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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Jung Eun-ji, Lee Jun-young
Latest Nielsen rating: 1.7 per cent
The cherry blossoms are almost a memory as spring heats up in Korea, and the rise in temperatures has opened the floodgates for the fitness hordes.
Exercise and diet have long been part of the lifestyle in South Korea, a country with one of the highest life expectancies in the world. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, activities such as jogging and weightlifting have exploded in popularity and compete with traditional forms of exercise such as walking, hiking and cycling among younger citizens.


Enter Pump Up the Healthy Love, a Korean romantic comedy starring Jung Eun-ji (Miss Night and Day) and Lee Jun-young (When Life Gives You Tangerines) that lampoons modern-day Korea’s obsession with fitness.
The show begins with close-ups of the oiled-up bodies of weightlifters during a muscle show known as the Mr David Competition in Las Vegas, in the US state of Nevada.
Lee plays Do Hyun-joong, a ridiculously buff competitor from Korea, though in this opening scene it is abundantly clear that the actor’s face has been stitched onto someone else’s body. Hyun-joong wins the competition but curiously runs off the stage right after receiving his trophy.
Cut to the present day, when Hyun-joong, now wearing a glittery shirt, is handing out fliers in a busy nightlife area. Yes, he is advertising a club, but not that kind of club – he is recruiting clients for his struggling 24-hour health club.

While distributing his leaflets, a commotion breaks out on the street after a couple leave a motel room. The woman is in hysterics, loudly asking the man why they did not have sex. Mortified, he rushes off, and the woman collapses in tears. Hyun-joong helps her up and hands her a leaflet, promising that his gym can change her life.
This woman is Lee Mi-ran (Jung), a dowdy office worker who has suffered romantic disappointment all her adult life. Through flashbacks, the show invites us to witness her long run of bad luck, including a problematic scene showing an awkward first kiss which makes her bleed.
Her flashbacks catch up to the present when she returns home, welcomed by notes from a male partner preparing her for a night of passion. She enters the room, only to be confronted by her sister’s nearly nude and very surprised boyfriend.
Mi-ran gets very drunk and enters what she believes to be a hot nightclub, but she has actually walked into Hyun-joong’s health club. He hounds her to sign up again, promising to change her life with a “total care service”, but she does not bite.

The next day at work she is dumbfounded to learn that her boyfriend – the man from the motel – is transferring to South America immediately. The pair have a private talk, and he breaks up with her.
Though he professes his love for her he claims that he is unable to be intimate with her, blaming her appearance.
Single once again and with her confidence at rock bottom, Mi-ran returns to Hyun-joong’s gym with an envelope stuffed with cash. So begins her journey towards finding her self-esteem.
Pump Up the Healthy Love takes some pleasure in making fun of fitness devotees, as we can clearly see through the caricature of Hyun-joong.
Following the Mr David Competition, we do not really see Hyun-joong without his shirt on again. While he constantly puffs up his chest and flexes his muscles, the show wants us to see that Lee is always wearing a muscle suit.

This, and other gags, would land a little better if the rest of the show were not so obsessed with body shaming.
Hyun-joong seeks to empower his clients, but his credo, which he shouts throughout the series, is “What the fat!”
Meanwhile, the show paints Mi-ran as an obese loser, but no matter how many baggy T-shirts and horizontally striped tops the costume department deck her out in, she still looks like a normally sized human being.
She only appears to transform because she is played by a trim K-pop star – Jung is a member of the girl group Apink.
Even after Mi-ran manages to fit into a skinny dress for a wedding, her shame is amplified when she discovers that she has inadvertently put on an outfit with an eye-popping sentence that glows in the dark – “I love sex”. Clearly, calories are not the only thing she needs to watch out for.

The body politics leave much to be desired, but if you can put those aside Pump Up the Healthy Love can be a pretty enjoyable series. It is silly and shrill, and ultimately it is about the right thing – it is what is on the inside that counts – even if it does not start off in the right place.
The cast also seem to be having fun with the material, particularly Lee, who gives the misguided life coach Hyun-joong the air of a confused strutting peacock.
Pump Up the Healthy Love is streaming on Viu.


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K-drama Pump Up the Healthy Love, romantic comedy about fitness with skewed body politics

Jung Eun-ji (left) as office worker Mi-ran and Lee Jun-young as gym owner Hyun-joong in a still from Pump Up the Healthy Love, a K-drama comedy about romance and fitness. Photo: Online

Jung Eun-ji as office worker Mi-ran in a still from Pump Up the Healthy Love.

Lee Jun-young as gym owner Hyun-joong in a still from Pump Up the Healthy Love.

Lee Jun-young as gym owner Hyun-joong, who wears a muscle suit, in a still from Pump Up the Healthy Love.

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K-drama Pump Up the Healthy Love blends fitness and romance for an enjoyable show – it is just a shame it seems obsessed with body shaming


K-drama Pump Up the Healthy Love blends fitness and romance for an enjoyable show – it is just a shame it seems obsessed with body shaming.


K-drama Pump Up the Healthy Love, romantic comedy about fitness with skewed body politics

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}K-drama Pump Up the Healthy Love blends fitness and romance for an enjoyable show – it is just a shame it seems obsessed with body shaming

K-drama Pump Up the Healthy Love blends fitness and romance for an enjoyable show – it is just a shame it seems obsessed with body shaming