“Search: WWW” (검색어를 입력하세요: WWW)

By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack
September 16, 2019

Bae Ta-Mi (played by Im Soo-Jung)
Cha Hyeon (played by Lee Da-Hee)
Song Ga-Kyeong (played by Jeon Hye-Jin)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

“Search: WWW” is the only K-Drama I can think of where women had the kind of lead roles that ordinarily would’ve gone to men. The female characters not only were the rainmakers where they worked, they were the decision makers who the men followed.

Bae Ta-Mi, Song Ga-Kyeong and Cha Hyeon are three top-level women working at South Korea’s two top web portals. The former two are employed by the No. 1-ranked Unicon, while the latter works at Barro. Through a series of events where Ta-Mi is made into a scapegoat for Unicon’s legal troubles, she is fired, but quickly lands a job at Barro. Her goal? To take over the No. 1 spot from Unicon.

All three are smart and ruthless businesswomen. But no amount of backstory could get me to warm up to Ga-Kyeong. It’s obvious from the start that she and her husband have what could only be described as an open marriage. Like her husband, she’s controlled by her rich and influential mother-in-law. The way she treats them or her equals didn’t bother me. But it was disgusting the way she humiliated a young man at a host bar, who was specifically hired to entertain her with his company. She took out her resentment and anger by degrading him in a way that said more about who she really was than anything else. She wasn’t nearly as horrible as her MIL, but that’s not saying much.

It was fascinating to watch how the women worked diligently to save their respective companies and how that took a toll on their lives. The women were in their late 30s and early 40s. Their lives revolved around their work. For Ta-Mi, that was the life she wanted, with no husband or children to hinder her career. So when she has a one-night stand with a man 10 years her junior, she’s a bit embarrassed, but doesn’t think much of it.

His name is Park Morgan (played by Jang Ki-Yong). He is the CEO of his own company, which supplies original soundtrack music for video games. His mother gave him a western first name, he said, because she wanted to prepare him in case he ever lived overseas. This indicated to me that his mother had given him up for adoption. I’ll talk more about this in the spoiler below.

Ta-Mi spends an inordinate amount of time beating herself up for liking a 27-year-old man. I thought this was interesting to offset how Ga-Kyeong had no inhibitions about “dating” younger men. But as much of a feminist as Ta-Mi was, she felt weird being with someone younger.

Of course, the operative word here is man. Morgan wasn’t a child. He had already served his mandatory military duty. He ran his own business. He had his own home. Yes, she’s been on earth for a decade longer than him, but in many ways, he was the more mature one in the relationship. She sabatoged their happiness by breaking up with him over their age difference and because she was anticipating their eventual breakup. He wanted to be married and start a family. She never wanted to get married. She pointed out that either one of them would have to compromise in order to make the other happy. Or their relationship would have to end one day.

Morgan said that every relationship comes to an end, whether by falling out of love, divorce or death. But to throw away a relationship because of the fear that they would break up didn’t make any sense.

I’ve always said that you need to be on the same page as your partner when it comes to children, finances and religion. It also helps if you have the same desires about wanting to be married — or not. But here’s the reality: right now, they want to be with each other. When Morgan gets to the point where he can’t live without marriage and children, he will have to break up with her. It will be heartbreaking for both, but they will survive. Getting married isn’t something one should do because the other wants it. Marriage can be difficult even in the best of circumstances. But it’s not fair for Ta-Mi to marry when it’s not something she wants in her life. They will mourn the loss and move forward. He will find someone else to marry and have children with. As a man, his age won’t matter as much. But I truly believe that Ta-Mi shouldn’t get married, because it’s too much of a compromise for her.

All that said, I was so pleased to have a sweet and less complicated relationship to cheer for. Hyeon is the trio’s maknae and can hold her own in the business world. At home, she relaxes by watching her favorite K-Drama, “What’s Wrong with My Mother-in-Law?” and screaming at the characters. She loves to hate the male lead, who’s played by Seol Ji-Hwan (who’s played by real-life actor Lee Jae-Wook). The drama is over-the-top delicious, with the mother-in-law in question avenging her daughter’s death by getting plastic surgery that convinces everyone she’s in her 20s and marrying into the family that mistreated her child. (Not for nothing, but I really need this to be made into a real-life K-Drama!)

Ji-Hwan is as mild mannered as the character he plays is an immoral cad. Hyeon accidentally beats him up one day and the two begin a sweet song-and-dance where neither will admit they like each other, but they are clearly falling in love.

I’m going to take a moment to declare Lee Jae-Wook as my new favorite young actor. Just 21 years old, he played a character in his late 20s. He was as convincing playing the shy actor with little confidence as he was portraying the scenery-chewing character in “What’s Wrong with My Mother-in-Law?” It took me a while before I recognized him from “Memories of the Alhambra,” where he played a strung-out hacker (below right).

The series dragged on at certain points (such as Ta-Mi and Morgan’s on-again, off-again relationship), but the parts I disliked the most were the inclusion of western “actors” to play the parts of Americans and Australians. I get that it’s not easy to find actual western actors in Seoul. But surely they could find someone who doesn’t sound like they’re reading the menu from the Olive Garden. The criteria for being hired seems to be: Don’t look Korean. I will give the showrunners points for giving a plum role to a Black woman, who played the U.S. head of Unicon. But was there no one on set to correct her each time she mispronounced the company name as “Unicorn“?

Is “Search: WWW” the perfect K-Drama? No, but it’s one of the best I’ve seen this year. And it’s certainly one of the only ones I can remember where the actresses are leads and the actors are playing the more traditional “girlfriend” roles. Even the secondary female characters are badass. They’re the ones who come up with the ideas that keep the company afloat. And they’re the ones who come through — sometimes illegally — when it’s time to get information. Part of Ta-Mi’s team is an ace hacker named Jenny who, while in high school, caused havoc with Seoul’s traffic lights so that she could spend an extra hour walking to school with the boy she had a crush on. Why? Because she loves men more than anything in the world.

I also really liked that the women didn’t just accept the crap that was thrown at them. Unlike in “Her Private Life, where Park Mi-Young’s character is abused by an idol’s fans and doesn’t fight back, Ta-Mi gives as good as she gets. When fans believe she’s the reason why their favorite actor attempted suicide, they throw eggs at her. Ta-Mi goes into defense mode chewing them out and egging them right back, so that they get a taste of what their vitriol feels like. And to be vindictive.

Airdates: tvN aired 16 episodes, each running about 70 minutes, from June 5 to July 25, 2019. (The finale was a little longer, at 84 minutes.)

Spoiler Alert:

We learn in one of the later episodes via flashback that the trio of Ta-Mi, Hyeon and Ga-Kyeong dates back to their high school years. Hyeon had taken on the role of Ga-Kyeong’s bodyguard and defender. When the latter drops her art project, Ta-Mi accidentally steps on it. The two argue, and Hyeon comes to Ga-Kyeong’s defense and takes her by the arm away from the situation. Later, the adult Ga-Kyeong remembers this as she watches Hyeon side with Ta-Mi and guide Ta-Mi away from the argument.

In the beginning, the way they shot Hyeon and Ga-Kyeong made me think the two were going to have an affair. That would’ve been an interesting concept, but I think perhaps too daring for even cable TV in Korea right now.

I would’ve liked to have seen more of Ji-Hwan’s backstory. They showed him going to a columbarium to visit his dog, who died a year ago. But he never mentions his family. We learn that he went to a top science high school for academically-gifted students, but he never went onto college. Why? When he enters the military, he spends as much time as he can with Hyeon, but not his family. Granted, those scenes may have deliberately been left out, but it made me curious what his deal was.

In order to understand Morgan’s desire for stability and wanting a family of his own, viewers have to understand his background. He is an adoptee. His mother was 20 when she had him and gave him up for adoption so that he would have a chance to do all the things she couldn’t provide for him at the time. He was adopted by a loving Australian couple, who found her for him when he was 19. They have a beautiful relationship, but she keeps him a secret from her family. She’s now a professor and news about having borne a child prior to marriage could ruin her career. Still, he’s happy to spend any time with her that he can. But his heart is broken when he sees her phone ring, and the name on the screen says, “Son.” Curious what his name comes up as, he calls her cell phone. His names comes up as, “Park Morgan — student.” This is one of the reasons he repeatedly begs Ta-Mi not to throw him away. He doesn’t want to get abandoned again.

Later, his mother dies in a tragic accident while on vacation in Paris. He learns from her husband that while their children don’t know about him, she told him all about her first child — Morgan. I think this is one reason why Ta-Mi decided to reunite with Morgan again. Life isn’t guaranteed for anyone. As he told her earlier, all relationships end one day, whether because of disinterest or death.

All of my adoptee friends who have found their birth families have told me that no matter how wonderful it was to be reunited with their first mothers, they would advise anyone who was searching for them to find a therapist beforehand. The emotions you will feel — both the good and the bad — are difficult to process alone. I always thought that what Morgan needed more than Ta-Mi was a good therapist who could help him deal with his past childhood traumas. Because even when you have had the best of parents with the best of intentions, being given away isn’t something that is easy to understand … or accept.

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