“Doona!” (이두나!)

By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack
October 19, 2023

☆☆☆☆
Lee Doo-na (played by Bae Suzy)
Lee Won-joon (played by Yang Se-jong)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

There is a recurring dream sequence in “Doona!” A young woman is submerged in water. From below, she can see the glitz and glamour of her life as a top star. But when our protagonist startles herself awake, we see her living a mundane life, waking up sweaty in a small apartment and taking long drags of cigarettes in the courtyard. This is how we meet Lee Doo-na, a famous K-pop idol who is hiding away in a shared house for college students.

There, she is annoyed and intrigued by the newest dweller — a sophomore engineering student who moved away from home to cut down on his commute. Yes, it will cost him more to live away from home, but he’s already factored in how living on campus will give him more time for his studies.

At their first few meetings, Won-joon has no idea who Doo-na is. And he’s not particularly enamored by her beauty, either.

For a woman who spent most of her childhood and all of her adulthood being sexualized as the unrealistic object of fans’ fantasies, all of this intrigues her. The more he pulls away, the more she wants to be close to him. And by the time he gives in, he is in too deep to do what is best for him — which is to resist her.

She is a woman who needs to be saved from … something. And he wants to be the one to rescue her.

Formerly an idol in the K-pop group Miss A, Bae inhabits her role with the assurance of someone who knows the business. Though she has said in press releases that her idol experience is not the same as Doo-na’s, the viewer can extrapolate that there are certain commonalities that some performers will relate to. Her chain smoking isn’t a habit borne from her pre-trainee years. One can extrapolate that like many performers, Doo-na took up smoking as a way of keeping her body weight perilously low — a prerequisite for female K-pop stars.

Based on Min Song-ah’s webtoon “The Girl Downstairs,” the taut series is helmed by “Crash Landing on You” director Lee Jung-hyo, who meticulously unravels all the traumas that make Doo-na an easy target for K-pop’s seedier side. The lethal combination of an opportunistic stage mother who spends all her daughter’s money and a predatory management company that doesn’t care about Doo-na’s mental or physical health created an alluring ticking bomb they thought they could control.

Doo-na needs help, but the people who are supposed to take care of her aren’t overly concerned with her well being. She’s gained weight, her mother points out. She needs to make her comeback before people forget about her, her manager dictates. They care about Doo-na, the business, and not the young woman whose cries for help have consistently been ignored.

When I wrote about mental health and how it’s handled in Korean pop culture, I spoke with experts, including  an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago. “All cultures have a stigma against mental illness,” said Dr. Royce Lee. “But when talking about celebrities, the intersection of culture and psychology becomes very important. The idea that one must please everybody is both a very Korean idea and a very common problem with fame. So it is a double whammy.”

While it’s plausible to believe that the studious Won-joon doesn’t know who Doo-na is, it was less likely that his two male roommates were clueless about her identity. Yes, she had the first floor all to herself, while the young men shared the three bedrooms on the second floor. But she smoked outside daily. And, she also has the kind of unique luminous beauty that is highly noticeable … even when she’s wearing the ubiquitous black hat that supposedly hides its wearer’s identity.

She is nonchalant when she tells Won-joon, “No one recognizes me unless I’m made up [like an idol].” But it made me chuckle, because I know for a fact that there are many K-pop fans who can ID their faves by a photo of the back of their ear.

Bae was just 16 when she made her acting debut opposite Kim Soo-hyun in “Dream High,” where she played a young singer hoping to launch her career. Back then, she was a cute girl whose acting skills were still being honed. She has since grown into a strong actor. One of her most nuanced roles was in last year’s “Anna.”

The ending is one that I found beautiful and realistic, especially for an intense first love. It was one that showed promise for the future.

Airdates: Netflix dropped all nine episodes (ranging about 45 to 50 minutes each) at 11:59 p.m. KST on October 19, 2023. My review is based on the screeners that Netflix provided me in advance.

Spoiler Alert: No one listened to Doo-na when she basically said she was having a breakdown. She told her label that she couldn’t sing anymore, She could speak and function, but there was something preventing her from being able to sing and perform on stage. At the very least, she needed a break.

Her manager — who was the father figure she longed for and who also was cognizant of the fact that she had a huge crush on him — hid her away in the shared housing, not so much to allow her to rest, but to make her want to go back to her old life.

When she breaks ties with her label, they sue her and make it so that she cannot financially survive without returning to music. She tells the label CEO that she wants full creative control over her music. And the way the woman stared at her, promising her the world, made it clear that Doo-na might get a little more freedom. But she would not be the one navigating her future.

The series ends about four years after Doo-na and Won-joon were forced to break up. (Idols can’t have personal lives that the public knows about, right?) In the final scene, both are in Japan (separately) for work. As they go in opposite directions, she hears his voice and smiles.

Is there a secret meaning to all of this? Have they moved on from each other? Is the familiar voice simply a reminder of her past? Or, perhaps, are they dating in secret and she knows she’ll see him later. Honestly? I’m fine with any of these scenarios. But I don’t think that a happy ending relies on the two of them being together. Sometimes, memories of the past is where they should remain.

© 2023 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved