MaryMeKpop

It’s crazy to think that we’re already in October and that there’s only a few more months left until the year ends. The final quarter of the season has a strong line-up of Korean dramas including ‘Strong Girl Nam-soon’ which just recently premiered on October 7. The drama is the cousin of its 2017 predecessor ‘Strong Woman Do Bong-soon’ which starred Park Bo-young and Park Hyung-sik. In the 2023 version, Kang Nam-soon (played by Lee Yoo-mi) is Bong-soon’s cousin and she too has inherited the strong powerful genetics from her family.

There were quite a few reasons as to why I initially tuned into this drama. The biggest draw being its relation to ‘Strong Woman Do Bong-soon’ – a drama that I admittedly wasn’t the biggest fan of. While I enjoyed the premise and I loved loved loved Park Bo-young and Park Hyung-sik, I ultimately dropped the drama because it just wasn’t for me and it was hard to watch. Even with my disappointment with the first part, I decided to give ‘Strong Girl Nam-soon’ a try in hopes that it would be better than its older cousin. Though the first two episodes weren’t the most gripping and exciting premiere episodes, I’m glad to say that I’ll keep watching this drama for now.

The other reasons as to why I gave the drama a try was because of its cast members, primarily Ong Seong-wu and Byun Woo-seok. I’ve seen and enjoyed these two actors in their other projects so I was excited to see them together in this one. Ong Seong-wu plays police officer, Kang Hee-sik, who crosses paths with Nam-soon and vows to help her find her parents in Seoul. Meanwhile, Byun Woo-seok officially enters his villain era as drug lord, Ryu Shi-oh, who Hee-sik and his police team are after. It’s interesting to see two up and coming actors act in the same drama and I was even curious as to what it would have been like had Byun Woo-seok and Ong Seong-wu switched roles with Byun Woo-seok playing the love interest and Ong Seong-wu being the villain. With that being said, we’ve seen more of Hee-sik than Shi-oh at this point, so I have a few more things to say about his character.

Episodes 1 and 2 were primarily foundational, showing us the in’s and outs of Nam-soon’s story and her search in Seoul to find her parents. Even if it felt like forever, I appreciated that the drama took its time in giving us all the context and background story on her life. But perhaps what the most exciting and intriguing part in the first two episodes for me was the relationship between Hee-sik and Nam-soon. It’s obvious that the relationship and amazing chemistry between Park Bo-young and Park Hyung-siks’ characters in ‘Strong Woman Do Bong-soon’ was one of its greatest strengths so the romance in this drama was also something that I was looking forward to. Even though there’s only two episodes out so far, I’m really liking what we’ve seen between Hee-sik and Nam-soon. I love how strong the foundation to their relationship is and that they have something in common. Hee-sik vows to help Nam-soon find her parents so there’s something tying them to each other. They have a reason to keep seeing each other, to keep contacting each other, to keep interacting. This common goal in their relationship speaks volume of Hee-sik’s character and how kind and helpful he is. Nam-soon isn’t the most familiar with Korea since she lived in Mongolia for most of her life so having Hee-sik to be there for her will play a role in her growth and development. And more importantly, I hope Nam-soon will be able to find her parents with his help.

And it seems as if this search shouldn’t be too difficult or at least shouldn’t take too long (hopefully). Nam-soon reunited with her dad at the end of episode 2 so we have to wait another week to see if anything will come out of this interaction. We also learned that Nam-soon’s mom and grandma receive signals whenever the other uses their powers and strength in an intense and heavy situation. Such was the case when Nam-soon used her strength to stop the airplane she was traveling on from crashing and killing the passengers and flight crew on the flight. This ignited the tingly senses in Mom and Grandma and it was then that they realized that Nam-soon was still alive.

There were plenty of other things that went on in the first two episodes but I was most interested with Nam-soon’s story. From her life in Mongolia to eventually making it to Korea to form a special relationship with Hee-sik to forming friendships with couple Ji Hyun-soo (Joo Woo-jae) and Noh Son-saeng (Kyungri), I enjoyed Nam-soon’s story. I liked what I saw in the first two episodes and I’m also excited to see how things develop in the coming episodes. Oh, and I’m definitely excited to see that Park Bo-young and Park Hyung-sik cameo too. I hope we see it sooner rather than later 🙂