Korean Drama: Secret Starring Ji Sung

I know I haven't blogged in a long time, but sometimes life gets in the way. It's not that I haven't been watching Korean dramas or haven't found one that was worth writing about, it's just too much time has passed for me to write about them. However, out of all the ones I have watched, one has stayed with me in the back of my mind and heart. That drama is Secret.

Last year was all about the supernatural and the usual romantic dramas that we love. And then along came Secret. A melodrama that portrayed such a deep and grief-filled love that the feels from episode to episode were overwhelming.

Secret is a drama about a woman named Kang Yoo Jung (Hwang Jung Eum) who takes the blame for her boyfriend, An Do Hoon's (Bae Soo-Bin), hit-and-run car accident, thinking that she could save the future prosecutor some trouble with the law. Unfortunately, what seemed like a mere crash into a water tank, resulted in the death of a young, pregnant woman. The twist is that the boyfriend knew what he did, let her take the blame, and when she was taken to jail, he had the audacity to try to keep her in there to cover his tracks.

To be fair, he tried to keep her from taking the blame, but she insisted thinking that she would not get in a lot of trouble. She ends up getting sentenced to jail for four years for the hit-and-run.

On the sidelines is Jo Min Hyuk (Ji Sung), who sees his pregnant girlfriend's supposed murderer and is planning some revenge of his own.  He decides to buy out her house and her business just to mess with her and keep her dependent on him. Unfortunately, after four years in jail and constant deception and betrayal, this girl is ready to lay down and die or at the very least live quietly for the rest of her life.

Let's talk about what has been done to her by the time she leaves prison:

1) Her boyfriend lets her take the blame for his crime
2) She finds out she's pregnant and raises her child IN JAIL.
3) When her boyfriend is told to vote on whether to let her out with THEIR CHILD, he votes not to let her out. (At this point I was designing ten thousand ways to kill a human being)
4) Her child is killed in prison
5) Her boyfriend dumps her and treats her as a burden once she's out of jail

Case in point, this woman has been crushed repeatedly. She has reached rock bottom. There is nothing else that could possibly happen to her that could destroy her further. She is not only living with the death of her child, the situation of being considered a pariah in Korean society, and the betrayal of her boyfriend who never stepped in even when their child was born. She also has to live with her decisions and the fact that she had a hand in all that happened to her child by not stepping in and doing what's best for them instead of only thinking about the prosecutor who must maintain his pristine reputation.

But grief-stricken Min Hyuk has his own regrets and his own guilt to deal with and so he uses Yoo Jung as an emotional punching bag. However, the beautiful thing about his character is that despite his grief he begins to see her. To feel that she could not possibly be a cold-blooded murderer and starts investigating. I find this fascinating. It is incredible that he is willing to look past his grief and he starts to grief for her, to hurt for her and by the end he's crying for her. He becomes her strength, her anchor when she starts drifting away and giving up. He gives her the strength to get revenge and this is why this drama has stayed with me even a year later.

If this drama were a painting, it could only be described as vibrant, beautiful and achingly bittersweet. It would also have a lot of red and black because of all the pain and rage you feel when you watch this.

Do Hoon becomes such a disgusting human being that he is unrecognizable. Just seeing his face on the screen made me want to vomit. He became greedier and more cowardly as the episodes went by and my love for humanity dropped by fifty percent because of this man. He killed this woman's father and indirectly by keeping her in jail, her child. He took EVERYTHING from her.

To vent my rage, I have designed five ways he should be brought to the brink of death:

1) His skin should be melted off of his body while he is nailed to the wall
2) His legs and arms should be cut off as well as his tongue
3) He should be chained to the center of Seoul so that people could his mouth as a toilet
4) He should be made to bleed to death
5) His private area should be cut off and then the rest of his body should be frozen to death while his limbs are ripped from his body one by one

As you can see, I turned into a psycho because of this drama. My mind could not compute how a human being could do this to another human being. To a LOVED ONE.

So....

Watch this because it's rare to see a Korean drama that does not mess up the ending. It's rare to see incredible character development. It's rare to see love growing from such grief. It's rare to see forgiveness and redemption. Most of all, watch because this drama does an incredible job of contrasting the incredible human beings of this world and the monsters of this world.




Please stay tuned for my review of It's Okay, That's Love, a drama starring Zo In Sung.