“Her Private Life” (그녀의 사생활)

By Jae-Ha Kim
jaehakim.com
June 3, 2019

Sung Duk-Mi (played by Park Mi-Young)
Ryan Gold (played by Kim Jae-Wook)
Nam Eun-Gi (played by Ahn Bo-Hyun)

“Her Private Life” starts off as a clever comedy about Sung Duk-Mi — a cultured art curator who also is a diehard fangirl. Her bias is K-Pop idol Cha Si-An (played by Jung Jae-Won — better known professionally as One). She has a need to know every single thing about him and thinks nothing of spending extravagant amounts of money to gift him with whatever she thinks he would like.

It would’ve been easy to make fun of such a character, since the general public worldwide tends to dismiss female fans as little more than screaming simpletons. But this series presents fangirls as young women who are unapologetic for what they like. Period. Are some of them flawed? Of course. But who are we to say that females screaming for a handsome singer are less worthy than males bellowing over their favorite footballer?

Well organized in most aspects of her life, Duk-Mi easily switches from a Louboutin-wearing curator to a mask-wearing fangirl, who always manages to snap the most exclusive photos of Si-An, which she shares on her popular website.

To her parents, who disapprove of all the time and money she puts into being an alpha fangirl, she points out that she’s the way she is, because her parents are the way they are.

They, too, are obsessive about their passions. Her mother is constantly knitting, and fills the house with her creations. Her father spends most of his days quietly polishing rocks that inexplicably hold meaning to him. We will learn later how their hobbies came to be — and it’s all a bit tragic.

Duk-Mi’s first encounter with Ryan Gold is at an overseas art auction, where she marvels to herself in Korean at how handsome he is. She didn’t realize he could speak Korean, until he haughtily asked her, “Do you want to have me?” She sees him again later at Incheon Airport, when he inadvertently obstructs her attempts to photograph Si-An. They bump into each other (literally), with her landing on top of him, before escaping.

Icy cold, but ridiculously handsome, Gold is a world-renowned artist who has been hired to head the gallery where Duk-Mi works. She recognizes him right away. But since she wore a face mask at the airport, he has no idea who she is. Startled, she falls off the ladder she’s perched on and he watches as she tumbles to the ground, without offering to help.

Ryan has already been set up to be a cold fish, but at this point, he seems to be lacking common courtesy and seems to be somewhat of a sociopath. It’s abnormal to watch someone fall and react with zero emotion.

This is where his backstory comes in and the writers expect us to forgive his oddities because … he’s so damned handsome, mostly. And although I hate to admit it, it works.

Ryan was orphaned at the age of six and adopted by an American couple. His adoptive mother was ethnically Korean, which is supposed to explain how he speaks the language flawlessly. As someone who grew up in the U.S. with parents who spoke Korean to us at home, I can tell you that even then, it was difficult for my siblings and me to maintain our Korean language skills. For an adoptee, who most likely grew up in an English-speaking household (since I doubt his father, Mr. Gold, spoke Korean), it’s improbable that he could speak any Korean at all, beyond ordering a few food items.

But that’s nitpicking. After all, this is a K-Drama, and he needs to speak Korean in this series, because it’s aimed at a Korean-speaking audience.

It is not a spoiler at all to note that Ryan and Duk-Mi will fall in love … Or that they share a past history that neither remembers. This, too, is a common K-Drama plot device. But, I really enjoyed how the writers took their time in unfolding the various story arcs.

There are duel second lead syndromes going on, but viewers aren’t fooled by either of these, because they have ZERO chemistry with the main leads. Duk-Mi’s childhood friend, Eun-Gi (played by Ahn Bo-Hyun), realizes that he has fallen in love with her. But since he never made his intentions clear, and she views him as a brother and best friend, he’s in for disappointment. And Ryan’s artist friend, Da-In (played by Hong Seo-Young), has moved from New York to Seoul to pursue a romantic relationship with him that he wants no part of. But again, he makes this clear from the get-go and doesn’t falter.

The most dramatic elements of the second half of this series have to do with Ryan’s story. And if I was the showrunner, I would’ve titled this series differently. But if I were to make an excuse for the writers, I could make a case that “Her Private Life” refers not only to her secret life as a fangirl, but for the painful childhood memories that she has blocked out — set on private — so that they were hers alone to remember … or not.

The last four episodes stood out for me, because the series tackled some important topics in a respectful — though washed over — way: single mothers, child abandonment, adoption, reunification and forgiveness. Actually, the concept of what constitutes a family was a recurring theme. It was refreshing to see that relationships based on bloodlines weren’t the only ones valued and that families are sometimes borne from tragic circumstances.

Airdates:

Sixteen hour-long episodes aired on tVN from April 10 to May 30, 2019.

Spoiler Alert:

I thought it was a good touch for the writers to add in bits about the negative sides of the beehive mentality that can afflict some fandoms. When Duk-Mi is spotted leaving Si-An’s apartment building wearing Ryan’s jacket (that Si-An also has), fans spread rumors that she is his secret girlfriend. They dox her, threaten her, pelt her with eggs and beat her up — all because she may be romantically involved with him. (She isn’t.) She ends up forgiving them, because she understands they’re young. But I would’ve liked to have seen the girls punished, because what they did was wrong. There is no excuse for bullying another person like that. They feel betrayed that Si-An wasn’t truthful with them about a relationship…and yet they hurt her. Those girls should have been punished not necessarily with jail time, but with something.

However, the series also points out how the media uses fangirls. While they rely on them for their enthusiasm, which translates into clicks and ratings spikes, news outlets also have little respect for fans and use their admiration to spread their own narrative — i.e. fangirls are crazy!

Fangirling aside, hints were given throughout the flashbacks about Duk-Mi’s past. We see her playing with two boys her age and a smaller child. When she was a little girl, she and her baby brother were involved in a car accident. He died. From that moment on, she lost her memory. Eun-Gi, who was born to a single mother, lived with her family at the time and knew about the accident. But, like her parents, he kept it a secret from her. As she points out later, that was a horrible burden for a small boy to carry for all those years.

Eun-Gi has a healthy relationship with his birth mother, who sends him money and visits whenever she can. He also considers Duk-Mi’s parents to be his parents.

Duk-Mi’s father began collecting rocks after his son’s death. He found a rock that gave him warmth. When he held the small object, he said it felt like it radiated warmth the way his son’s tiny hand felt. To many, this will sound like a strange explanation. But it also may resonate with people who have had to find something — anything — to keep themselves sane after the loss of a child. As pointed out in the series, there are words for people who have lost a spouse, or for children whose parents have died. But there is no word for a parent who has lost a child, because that is such an incomprehensible tragedy.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Duk-Mi’s mom knits so much in this series. Park Mi-Young and Kim Mi-Kyung starred together in “Healer,” where the former played a journalist and the latter played Ji Chang-Wook’s handler, Ajumma. Formerly a tough detective, Ajumma was the Healer’s hacker and handler, who spent her spare time knitting baby clothes, to honor the son she had lost. When I saw her character knitting in “Her Private Life,” I knew that it was going to be related to the death of a child. I wasn’t sure if it had to do with Ryan or her own child, though.

Ryan’s mother was a single mom. She was an artist, who couldn’t earn enough money to feed them every day. After receiving a lead for a lucrative commission for a painting, she left Ryan in the park and told him to play there until she returned. It may sound crazy to leave a 6-year-old child in the park without adult supervision. But I remember stories of my brother roaming the streets of Seoul with his friends at that age and coming home well after dark, safe and sound. Anyhow, she gets hit by a car on her way to pick him up and temporarily loses her memory. By the time she comes to, she cannot find Ryan.

Duk-Mi’s parents took him in for a while and raised him. But after their son died, Duk-Mi’s mom went crazy (in her own words) and couldn’t tolerate caring for a boy that wasn’t hers. Late at night, she dragged him to an orphanage and left him there alone, crying. She never forgave herself for her actions, but Ryan does. I’ll be honest. I don’t think I could forgive her. But I’ve also never been in her situation. She said her biggest regret is that by the time she came to her senses and went to the orphanage to reclaim him, he had been adopted by an American couple.

Ryan lost two mothers who had returned for him too late, which may sound melodramtic, but there’s an element of truth to this plot device. There have been many cases where indigent Korean parents placed their kids in child welfare centers, thinking they would be fed and receive an education. They intended on returning for their children when their family life was more stable. They didn’t realize that their sons and daughters would be placed for adoption, often overseas, where the biological parents had almost no chance find them again.

But Ryan is reunited with his birth mother, who turns out to be Si-An’s mother as well.

The series ties things up in a nice, happily-ever-after bow. But all I could think was that both Ryan and Duk-Mi — and perhaps her parents, his mom, and Eun-Gi — could all use some therapy to work through all the traumatic events they had lived through.

The majority of adoptees will never know who their birth parents were. But my real-life friends who have reunited with their first parents have told me that the one thing they would recommend to anyone thinking about going through the process is to find a good therapist to talk to before, during and after any potential reunification. Because even the best case scenarios are emotionally taxing and can be traumatizing.

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