K-drama midseason recap – in Payback: Money and Power, investors and prosecutors duel in financial thriller that slows after promising start
- The thrills are fading but the drama mounting as a financial whiz, played by Lee Sun-kyun, and Park Jun-kyeong’s vengeful prosecutor try to take down a kingpin
- The thirst for power of the kingpin’s daughter, played by Son Eun-seo, has come to the fore, drawing tantalising comparisons to South Korea’s current politics
After a compelling start, Payback: Money and Power has settled on a relatively small group of characters and the tug of war between them as they use financial, legal and sometimes more extreme means to outmanoeuvre each other.
The main players are financial whiz Eun Young (Lee Sun-kyun), his junior prosecutor nephew Jang Tae-chun (Kang You-seok) and military prosecutor Park Jun-kyeong (Moon Chae-won) on one side, and finance kingpin Chairman Myung (Kim Hong-fa) and his son-in-law, rising prosecutor Hwang Ki-seok (Park Hoon), on the other.
Myung is after money and Ki-seok is after power, while Jun-kyeong is hell-bent on avenging her mother’s death.
Tae-chun has ambitions to rise up the National Prosecutor Service but his desire to seek justice outweighs them. Growing up with an alcoholic single mother, he saw at first hand how unfair life could be for people without money or connections.
That leaves Young, who, beneath his flash and charisma, has weaker motivations than the rest of the cast.
Young cares about money, but not as much as Chairman Myung, and he also cares about his family, including his surrogate one (Jun-kyeong’s mother took him under his wing as a youth) – enough to dip into illegal finance to provide for them, but not enough to go straight.
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Capably played by Lee, Young is the charismatic male lead and, given what audiences expect from this kind of character, when faced with villainous characters, he naturally falls into the role of the hero.
The problem is that Young is such a brilliant financial mind that we already saw early on how he handily surpassed his avaricious mentor Chairman Myung. Having them go up against each other again in the present isn’t as exciting as the show seems to think it will be – Myung is clearly no match for Young.
The difference in their current confrontations is that Myung has a more formidable cadre of allies in his corner, including Ki-seok.
Ki-seok has swiftly navigated his way up the ranks of the prosecution service and is on track to become South Korean attorney general, and he’s not likely to stop there.
Supporting Ki-seok in the shadows is his wife, and Myung’s daughter, Se-hee (Son Eun-seo). Se-hee doesn’t feature prominently in the first few episodes but her thirst for power steadily becomes evident.
She saw potential in Ki-seok and expects him to rise all the way to the highest political post in the land.
Se-hee starts to emerge as a formidable foe. Since she’s an unknown quantity, both for us and for Young, there’s the potential for her to usurp her father’s place as the villain. Alas, this tantalising prospect soon evaporates, as the show instead settles for more of the same.
However, there remains time for that to change, and if it did, it would make for an interesting parallel with Korea’s current political climate.
In this case, more of the same means back-room tactics involving Korea’s prosecutorial service.
The job of prosecutor occupies a curious position in Korea. It’s an extremely coveted post but people assume that the Prosecutor’s Office is rife with corruption.
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Last year, South Korea elected former prosecutor Yoon Seok-yeol as president, and the narrative convention has not abated. If anything it’s only grown more prevalent.
While working as a prosecutor, Yoon went after major figures, including former presidents, which allowed him to rise to prominence. Some critics have also advanced the idea that first lady Kim Keon-hee may have selected Yoon as a partner for his likelihood to climb the political ladder, just like Payback’s Se-hee.
Outside the halls of justice, Payback attempts to jazz up its narrative with familiar action and thriller tropes. Among these is having Young arrested and sent to jail, where inmates in Myung’s pocket gang up on him.
At one point he even strikes an unlikely deal that allows him to work as an adviser in Tae-chun’s office.
After Young’s dramatic entry in the series, which saw him ride horseback across the Mongolian plains and conduct a team of stock manipulators like a mini orchestra, the show has struggled to conjure other memorable images.
The villains have also been lacking, save for the occasional juicy detail, like Chairman Myung’s habit of preparing condolence money in advance for people he manipulates and expects will eventually kill themselves.
While the show has become less convincing as a thriller over the past few weeks, it does remain convincing when it switches to dramatic mode, largely thanks to the genial Lee, who plays Young as an eager provider for those around him who enjoys small moments with his family, such as Jun-kyeong’s mother’s salty soups.
Perhaps that’s what the show needs: a little kick to fire up the senses.
Payback: Money and Power is streaming on Amazon Prime.
