By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack
September 19, 2018
Choi Dal-Po / Gi Ha-Myung (played by Lee Jong-Suk)
Choi In-Ha (played by Park Shin-Hye)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.
I was going to review “Pinocchio” simply as I would any other K-Drama. But I started to write this at the same time that Soon-Yi Previn broke her silence about her relationship with Woody Allen (her husband), Mia Farrow (her adoptive mother, and Allen’s former long-time girlfriend) and the accusations that Allen sexually molested Dylan Farrow (the adoptive daughter of both Farrow and Allen; and Previn’s sister via adoption).
“Pinocchio” essentially is the story of a young, orphaned boy named Ha-Myung. Literally rescued from the sea by a kindly old man, he is raised in a household that includes the man’s adult son and that son’s daughter, In-Ha. She is the same age as Ha-Myung. They are raised together and equally loved by the older men in the family. They are in the same classes at school. They eat together. They share household chores.
As the two youngsters grow up into adulthood, they fall in love, but are afraid to reveal their relationship to their parents.
Why? For a lot of reasons. But the primary one being that even though they don’t share a drop of blood, their childhood dynamic was that of siblings (even though they pretend to be uncle and niece. More on that later). They know that pursuing a romantic relationship would affect the entire family and not just their own lives.
In “Pinocchio,” there was no power imbalance between the young couple.
Such was not the case between Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn. He was a world-famous filmmaker — 35 years her senior — and she was a much younger adoptee who he felt paternal towards (his words, not mine):
I lucked out in my last relationship. I’ve been married now for 20 years, and it’s been good. I think that was probably the odd factor that I’m so much older than the girl I married. I’m 35 years older, and somehow, through no fault of mine or hers, the dynamic worked. I was paternal. She responded to someone paternal. I liked her youth and energy. She deferred to me, and I was happy to give her an enormous amount of decision-making just as a gift and let her take charge of so many things. She flourished. It was just a good-luck thing. (via NPR)
It is undisputed that Allen and Mia Farrow began dating when Previn was 10; and that Allen took nude photos of Previn in 1991, when she was 21. But the stories diverge from that point.
Farrow says she and Allen were in a relationship when she discovered the pictures and that the filmmaker was a father figure to her children. Allen and Previn maintain that he was no longer dating Farrow and that he had never been a “dad” to Soon-Yi, who was an adult when they began an affair that eventually would lead to marriage (and later the adoption of two daughters of their own).
But if Allen wasn’t still involved with Farrow, why did he co-adopt Dylan Farrow (whom Mia had adopted in 1985) in 1991 (the same year he took naked photos of Previn)? Courts don’t allow “just friends” to adopt a child together.
So the question is: Is it wrong for two biologically unrelated people who were raised as family members to fall in love and have a romantic relationship? If you condemn Allen and Previn, can you condone the two lead characters in this series, just because they are portrayed by attractive and likable actors?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There’s a lot going on there, right? So, let’s take a breather and appreciate one of the best scenes ever in any K-Drama!
Ha-Myung (now going by his adoptive name, Dal-Po) is the only student in his high school class to score 100 on a test. A jealous classmate starts a rumor that he cheated and stole the test in advance. The idiot teacher sides with the bully. He tells Dal-Po it’s his responsibility to prove he’s not a liar:
Instead of caving in to the teacher’s abuse of authority (and lack of moral compass), Dal-Po takes matters into his own hands. Two can play this dirty game:
Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss! It was excellent how he showed that the teacher’s reasoning was not only unjust, but flawed.
Before we move onto the rest of the review, here’s a visual palate cleanser from Episode 8 to help clear out memories of that fugly wig Lee Jong-Suk had to wear for the earlier episodes:
OK, here we go.
After a horrific fire that lead to the deaths of all the firefighters on duty, Ha-Myung’s family is ostracized. The body of his father — the captain of the fire department — wasn’t found with the others and the press starts spreading rumors that he had escaped and gone into hiding. Neighbors shun the family, pelting eggs at Ha-Myung and his older brother, Jae-Myung. Grocers refuse to sell merchandise to their mother. When Jae-Myung doesn’t return home one night, their mother takes Ha-Myung to a cliff and the two commit suicide.
However, Ha-Myung is rescued by Gong-Pil, an elderly man, who convinces himself that the boy is his son, who died decades ago. Because he is all alone, he goes along with the old man and lives his new life as Dal-Po. Though he is extraordinarily intelligent, he pretends to be dense (as Dal-Po was) so that his new father doesn’t realize what’s happening.
A few months after Ha-Myung’s adoption, Gong-Pil’s younger son — Dal-Pyung — moves back home with his daughter, In-Ha. Though skeptical at first, the father and daughter play along, calling Dal-Po 형 (older brother) and 삼촌 (uncle), respectively. However, Dal-Po and In-Ha’s relationship is more akin to siblings, given their similar age.
There are several subplots going on (a chaebol’s son who falls in love with In-Ha; and In-Ha’s estranged relationship with her TV anchorwoman mother, whose distorted reports on Ha-Myung’s family caused their demise), but none of those storylines had me questioning my own sense of morality as how I viewed the romance between In-Ha and Ha-Myung.
At times, I found myself rooting for their relationship, even though it bothered me that they grew up as family members. The writers were so convincing of all the reasons why it was OK, that I wanted to believe it, too. Since there was no predatory, “dirty old man” factor that Woody Allen has going against him, it seemed OK to want the two of them together.
Near the end of the series, Ha-Myung’s father says that he is going to have his adoption nullified so that he and In-Ha can get married. Yes, legally that would remove Ha-Myung from the family tree. But it still doesn’t change the fact that he and In-Ha grew up together as family. I wish that the writers had taken a more nuanced and difficult approach and given them a different type of ending. With a little tweaking, it would’ve been possible to have them remain in each other’s lives, but with different partners (or none).
I really enjoyed so many elements of this series. Lee Jong-Suk showed some powerhouse acting, especially in the scene where he is reunited with his biological older brother. His heart-felt tears almost made me break down myself. His leading lady proved to be his equal in every way, but we’ve come to expect no less from Park Shin-Hye. And as Ha-Young’s adoptive father (and In-Ha’s biological grandfather), Byun Hee-Bong was absolute perfection with his impish laugh and the sad look in his eyes when he softly revealed that he knew Ha-Young wasn’t the his Dal-Po, but he didn’t want to lose him.
Growing up, I knew a real-life couple that adopted an infant girl from South Korea. (These are real-life people; and not an urban myth or someone who’s a friend of a friend). When the daughter was in her late teens, she and her adoptive father had an affair that broke apart the marriage. The wife blamed the child and divorced her husband. The father’s reasoning was that they weren’t biologically related, so they weren’t committing a crime or a sin. It was just … adultery.
No matter what your views are on extra-marital affairs, I think we can all agree that when you adopt a child, the child is powerless. She didn’t ask to be given up for adoption or to be adopted. She is literally at the mercy of whoever adopts her.
Korean Arm Grab: People don’t show a lot of skinship in South Korea. And yet this type of grabbiness, which I view as borderline abusive, is accepted and romanticized. Why is the Korean Arm Grab — where the man roughly grabs and jerks the women around by her arm — such a part of K-Drama culture?
The male characters do this all. the. time. to show their love and affection for the women they love and want to protect. It’s gross and inappropriate; and it teaches young girls and boys that this is acceptable — and even romantic — behavior.
It’s not. It takes away from the woman’s ownership of her own body and her own free will. And honestly, I’m waiting for a scriptwriter to write a scene where the woman dropkicks the man when he does this.
Airdates: Twenty hour-long episodes aired on SBS from November 12, 2014 to January 15, 2015.
Spoiler Alert: In-Ha’s mother plays the villain for much of the series. We learn later that she wanted to be a whistleblower and report on the corruption that her news station and its benefactors wanted her to cover up. But she allowed herself to be convinced that doing a favor for a powerful chaebol would allow her to report freely and expose other injustices in the future. Of course, what it really meant was that one dirty deed kept her tied to corruption for the rest of her career. As she admits to herself, she chose to lie and convinced people it was the truth, because she was such a good liar.
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ETA: I think that most of us know that in the United States, incest is illegal. And in some states, so, too, are relationships between adoptees and their partners if they were raised together in the same family:
Incest is defined as sexual relations or marriage between people who are closely related, such as siblings, parents and children, and cousins. Some states may also consider it incestuous to have sexual relations or marry someone who is related by adoption. — Legal Match
In South Korea, marriage between blood relatives within eight degrees of relations is prohibited.
That means that Koreans may not marry third cousins — their grandparents’ cousins’ grandchildren — or closer relatives. — The Korea Herald
But what about adopted children within South Korea? It seems it’s only illegal if they are biologically related. For instance, it’s not legal for them to marry if the siblings are blood related “within the sixth degree of adoptive parents lineage and within the fourth degree of adoptive parents affinity,” according to Article 809 of the Korean Family Law Reform Bill (passed in 2005).
It’s important to remember that until 1997, South Koreans with the same last name who hailed from from the same 동성동본 (or clan) were not permitted to marry.
© 2018 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved
intellectual!
I’m a Korean adoptee. I came to America when I was almost 8. I only spoke Korean then and had to learn English as a second language. My adoptive parents never taught me Korean. I don’t speak any Korean and sound like every other American kid. I have zero Korean accent. That family friend who interviewed Soon-yi projected an accent onto her that doesn’t exist. The way she described her was in a way that was exoticizing and almost fetishing her. Allen’s quotes about her are disgusting and reek of colonialism. He sounds like a dirty old man who wants a pat on the back for “saving” his daughter-wife from a third world country.
People who never had to learn a second language to survive in a country where that second langauge is the dominant language don’t know how easy it is to forget your mother tongue. I pity them really.
I noticed that sentence too and thought it was very odd considering her background.
You notice how journalists don’t perceive accents in the white people they interview who unlike Soonyi actually grew up in households where their parents spoke differnet languages? I’ve never heard anyone say that Sandra Bullock has a german accent or that Charlize Theron has a South African accent.
I love Lee Jongsuk so much but I could not get into the relationship between the main leads exactly because of your points. Growing up in a Chinese family, I had uncles and cousins and brothers who were not related to me at all and we didn’t even live together but they were still family because we grew up together as family. It’s not like Inha and Hamyung lived together as toddlers and then didn’t meet again until they are adults. The whole concept was iffy and I was rooting for them to not get married. That’s just my opinion and I hope people will respect and not call me a hater!
Thanks for sharing! I’m not a hater! I liked their relationship and didn’t think it was disgusting at all because they weren’t related by blood and they knew they weren’t real brother and sister or niece and uncle if you want to get technical. ha ha
With Woody Allen and his wife, I agree with Jae that the power dynamics made this very different and their relationship is worth sideeying if only because he comes off as a dirty old man who dated the daughter after he dated the mother first. How’s that not shady in any setting, even if he really wasn’t a father figure to Soonyi?
I loved this series but your review made me question if I would’ve rooted for this couple in the real world or if I would’ve found it disgusting and cringeworthy.
She said the article was a hot mess which I agree with. She didn’t say she believed or didn’t believe anyone. what she pointed out was the language issue that the writer projected onto Soon-Yi. What’s your problem with that? She’s talked before about how people perceive Asian Americans as having accents when they don’t. But nice of you to hop on here with your inferences and pathetic attempts to make a mountain out of a mole hill.
Woody Allen Mob Lynching? Really? You don’t know the history of actual lynching do you? You’re a disgusting excuse for a human being. Shut the hell up and crawl back up Allen’s ass where you belong.
Go away you douchebag. You don’t understand what “clearly” even means.
That’s what you got from her tweet? I understood it to mean that Asians are viewed as perpetual foreigners. If Soon-Yi had a white face, no one would hear any accents at all.
Nice way to try to discredit an actual reporter with your conspiracy theories.
Spoiler: Because they knew all along that they weren’t actually related and were only continuing the fib for the sake of the Grandfather.
i dunno. they lived together in the same house and were raised as siblings. and the grandpa adopted him so he was legally a part of their family. so then is it ok for adopted kids to marry each other? i don’t think that’s a road we want to go down.
As an adoptee who has two brothers and none of us share the same DNA, I find it offensive that people basically are saying that it doesn’t matter if we get married because we’re not blood. That’s sick. My brothers are my brothers, not potential dates. I watched this drama because of Lee JongSuk but couldn’t finish it because of the plot. After reading this review, I think I would’ve gotten sick seeing them get married.
Oh and you know better than Soon Yi herself? Talking in her name and depriving her from her free will and emotions IS AN INSULT TO DEMOCRACY AND TO EVERY WOMAN. She never accused or sued Woody! She married and loved him! Are you a dictator to condemn people who love eachothers?
Wow. You have serious issues Nina.
You’re literally commenting about something you don’t even remember so maybe, don’t. 🙄
But…this isn’t Old Boy we’re talking about. KDramas air at a time for families to watch together in Korea. Look, I think it’s super cute when they curl their fists up like a kid to depict pent-up anger. But there’s no reason to force the woman to stay because HE wants her to.
Fiction.
everyone knows it’s fiction. they’re saying they don’t like it. i agree. it’s awful. just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean anyone has to like it. i’m glad you enjoy watching girls get their arms yanked against their will. that’s not my kink, sis.
😂😂😂 I loved that last line, Pat!
They were like in the 12-13 range when they met tho weren’t they? And they were living in the same house with the same family when they were in their mid to late 20s? That sounds like a family to me.
There are a lot of other factors that come into play other than Previn and Woody being just non bio family members and then dating. As a side note, apparently, a kid at school asked my dd if ds1 was her boyfriend because they walk home together. They are not bio siblings but siblings none the less. Both her and her big brother were grossed out about it and made it clear to the other child that was not the case. No influence from me in the situation since it happened at school.
I am actually amazed at how many people say that they’re not biologically related so what does it matter. I remember when the news first came out in the 1990s, a male friend of mine thought it was fine.
Same for “Pinocchio.” I wasn’t OK with the two lead characters dating after having grown up together in the same house, where he was adopted by the girl’s grandfather. They were saying that since everyone knew they weren’t biologically related, it was OK. There’s a fine line as to what’s acceptable and, for me, that isn’t.