“My Happy Ending” (나의 해피엔드)

By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack
February 26, 2024

☆☆☆☆
Seo Jae-won (played by Jang Na-ra)
Heo Soon-young (played by Son Ho-jun)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

There is a lot going on in this K-drama that could’ve been resolved if the protagonists had a long conversation to discuss misunderstandings. Then they would’ve learned that:

° Jae-won is bipolar. But because she was worried that Soon-young would leave her if he knew, she kept it a secret even after they got married. Yes, there is a stigma against depression and mental health issues, but if the man you’re with won’t accept you unless you’re perfect, then he is not for you. When he later found out, he wasn’t upset that she had a medical issue. He was upset that she hadn’t told him about it when she had so many opportunities to.

° Instead of asking her if she had cheated on him, Soon-young just assumes that Jae-won had an affair and that their daughter, Ah-rin, isn’t his. So what does he do? He concocts a whole different persona and cheats on her with her best friend, Yoon-jin (So Yi-hyun).

° Yoon-jin is about as unhinged as they come. She decides that she wants to ruin Jae-won’s marriage, because Jae-won had “slept” with Yoon-jin’s fiancé years ago. [SPOILER ALERT: On a work conference, Jae-won was forced to drink excessively to keep up with her bosses. Yoon-jin’s fiancé had targeted her, put a date-rape drug in her drink and then raped her. Jae-won was unaware of this at the time.]

° By Episode 5, the show’s pacing picks up and we learn that her stepdad had killed her mother with pesticide. But was he really guilty? Or is there more to this story than they’re initially letting on.

Airdates: Sixteen hour-long episodes aired on TV Chosun from December 30 2023 through February 25, 2024. (I watched this on Viki.)

Airdates: Sixteen hour-long episodes aired on TV Chosun from December 30 2023 through February 25, 2024. (I watched this on Viki.)

Spoiler Alert: By Episode 10, Jae-won’s husband is found dead. Cause of death? Pesticide. Like step-father, like step-daughter? The police can’t hold her, though, because they have nothing but circumstantial evidence. Because her home and office are surrounded by reporters, she goes to stay with … a male colleague, Te-oh (Lee Ki-taek), who clearly is infatuated with her. Hello? Why not stay with her female secretary or check into a hotel instead? If word gets out that she is bunking with a young man, gossip mongers and the media can spin it that she killed her husband because she was having an affair with Te-oh.

To his credit, he tells her he’ll stay at a hotel and she can stay at his apartment with his sister, who’s visiting from the U.S. [Both siblings were adopted.]

In Episode 11, Te-oh comes up with the idea to have his sister, Rachel, take Jae-won’s daughter to the U.S. where she can stay with his adoptive parents. While the explanation is that she will be safer that way, it also seems clear that the writers wanted to get the child out of the plot so that they could have an easier time building romantic tension between Jae-won and Te-oh.

As with many K-dramas, there is a backstory that shows how the male and female lead have been tied together since childhood. Te-oh was eight years old before he was adopted. The boys at the orphanage who weren’t adopted blame him for ruining their chances of getting their own families. When three other boys bully him, Jae-won saves him by scaring them off with a knife. She was older than him and viewed him as a little kid. But that’s when he fell in love with her. He asked for her school name tag as a memento, and held onto it ever since.

There is a happy ending. She takes time off from her job, sees a therapist, moves her daughter, Ah-rin, back from the States to Korea, and convinces her father to live with them. And she finally accepts Te-oh as a romantic suitor.

© 2024 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved