lee Su-ho, Hwang In-youp played Han Seo-jun, and Park Yoo-na played Kang Su-jin. Ratings went from 3.6% for the premiere to a peak of 4.6% in episode fifteen and finished at 4.5% (Nielsen Korea, nationwide). Its reception abroad outweighed its domestic ratings: after Viu and Rakuten Viki, it reached Amazon Prime Video on October 21, 2021 and Netflix in select territories from 2023.
The animated series was announced on August 4, 2021 and produced by Studio N, Naver Webtoonโs video subsidiary, together with Cocktail Media. Crunchyroll began releasing it weekly on August 7, 2024 everywhere outside Asia, and it wrapped with its thirteenth episode on October 30. The opening song, โMy Highlight,โ is sung by Jo Yu-ri, formerly of IZ*ONE. In Japan, U-Next streamed a Japanese dub from October 5, 2024. Season one entered Crunchyrollโs top twenty most-watched titles and ranked fifth in the drama genre. Japan also made live-action films: True Beauty: Before opened on March 20, 2025 and True Beauty: After on May 1, with Kลki playing Reina Tanikawa, the counterpart to Lim Ju-kyung.
The reason to pick it up again now is the second anime season. Crunchyroll announced it on January 4, 2025, and on February 6 Studio N confirmed that the season is in production with Cocktail Media and will stream on Crunchyroll. As of August 2026, however, we have not been able to confirm an announced release window. The drama ends within the high school years, while the webtoon continues into university and beyond, so anyone who watched the drama can pick up the rest of the story in the webtoon. The Korean edition is on Naver Webtoon and Naver Series, and the English edition is on WEBTOON. (As of August 21, 2026)
