The first time CEO Lee Gun (Jang Hyuk) appears onscreen in the South Korean television series “Fated to Love You,” he’s interrupting a commercial shoot for a shampoo that his chemical company produces. Displeased with a snooty model’s complaints that the shampoo is subpar, he strips himself of his expensive watch, designer sunglasses, scarf and three-piece suit-jacket, strides onto the set without identifying himself and douses his own hair with water and shampoo. The commercial director, aware of how brilliant a performance he’s being handed, starts to shoot. Gun ends his performance by ripping his shirt open and bragging that his washboard abs are the work of three generations of artisans. He ends with a big laugh. The laugh will become a signature of the character over the series’ 20-episode run, at turns annoying and tiresome, then thrilling and anticipated. But in that moment, it was just novel and strange and somehow perfect for selling shampoo.
It’s in this opening scene that I knew I was going to lose my entire weekend to binge-watching “Fated to Love You.” I spent three days glued to Netflix, watching the story of Gun, a brilliant, wealthy businessman, and Kim Mi Young (Jang Na-Ra), a mousy legal temp from a remote island village, who find themselves thrown together one fateful night, then bound by that most predictable of plot twists: an unplanned pregnancy. The pregnancy leads to a shotgun marriage; Gun, a long-term bachelor, needs an heir, and Mi Young, though willing to terminate the pregnancy if Gun wants to, goes with the general consensus of keeping it.
(It’s important to note that the viewer’s ability to enjoy this series is contingent on how willing she is to accept drugging as a plot device. Both Gun and Mi Young are drugged — the latter intentionally, the former accidentally — by Mi Young’s brother-in-law and his colleague at the soap factory on their island. The plot point is handled merrily, like something out of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” but given the many stories of drugging and non-consensual sex that have been in the news in recent months, courtesy of Bill Cosby, it’s hard to let the moment slide — especially since it happens not once, but twice, recurring again in the series’ penultimate episode.)
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This, however, is the great part about watching a series that takes place far away from the atrocities and scandals that dominate my own country’s news cycles. I can choose not to impose my cultural subtext onto the narrative and observe how differently another country approaches portraying familiar situations. The days-long immersion is a welcome respite from my nonstop stateside anxieties. Korean soap operas — or “K-dramas” — are growing in popularity among U.S. viewers, thanks in part to the Korean Wave, a strategic push for Korean pop cultural products and exports that dates to the 1990s, and streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu that offer dozens of the series. It wouldn’t surprise me if others who binge-watch K-dramas do so for similar reasons.
I forged ahead with “Fated to Love You” largely due to Jang Hyuk and Jang Na-Ra’s performances and the impressive amount of time the show spent on developing its characters. Mi Young’s first scene, for instance, shows her rushing toward the office in large, owlish glasses, arms laden with trays of coffee, dry cleaning, file folders and Post-it notes. Exposition immediately tells us she’s a pushover whose fatal flaw is that she can’t disappoint anyone, but over time, that flaw drills down and away from predictability. Mi Young’s intense concern for others is, in fact, one of her greatest fortunes, even when it impedes her own happiness. We wait for well over half the series to see her overcome it, and when she does, it’s actually disappointing. What she gains in assertiveness she loses in playfulness. We realize, through Mi Young, that making decisions that take into account the feelings of others isn’t something to be overcome at all.
Share this articleShare“Fated to Love You” has two other main characters: Kang Se Ra (Wang Ji-won) and Daniel Pitt (Choi Jin-hyuk). Se Ra is Gun’s girlfriend of six years, a prima ballerina who has reluctantly placed her career before their relationship. Daniel is an internationally renowned designer with a long-lost sister he has been searching for ever since he was adopted to the United States as a child. Se Ra and Daniel eventually become the third and fourth points on a love rectangle, their feelings for Gun and Mi Young respectively threatening to break up the couple’s tentative union. Se Ra, to whom Gun had intended to propose, found it difficult to understand how he could marry someone else so suddenly, even with a baby. Daniel, protective of Mi Young because she reminds him of the sister he lost, doesn’t trust that Gun’s feelings for her are sincere and honorable.
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Gun and Mi Young’s feelings for each other are, perhaps, the most fascinating part of the series. Gun, who oozes sexiness in the show’s first scene, quickly betrays a goofy, childish, socially awkward side. And that signature laugh, meant to intimidate and unnerve in public, becomes something he uses to hide his many vulnerabilities. Mi Young, already so timid and retreating with everyone, isn’t afraid of Gun. As formidable as he is, she doesn’t shrink from him. The first time they meet, she learns that he’s afraid of dogs and that she can outrun him. His laugh annoys and confuses her more than it ever intimidates her. In every subsequent encounter, she treats him as a kind of emotional — if not social — equal.
“Fated to Love You” is filled with all the predictable narrative turns that mark most nighttime soap operas in the United States. But what made it so welcome and addictive for me was that it also had strange fits of whimsy. The trysts at the beginning and end of the series were depicted in dream sequences where Gun and Mi Young wore elaborate costumes and played suggested hand games; Gun occasionally makes people freeze, complete with cheesy CGI “ice” encasing the person’s body. More important, the show was content to focus entirely on the central relationship, taking us to its darkest and most gleeful stages, without burdening us much with subplots about corporate takeovers or characters unconnected to our leads.
It’s also surprisingly chaste, an element that Tom Larsen, president of YA Entertainment, the company that licenses Korean dramas in North America, believes is responsible for the growing popularity of K-dramas among American viewers. “[These series] have captivated US audiences, including a growing viewership turned off by the sex, gore, and violence that drives today’s American entertainment industry,” Larsen wrote in a release to PR Newswire.
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On the second afternoon I spent binge-watching “Fated to Love You,” I tweeted about it. Within minutes, I received admonitions from followers about how addictive K-dramas are. They were right. I gave myself a day to decompress, smiling at random about Gun, Mi Young and their deeply gratifying happiness. Then I couldn’t take the withdrawal any longer, scouring Netflix K-drama series descriptions until I found next weekend’s escapist portal. Its title: “Cunning Single Lady.”
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