The Long Game

The k-drama series Itaewon Class will grab your heart for a lot of reasons; the difficult journey of protagonist Park Sae-Ro-Yi (Park Seo-Joon) is especially wrenching. As a teenager who dreams of becoming a cop, Sae-Ro-Yi steps in to stop a rich kid from bullying a classmate. By doing so he inadvertantly triggers a series of events that end up destroying his life, killing his father and sending him to prison. None of this is fair or deserved (quite the opposite), but it forges the boy into a man who will not be stopped until he settles the score.

Before the turnkey event Sae-Ro-Yi meets and falls for Oh Soo-A (Kwon Na-Ra), an orphan who is close to his dad. Sae-Ro-Yi's father is fond of Soo-A, and is helping to pay the tuition for her education. When Sae-Ro-Yi mixes it up with bully Jang Geun-Won (Ahn Bo-Hyun), he doesn't realize that the rich kid is the son of Jang Dae-Hee (Yoo Jae-Myung), CEO of the Jang Ga Group, and also his father's boss. Dae-Hee demands that Sae-Ro-Yi kneel before him and admit he was wrong for punching his son, but Sae-Ro-Yi feels he was in the right and refuses. Dae-Hee has Sae-Ro-Yi expelled. Proud of his son for standing up to his boss, Sae-Ro-Yi's father resigns from Jang Ga.

Sae-Ro-Yi and his dad start over by planning to open their own restaurant, but then Geun-Won kills Sae-Ro-Yi's father in a hit-and-run. The crime is quickly covered up by Dae-Hee, but Sae-Ro-Yi soon uncovers the truth. When he confronts Geun-Won and begins beating him with the intention of killing him, Soo-A intervenes and stops him. Dae-Hee sees to it that Sae-Ro-Yi is harshly punished for the beating by insisting he be prosecuted, which lands the heartbroken teen in prison for 2 years for assault and attempted murder charges. It's at this point that Sae-Ro-Yi decides to get revenge on Dae-Hee by beating him at his own game -- but fairly.

Vengeance isn't just about planning, it takes time. Once Sae-Ro-Yi is released from prison he spends seven years working as a deep-sea fisherman to earn the money he needs. The bullied kid he protected in high school becomes an investment manager, and secretly helps Sae-Ro-Yi use his father's life insurance and wage savings to buy stock in Jang Ga Group. Sae-Ro-Yi returns to open his first restaurant-bar in Itaewon, the colorful district where Soo-A lives.

Meanwhile, Dae-Hee takes Soo-A under his wing and supports her at school, after which she goes to work for Jang Ga Group. After a dismal childhood in the orphanage Soo-A is determined to live a better life and achieve her own dreams. She feels slightly guilty over her choice to work for the enemy because of Sae-Ro-Yi's feelings for her, but he assures her he only wants to see her successful. At this point I think every woman who watches this series wants to smack Soo-A for being an idiot and turning her back on Sae-Ro-Yi, but it's a realistic scenario, so we'll give her a pass.

When Sae-Ro-Yi opens his restaurant-bar DanBam (Sweet Night) in Itaewon, he assembles an interesting, quirky staff: Choi Seung-Kwon (Ryoo Kyung-Soo), a former thug and his cellmate in prison; Ma Hyun-Yi (Lee Joo-Young), a transgender woman who worked with Sae-Ro-Yi at a factory, Jo Yi-Seo (Kim Da-Mi), a young and brilliant teen turned social media star; Jang Geun-Soo (Kim Dong-Hee), Dae-Hee's illegitimate teenage son who has a crush on Yi-Seo, and Tony Kim (Chris Lyon), a multi-racial man who came to Korea from Guinea to try and find his father.

As manager Yi-Seo uses her marketing savvy to help DanBam become a successful business; in the process she falls for Sae-Ro-Yi, who just considers her a kid. This also sets up the love triangle between Sae-Ro-Yi, Soo-A and Yi-Seo, which becomes really interesting through the entire series. Dae-Hee soon discovers that Sae-Ro-Yi now owns a lot of Jang Ga Group stock, which he forces him to sell in order to protect DanBam's future. Jealous over Yi-Seo's feelings for Sae-Ro-Yi, Geun-Soo leaves DanBam to work for his father, and the war between Sae-Ro-Yi and Dae-Hee begins in earnest.

I think these sort of revenge stories are tricky. It's obviously vicariously pleasing to see justice served by the poor and victimized to the rich and over-privileged, but also difficult to do in a fair or realistic way. Itaewon Class serves it up perfectly in every sense. Park Seo-Joon did an amazing job portraying a young man shaped by love and tempered by hate. The long game of revenge is fascinating, but the most satisfying part for me was the resolution of the love triangle, which doesn't happen until almost the very end of the series. By that point I wanted to smack Sae-Ro-Yi in the head for not realizing his own feelings.

There is some fighting and violence, a bit graphic at points, but appropriate to the story. The portrayal of a transgender character is likely going to be polarizing, but I thought it was marvelous and quite inspiring. Available to watch on Netflix in the US.