Well, I’ve finished another drama, and it was quite the
pulse-pounder! I’d heard nothing but good things about it before watching, so
that’s why I decided to check it out. Did it live up to expectations? Most
certainly! Did it do enough to claim the top spot on my list of favorite
dramas? Well…just read on.
Plot
If it wasn’t obvious, this may contain spoilers, particularly
about the first episode, so if you plan to watch, you might want to avoid this
section.
The action begins on October 9, 1983. Two significant events
happen on this day: our hero is born, and there’s an assassination attempt on
the South Korean president in Burma. Apparently this was a real incident, which I
hadn’t heard of before. Park Moo-Yeol (father of the boy born that day) and Lee
Jin-Pyo, secret service agents and best friends, are witnesses to this attempt,
which was perpetrated by North Korea.
Five South Korean government officials are outraged, and
together they conspire on a secret mission, Operation Clean Sweep, to kill off several
of North Korea’s military leaders in retaliation. Operation Clean Sweep is so
secret that even the president himself doesn’t know about it. Jin-Pyo and
Moo-Yeol are tapped to assemble an elite team of 21 men to carry out the
mission, and after doing so, they’re dropped off on the North Korean shores to
head for Pyeongyang. This whole mission, of course, is totally awesome.
However, back in Seoul, a monkey wrench has been thrown into
the plans. The South Korean president has announced that he doesn’t want to
retaliate against North Korea, and the U.S. has announced that if South Korea
tries to retaliate, they’ll withdraw their military protection from the
country. Choi Eung-Chan, the official who devised the operation and personally
guaranteed the 21 men that they’d return safely, doesn’t want to abort the
mission, since he’d given them his word, but the other four all agree that it’s
for the greater good to have the U.S.’s protection. Choi is left with little
choice but to find some way to cover up Operation Clean Sweep.
The 21 men are able to kill off several of their targets,
but Moo-Yeol, unfortunately, is severely injured by a soldier who stabs him.
They head back to the waters for the submarine to take them home. However, when
the hatch opens, a sniper with a gun emerges. He starts killing them one by
one, much to the shock of the soldiers, who don’t understand why someone from
their own side is shooting them. Moo-Yeol, who is already wounded, hides
Jin-Pyo under the water and takes the bullet that was intended for him,
allowing Jin-Pyo to be the sole survivor of the mission.
Jin-Pyo makes his way back to South Korea outraged at being
betrayed by his own country. He finds out the truth from spying on Choi and
plots his revenge. He kidnaps Moo-Yeol’s son and takes him to Thailand to raise
him himself. He names the boy Yoon-Seong and trains him in shooting and
fighting, all as part of his plan to avenge the deaths of his comrades.
By the time Yoon-Seong is 28 years old, he’s a skilled
fighter with a doctorate from MIT, and he returns to South Korea to work in the
Blue House’s (the South Korean capital building) internet systems department.
Jin-Pyo has sent him there with a mission to take down each of the five men
behind Operation Clean Sweep, and has warned him not to get emotionally
involved with anyone. Of course, given that our hero wouldn’t be very likable
if he were just a cold-blooded fighting machine, that advice is easier given
than followed, especially when he meets a girl named Kim Na-Na. As with most
Korean dramas, head vs. heart becomes a struggle within the story.
Writing and Acting
The acting was superb. I had no complaints about any of the
actors.
The pacing was good too. It felt well planned-out, not like
the type of thing where they’re making it up as they go along (as I think is
often the case with these dramas). I was also glad that the connections between
characters and incidents balanced out well. And of course, being an action
thriller, there were frequently surprises and intense situations that were
exciting to watch.
There were a few times when I felt the dialogue was a little
too perfect, though it may have been the fault of the subtitlers (I started
watching this drama on one site and finished it on another, because the
subtitles on the first site were so bad I was going crazy trying to keep up
with everything). By “too perfect,” I mean that it seemed like they were
beating the viewer over the head with certain things that weren’t necessary.
Hopefully it wasn’t as bad as I perceived it to be.
Music
In one episode, Na-Na is asked to choose a wedding
anniversary song for a politician, and she chooses one I hadn’t been familiar
with: “Over and Over” by Nana Mouskouri. It’s interesting that the singer has
the same name as Na-Na herself. I wonder if the writer was a fan and named her
after the singer?
There were also two songs at the noraebang that I’d never heard: “바보” (“Fool”)
by 혜령
(Hye-Ryeong), and “무시로” (“At Any Time”) by 나훈아 (Na Hoon-A).
English
Here are the terms I heard: “Thank you,” passport, ID card, “no
thank you,” sponsor, stent, security system, kiss, sticker, lame duck, date, hacking,
bar, one-night stand, steak, UFO, “Good!”, elevator, “good morning!”, server, spy,
“bingo!”, B cup, C cup, “one plus one,” trunk, home shopping, shower gel, poker
face, siren, paper company, database, sense, IP, studio, ice, drive, hunting,
booking, brake, coffee mix, ice coffee, loser, vampire, “as soon as possible,” presentation,
bench, shopping bag, alphabet, wrestler, infighter, straight, interior, partner,
terrorist, one shot, health club, alibi, triangle, double shot, ice cream
waffle, anti-café, barista, hidden card, anti-aging center, panic, cash cow, enter,
project
There were occasionally full sentences said in English, and humorously,
the pronunciation sounded awkward, like the actors were just reciting syllables
they didn’t understand. That’s probably how my Korean would sound to a native
speaker. There was a different character who spoke English at one point, and
while his pronunciation wasn’t as bad, his sentences didn’t sound natural, so I
wonder if they were written by a native English speaker.
The president’s daughter goes to a hagwon in one scene, and
we see her native English teacher. I think that guy sounded like a legitimate
native English speaker, if memory serves.
Other observations
This was definitely the bloodiest drama I’ve seen yet,
though I’m glad they spared us some of the gore in several scenes.
The actor who plays Yoon-Seong’s sidekick is the same actor
who played one of the uncles from “Unexpected You.” His character here was very
different though. He’s more bumbling and emotional here, as opposed to the steely,
intelligent and confident character in “Unexpected You.”
Na-Na is the first case I’ve seen of a person in modern
times whose given name consists of two of the same character, real life or
fictional. There was, however, a courtesan named Seom-Seom in Hwang Jin-Yi.
There’s a scene where the president’s daughter gets into a
fight in public, and everyone pulls out their cameras instead of trying to do
something about it. Somehow I assumed Koreans didn’t lower themselves to
Worldstar Hip Hop levels.
I think I saw a camera man’s reflection in a window in one
scene. I have no further comment on that, I just thought it was funny.
Yoon-Seong is driving while doing a video call in one scene,
and he witnesses an intense situation on the screen. I could only wonder how he
focused on the road.
At one point they show what’s supposed to be an American
high school yearbook, and you see pictures of students who have English first
and last names, yet the pictures accompanying them look like Korean people.
All right, now that I’ve gotten those frivolities out of the
way, I’d like to talk about my biggest beef with this drama: the political
preaching. Every one of the five guys they went after was used to send a
left-wing political message. I’ve become especially sensitive about how we
conservatives are marginalized these days, so I feel it’s necessary to respond to it. Once again, there
might be spoilers in this next part.
The first guy they went after was a crooked parliament
member who was embezzling government money that was intended for welfare. Since
I was still watching the crappily-subtitled version when they dealt with him, I
don’t specifically know if this guy was supposed to be a “conservative,” but
statements he made like “the government isn’t a charity” suggested it. They
portrayed him as a gargoyle who spat on the poor (figuratively speaking) and
cared nothing for the public good. They used two poor young kids, a brother and
sister, to humanize the issue and make it seem as though government dependency
was some magic cure for poverty.
Now I’ll admit, perhaps a homogeneous country like South
Korea, with higher social capital and cultural unity, is better suited for an
expansive welfare system than diverse countries full of third-world immigrants,
but I still felt it was manipulative, and I didn’t like the characterization of
welfare non-worshippers as crooked thieves who simply don’t care about the
poor. The theory behind reducing welfare is that it encourages more
self-reliance and thence, productivity. Just because you can imagine a few odd
cases where that absolutely isn’t possible doesn’t mean that the general
principle is wrong. Even if you disagree with that view, for many people who
hold it, including me, it’s ultimately motivated by love and a desire to see
people better themselves.
The second guy they took down was definitely a conservative
politician. We know this because he won his party’s nomination as presidential
candidate, and right before his corruption was exposed, the host of the debate
he was to participate in characterized his opponent’s priority as “reducing the
gap between the rich and the poor.”
Again I say, there is a legitimate discussion to be had
about how large the gaps between the rich and poor should be, but these days,
everyone who talks about it thinks that the only solution is to somehow bring
down the rich and redistribute their money to the poor, who would surely put it
to good use if it were simply handed to them (an idea I can’t help being
skeptical of). We hear enough subtle “hate-the-rich” rhetoric anytime Obama
gives a speech, and hearing it in a Korean drama is enough to grind me. After
seeing this policy produce disastrous results throughout much of the Western
world, it saddens me to think about countries trying to adopt it.
The third guy they went after was a college president who
was embezzling tuition money from his university. He had promised the students
lower tuition, but he was claiming that it was impossible to keep the promise
because the funds weren’t there. Of course, this led to characters pontificating
on how poor people just can’t get an education in this day and age, and how
education should be a right for everyone, etc.
Certainly, a guy who breaks a promise like that and lies to
justify it is acting immorally, but if, theoretically, the funds really hadn’t
been there, what would their complaint have been? Providing an education
requires resources, which have to come from somewhere. If it simply isn’t
possible to provide something, how can it be a right? Ah, I know! It’ll have to
come from that bottomless money supply, the government, opening up a whole new
Pandora’s Box of dependency!
The fourth guy they took down was the president of a chaebol, which is what Koreans call
large conglomerate companies. This guy had workers at a chemical plant who were
protesting because he hadn’t followed proper safety regulations, and the
workers’ health was suffering. He sent thugs to rough up the protesters, and
also forced one who had leukemia to sign a statement under duress that absolved
the corporation of responsibility (I wonder if the writers were aware that in
America, the unions, which ostensibly protect such workers, are often the ones
sending out thugs to rough people up). He was basically a quintessential
Marxist archetype of the bourgeois owner
who only cared about money and held his workers in contempt.
If such a mean-spirited person existed, yes, it would be
good to see him brought down, but I couldn’t help but think that the idea we
were supposed to take away is that anyone with that much money has to be evil.
As leftists are known to do, they create straw men to make their point.
Oh yeah, this guy was also lobbying to privatize healthcare,
and he was denounced as taking away the protection of the poor. Again I say, a
homogeneous country like Korea with low crime is probably better suited for a
government healthcare system than the U.S. is, but there’s still the issue of how there are potential
dangers in creating entitlements that are dependent on available resources.
Everything’s nice until the money runs out.
The fifth guy (the aforementioned Choi Eung-Chan) was portrayed sympathetically, and even though
he did some dishonest things, he was an egalitarian whose worst crimes were
getting money from questionable sources and bribing people to get altruistic
legislation passed. In the viewer’s mind, he’s supposed to be forgiven due to
his scruples in owning up to his mistakes (which he allows to end his political career) and general concern for the less
fortunate.
Certainly, Koreans have different perspectives on a lot of
issues than Americans do, because their country has a much different history
and composition. While I’ve conceded that certain policies might possibly work
better there, I still get irritated listening to these principles touted with
self-righteous fervor, because I can see flawed thinking at the root of them
where perhaps most people can’t. But hey, it sounds so wonderfully benevolent
and that’s all that matters, right? Isn’t that pretty much liberalism to a T?
Final thoughts
This was a thrilling drama, and I’m glad I watched it. The
left-wing preachiness, however, detracted from my enjoyment, and for that
reason, I just can’t place it above Beethoven
Virus (well, that and the fact that Beethoven
Virus still had the much, much better soundtrack and made me tear up more
often). After seven dramas, here’s my ranking:
1.
Beethoven
Virus
2.
City
Hunter
3.
Unexpected
You
4.
Three
Dads, One Mom
5.
Lovers
in Paris
6.
Hwang
Jin-Yi
7.
Spring
Day
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