“Oh My Ghost” (오 나의 귀신님)

By Jae-Ha Kim
jaehakim.com
July 28, 2021

Na Bong-Sun (played by Park Bo-Young
Kang Sun-Woo (played by Jo Jung-Suk)
Shin Soon-Ae (played by Kim Seul-Gi)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

The first half of “Oh My Ghost” is what I refer to as a laundry series. I was so disinterested in the plot that it took me months to finish, and most of it was while I was sorting and folding laundry. But all that changed in the second half when the series veered from the repetitive plot of a horny ghost wanting to bed a handsome chef, and turned into a thrilling murder mystery.

Bong-Sun is a mousy dishwasher at a high-end restaurant owned by celebrity chef, Sun-Woo. She has inherited her shaman grandmother’s ability to see and talk to ghosts, which leads to sleepless nights and general malaise. Soon-Ae is a ghost who needs to ascend to heaven, but she refuses to do so without fulfilling her final wish: to lose her virginity, even though she has to possess an unsuspecting woman’s body to do so.

You know what’s going to happen next, right? Soon-Ae jumps into Bong-Sun’s body and tries to seduce Sun-Woo, who is confused by his worker’s aggressive change in personality. This goes on for way too long and I initially didn’t like any of the characters. But as the back stories were filled in, I really fell in love with Soon-Ae (especially) and Bong-Sun. Sun-Woo is, of course, very good looking. But I didn’t like his barking personality and I didn’t find his character particularly charismatic.

The moments Soon-Ae (as Bong-Sun) spent with her father and younger brother were some of the best elements of the series, as were the vignettes with Soon-Ae and Seobinggo (Lee Jung-Eun), a powerful shaman whose gruff demeanor covers up a heart of gold. Seobinggo fears that if Soon-Ae doesn’t voluntarily ascend from the ghost world to heaven, she will turn into a demon whose afterlife will be nothing but pain.

Ultimately, when we die, it’s the living who suffer. And no one wants to prolong loved ones’ agony by leaving unanswered questions.

Airdates: Sixteen hour-long episodes aired from July 3 to August 22, 2015 on tvN.

Spoiler Alert: The series gets really interesting when it reveals the true nature of Sun-Woo’s brother-in-law, Sung-Jae (Lim Ju-Hwan). Seemingly kind, he is devoted to his wife, Eun-Hee (Shin Hye-Sun), who is wheelchair-bound. But it turns out that quite a while ago, he was possessed by an evil ghost. He ran over Eun-Hee, crippling her. When Soon-Ae tried to help Eun-Hee and realized that he was the perpetrator of the crime, he killed her. He set it up to appear as if she had committed suicide. Soon-Ae wasn’t able to ascend to heaven because of her lack of sexual experience, as she had thought. She was roaming earth to make sure Sung-Jae was caught before he could kill more people … which he did.

What was lacking in this storyline was a brief flashback to show viewers when he became possessed and what he was like prior to it. Seobinggo points out that there is a shift in his energy from earlier photos (where he was good) to his current self. As it stands, it’s difficult to figure out if his gentle demeanor was always an act, or one that the ghost emulated to get his way.

When Sung-Jae realizes what has happened to him, he jumps off a building, seemingly to his death. But the final episode shows that now he is wheelchair-bound and seemingly free of the demon ghost. But is he? Or is he pretending again?

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