I went into Women in the Sun already set on liking Lee Ha Na, but I didn’t always have so much Lee Ha Na love. In the first drama I saw her in, the kind of strange When Spring Comes (Kkot-pi-neun Bom-i O-myeon – KBS 2007), I actually didn’t think much of her at all, at first. But she, and the drama in general, soon totally won me over. It didn’t sound very promising to me – did I really want to see a drama about a guy from a family of criminals who wants to become a prosecutor? – but I’m so glad that I watched it. It was a really nice, heartwarming story about people trying to deal with bad parents, and wanting to forget where they came from. Who doesn’t love a story like that?
Lee Jung Do (Park Gun Hyung, I Do, I Do) is a third generation criminal, by birth only – he wants to distance himself as much as possible from his unsavory family. His father and grandfather have both been in jail for fraud and forgery, respectively, but he intends to buck the trend by becoming a lawyer (since no lawyers are ever crooks, right?).
He’s smart and driven enough to do whatever he wants, even with the handicap of a crime family. I thought this was crazy – how the sins of his father (and grandfather) were literally visited on him since he was turned away from jobs because of what they had done.
Anyways, he eventually becomes a prosecutor, and sets about trying to fix a corrupt society, all while exploiting his long-suffering assistants (he was the worst boss ever). He thinks he’s rising out of the mud of his former life, but what happens when the next person he has to prosecute is his father? Has he not left his old life behind as much as he had thought?
Ok, that plot sounds pretty serious, and maybe even boring, but this drama had a nice light touch, so nothing ever felt that stuffy or painful, especially considering the potentially heavy and downery subject material. This was helped in large part by the strong focus on family and romance – he can’t be a prosecutor 24/7, right? And the drama’s called When Spring Comes, so you know that romance will be very important to the story. Because Jung Do’s spring comes very soon in the drama.
Fittingly enough, he falls in love with a small-time crook, Moon Chae Ri (Lee Ha Na), who is also rebelling against her family. He first meets her when he catches her trying to pick pockets in the subway station, and as their paths continue to cross (as they can only do in a drama), he realizes he has fallen very much in love with this girl, whom he likes to call Mango (I guess that’s prosecutor humor). It might take a little longer for her to realize that she likes him too, but that’s what 16 episode runs are for!
Chae Ri doesn’t want to be a petty thief or con, but it’s hard out there for an aspiring musician, you know? As kind of a reverse Jung Do, her dad, Detective Moon (Jung In Ki), is a copper, and her bad relationship with him (there are mother issues involved) might also explain why she takes to a life of crime, and why she becomes very attached to Jung Do’s father, Lee Duk Su (Kim Gab Su – this must have been a nice reunion for these Alone in Love costars). And Romeo and Juliet alert: her dad actually put his dad in prison, and is still keeping a close eye on Duk Su lest he return to his illegal ways. They were lucky that the dads didn’t take it personally, and actually got along pretty well, all things considered.
At first I thought the lame Chae Ri was totally not worth Jung Do’s devotion, and also didn’t have much of a personality (or a pulse, to be honest), but she really grew on you with her strange ways, and slow way of moving.
Once she started to like Jung Do back, she also became a lot more engaged in the plot, I think. Even when her story took a pretty strange turn as it began charting her rise to super pop stardom, I still rooted for her, and would have totally bought her album. Since Lee Ha Na has a nice voice, this wasn’t as bad as it could have been, though I wish the OST had featured more of her covers of old-timey songs.
One of the reasons that it took me so long to accept the fact that Chae Ri was the main girl was that I expected Park Si Yeon, who played Oh Young Joo, to get Jung Do at the end. Since Park had been in the popular My Girl, I thought she would have graduated to first girl roles, but I guess not. Young Joo is a local tomboyish police officer from an elite family who is partnered with Chae Ri’s dad.
She had joined the force to atone for her mother’s sins – for her biological mom also did time in the big house. Before Lee Bo Hee was playing psychotic ahjummas (see Wild Romance), she was playing sketchy chicken ahjummas who went after guys like Kim Gab Su (it was uncanny how popular all of the Lee men were – even halabogi). In some ways Young Joo was more of Jung Do’s soulmate, but you don’t always get together with the one you have the most in common with, I guess. She was kind of sad as she mooned over him, and then watched both the man she loved, her work partner, and even her mom forget about her, and obsess over Chae Ri.
But she wasn’t so lonely, since she had her very own devoted man, who just happened to be Jung Do’s prosecutor rival. Kim Jun Ki (Kim Nam Gil, though here he went by Lee Han) was pretty boring, but he served as a nice contrast to our sketchy hero.
He came from a good, wealthy family, was the top of his class (as opposed to Jung Do who barely scraped by sometimes), and had everything nice. Since Young Joo had been adopted by a wealthy family, these two were set up, and even though Jun Ki liked her right away, it took a while for Young Joo to warm up to him.
Jun Ki also had family issues, since his dad was one of those evil, crooked businessmen, who pushed his son into becoming a prosecutor so that he would have contacts on the inside. Like Jung Do, Jun Ki also faces off with his father under painful, and very public, circumstances, but I guess that’s what happens when you try to mess with the hero’s family.
I don’t even know why I ended up liking this bizarre drama so much, but I’m not complaining. It was a little depressing that the message was something like, you can’t run away from your family even if they make your life super hard, so it was lucky that Jung Do, Chae Ri, and Young Joo didn’t really come from as bad of families as they had thought. But it was still too bad for Jun Ki, because his dad was as bad as all that.
As manipulative and forced as they usually are, I can’t help but get drawn into depictions of idealized family life, and this drama presented an appealingly close-knit Lee clan, and all of its loyal retainers. I didn’t like how they knew everyone in the neighborhood (I’m not as into that kind of stuff), but I liked how they looked out for one another, no matter how angry they were. I think Jung Do’s father and grandfather were the first ones who realized that Chae Ri would be joining their family, and were as nice as could be.
I thought Kim Gab Su was super good as Duk Su (the prison record notwithstanding), and he really brought everyone together in this drama. I remember one year when Kim Gab Su was, like, in every drama ever, but since he’s one of the better character actors, that was a pretty good drama year. I think this was one of his better roles, or at least the one which provided him with a better showcase, and his scene on the stand, when he explains his motivations behind his criminal activity, was really dramatic and moving.
He totally reveled in playing this outrageous and slightly trashy man, so it must be hard for him to play such nice or reserved men in other dramas. I don’t know if he’s ever played an outright good guy, and that’s probably for the best since those types are usually creepy. The closest he came to that was in Cinderella’s Stepsister, and at least there he played it like a farce, and he and Lee Mi Sook were pretty funny together. I’m ok if he has a secret marshmallow center, so long as the coating is a little mean and snarky.
I am not very familiar with Park Gun Hyung, but his Jung Do was pretty likable. I kind of felt for him as he never gave up on Mango, even when it really looked like he should. He was just in the latest Kim Sun Ah drama, I Do, I Do, playing her obstetrician, so he has now had a variety of drama occupations.
He was more interesting than the Jun Ki actor, though that might be because the Jun Ki role was boring. I liked Kim Nam Gil in the KBS short drama (one of those “serious” and “deep” ones), Several Questions that Make Us Happy, where he played this pretty pathetic guy, but in a funny way (he was a man, you know?), so I couldn’t help but be disappointed by his non-role here. He shot to popularity in the sageuk Queen Seon Duk, which I have had no desire to see, and was then in Bad Guy,which is only notable to me because he sported a ratty mustache that was so gross.
I don’t think Park Si Yeon has ever been a drama lead (I don’t really count Slingshot), and I wonder why she never gets the guy. She probably gets them in movies, but I almost never watch those, especially since hers are usually on the scandalous side. She’s set to play the femme fatale second girl in the upcoming drama following Bridal Mask, Nice Guy, and I can’t imagine her opposite little Song Joong Ki at all. She’ll eat him alive!
Even though Lee Ha Na was the leading lady in this drama, Women in the Sun is, so far, a much better showcase for her. For some reason she was kind of zombie-like in this, especially at first. Maybe she wasn’t that comfortable playing a deadened, unhappy type like Chae Ri.
I’m thinking I might as well watch all of her dramas, so all that’s left are Me Ri, Dae Gu’s Attack and Defense Battle, which has another strange-sounding plot, and Triple, even though the reviews weren’t that good. I wish she’d make another fun drama (maybe a rom-com, this time), instead of being in Rain’s movie that’s about to come out soon, which has something to do with planes, I think. Boring.
Prosecutors are such a popular character in dramas (I swear they are, like, in every drama I’ve ever seen), and I wonder if that’s because these prosecutors in Korea are like detectives-martial arts experts-lawyers all rolled into one socially acceptable, and entertaining package. The drama following Big, Haeundae Lovers, also features a prosecutor as its leading man, and his unique tool for justice will be his amnesia. I read that Jung Do was supposed to be a “different” kind of prosecutor, and I guess that’s why he’s shown in promotional materials holding strange poses and props.
But his way of doing things totally jived with other depictions, so I don’t know what was so different, except his lowly background. I remember being really confused when I first encountered a prosecutor in a leading role, in Rooftop Room Cat (so good – you should totally see it). I thought I had been following the drama pretty closely, but when the prosecutor started doing flying kicks I begin to wonder whether I had missed something really important. It wasn’t until a few dramas later that I realized that all prosecutors needed to be super good fighters to earn their keep. This drama might not have added anything to the prosecutor arsenal, but When Spring Comes didn’t need to – it was still a good drama about a lot more than catching criminals, even ones who might be your dad.
Related Posts:
Women in the Sun: Episodes 1-2
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