I don’t know Korean and therefore may miss some fine nuances in the conversations, but this would hardly matter. The Korean films invaded Greece in the middle of the decade 2000. Much earlier we had a flood of Turkish serials which were in some ways better than the Greek ones but very slow and very long. Korean serials are a lot better but have their own faults.
The Yong Pal (2015) is as unrealistic as Iris (DK1). I watched it following up on beautiful Kim Tae-hee, who spent far too long in a supine position of sleep, unconsciousness or sickness (all enforced on her). She also cried copiously often with lots of tears. We had few glimpses of her lovely smile of genuine happiness, being in love (as in Iris). But this serial held a surprise for me – Joo Won (born Moon Joo-won Sept 1987) who I thought quite good. He is not as pretty-faced as Song Joong-ki, not as upright and imposing as Lee Min-ho (The King: Eternal Monarch), but showed an exceptional ability to express with minimal effort almost all the common human emotions. He rightly won the Daesang (Grand Prize) in 2015 (for his role in this serial) and subsequently other awards.
This serial has 18 episodes but could have finished with the 16th and should have finished with 12. A young heiress (chaebol) of a most wealthy and influential family, after an attempted suicide (falling from an upper floor on the street below and barely surviving), is put to a coma by her father’s instructions to the director of a family-owned large hospital, to be awakened after her father’s death who had terminal cancer, so that she would not be aggravated by his presence (the cause of her attempt). But with father’s death, the evil half-brother (Han Do-jun), from a discarded mistress, arranges with bribery to obtain control of the large Enterprise and have his sister (Han Yeo-jin) perpetually in coma! Meanwhile a young resident in that very hospital “Honshin” (with a sick sister who needs expensive medical care and eventual surgery) offers his services to crooks and gangsters for good money (hence the code-name Yong Pal) and corrupt plutocrats (including the Chief of Police). One day he witnesses with one of the good nurses how the heiress, after a brief awakening, having attempted to cut her veins, is brought to the Operation Room for surgery; she tries to slit her throat, but he saves her. Their glances meet and you know that a love-story will follow with the usual good end. Indeed, with considerable efforts he saves her form her horrible predicament and they get married. She regains her legal (and natural) pre-eminence while her brother gets arrested. The Chief Secretary and executor of many transgressions abandons Do-jun now, supports Chair-woman Yeo-jin and arranges according to her vengeful instructions to have the hospital director killed (and some others who had harmed her) but not her brother and his wife (Lee Chae-young).
However, her husband (Yong Pal=Kim Tae-hyun) advises her strongly to abandon her pursuit of revenge however intense her feelings may be. And here is the biggest fault of the serial. It is by no means the only one. Too much car-chasing appears in the 1st episode. In the 2nd two cars come, rescue Yong Pal and a big mafia boss, who is a caricature but provides enough mediocre humor, yet the police who had shown intense care before, this time don’t follow the cars! Shortly afterwards we have the first flashback where Yeo-jin’s boyfriend gets crashed and killed, but she survived. Then we have Tae-hyun’s burst of tearful sorrow in the flashback of his mother’s death – for added sentiment. Many inconsistencies and flashbacks follow.
In the 8th episode all Yeo-jin’s argumentation against Tae-hyun and her fears about her loss of the inheritance (and position of supreme power), because she was declared “dead” (falsely), is utterly stupid. He says that her brother and president Ko (who are allies against her) are crocodiles and may tear her apart but she retorts that she too can be a crocodile – and in the event she proves that she is just as vicious as they. In 10 and 11 we have incredible developments entirely at the whim of the script-writer. Yeo-jin returns to the hospital and appears all suddenly all-wrapped up in gauzes. But she has heard from a (good) chief Nurse who cared for her father, his last words and instructions – all of which help her in the showdown (during her sumptuous funeral) to defeat her brother and president Ko. Many more gross faults follow (particularly Tae-hyn’s delay in bringing the marriage certificate and thus showing himself very stupid).
We have two important faults about Yeo-jin’s insistence on revenge. (a) If she really was in love with Tae-hyun, her heart would have softened and the deep anger flaming the desire for revenge would have subsided. This is a major piece of ignorance on the part of the scriptwriter (and director and producers). (b) The second and far worse piece, but one that added plenty of footage is Tae-hyun’s arguments about the reason she should abstain from revenge. He tells her that both the Director and Chief surgeon Lee Ho-joon, who ensured that she stayed in coma and in the end (thought he) murdered her, had in fact saved her life after her first near-death attempt at suicide. These efforts rightly did not count for Yeo-jin! Tae-hyun should have argued that forgiveness and reconciliation, as in most tales (and the last plays of Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale, Tempest), are much more satisfying for all concerned, including the audience. Obviously, the scriptwriter and possibly most Koreans do not think so.
Episodes 17 and 18 show us a further plot not merely to dethrone Yeo-jin, but actually kill her – after inducing hallucinations and cancer of the liver with an addictive substance. Now the widow Lee Chae-young had not real motive for revenge. She hated her evil husband for 15 episodes and her claim that she pitied him after his fall is totally phony. The change of heart in Chief Secretary (a most convincing treacherous fellow) and some of the executives and the widow is not at all supported by any real motives – except the desire of the producers to have two more episodes. But the plot is very badly executed and so is the final release of (all too hasty)!
Nonetheless Yong Pal won the 2015 Hallyu Award of Best Drama. Obviously, critics don’t mind how rubbishy a serial is, so long as it has well-known stars, ensures large audiences and, of course, sales!
Kim Tae-hee is lovely but her performance had nothing that any other not so famous actress could not have displayed – and possibly better. Joo Won struck me as surprisingly good but his performance in My Sassy Girl (2017, a romantic serial of even lower quality) was not as commendable.
