K-drama Delightfully Deceitful: Kim Dong-wook, Chun Woo-hee lead stylish drama that mixes diverting thrills with indulgent psychobabble
- Kim Dong-wook stars alongside Chun Woo-hee in psychological drama Delightfully Deceitful, which follows a master con artist – who is likely a psychopath to boot
- The con artist, a woman named Lee Ro-woon, has just been released from prison and manipulates those around her to get what she wants
Lead cast: Kim Dong-wook, Chun Woo-hee, Yoon Park, Sojin
Latest Nielsen Rating: 3.5 per cent
Delightfully Deceitful belongs to a class of Korean dramas that take a very aggressive approach to psychology. All human actions are boiled down to predictable behavioural patterns which can easily be manipulated by those who want to.
Those who choose to do so are generally on the extreme ends of the psychological spectrum – sociopaths or psychopaths who come across as very social beings that are able to wiggle their way in, through, out and around the slippery echelons of society.
In this story, that role falls to Chun, who plays the sharp-eyed Lee Ro-woon, a young woman who can manipulate those around her. At the start of the show, her targets are somewhat limited, for she is in jail for the murder of her parents.
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She has already served 10 years out of a 15-year sentence when a man on the outside admits that he was the real killer.
Accepting this sudden change of fate with barely a flicker in her eyes, Ro-woon is unleashed on the outside world for the first time as an adult and she sets about getting herself a wardrobe and funds in hardly any time at all.
She manages to do this because Ro-woon is no ordinary young woman – she is a master con artist, and likely a psychopath to boot.
Her path is not completely clear, however, as she faces two obstacles: her goofy and too attentive probation officer, Go Yo-han (Yoon Park), and her empathetic lawyer, Han Moo-young (Kim Dong-wook).
Moo-young is a successful lawyer who suffers from hyper-empathy syndrome. In the usual way that there is an emotional divide between leading male and female characters in K-dramas, this makes him the polar opposite of Ro-woon’s cold psychopath.
Moo-young’s condition makes him feel deeply the emotions of people around him. It can get so intense that he will sometimes suffer their physical pain as well.
He often sits down with his therapist Mo Jae-in (Sojin of the K-pop group Girl’s Day) to talk about his condition. These frequent and highly expository sessions are purely for the audience – Moo-young and Jae-in state the obvious to each other so that the audience can understand.
After he successfully defends a card shark in court, Moo-young takes on a new client – the man who has admitted to murdering Ro-woon’s parents. He sits down with this man and patiently listens while he says nasty things about his crimes and what he should do to trick the jury into giving him a light sentence.
Moo-young records this conversation and releases it to the public, ensuring that the man is swiftly imprisoned and Ro-woon is released.
Empathy aside, this seems a patently suicidal tactic for a lawyer – Korea may not have the same ironclad lawyer-client privileges that some other nations have, but this is a hard move to take seriously.
Next up for Moo-young is a trip to prison, where he waits for Ro-woon upon her release. He brings her new clothes and is a model of gentlemanly conduct when he takes her to a cafe. He also offers his services as a lawyer for her forthcoming defamation trial against the government for wrongful imprisonment.
Moo-young’s ultimate intentions are not clear but he evidently knows a lot more than he is letting on. He knows, for instance, that the man now in prison for the murders is also innocent – which makes it even more perplexing that he engineered his jailing.
He also knows that Ro-woon is not the innocent girl she pretends to be, but he also does not think she is the killer; he believes the real culprit is another, as yet unrevealed, person.
Many of the “set pieces” in Delightfully Deceitful sees Ro-woon in her element, tricking people with her elaborate schemes. She confidently swaggers into stores pretending to be a detective or bursts into a hospital as a fake guest lecturer to get into its VIP ward.
During all her ploys, Ro-woon breaks the fourth wall to talk directly to the audience and explain what she is doing and why people fall for it.
Her tricks are enjoyable to watch but her explanations are far less so. It is a gambit that distracts from the action and feels like a poor match for Ro-woon, who as a psychopath surely should not care about what we think.
It also reveals a lack of confidence in the writing. Do the creators not think we will buy into these sequences otherwise?
This aggressive style, mixed with an over-reliance on psychobabble, makes for an odd, but not altogether unattractive, combination. Many stretches in the opening two episodes are enjoyable but they do not add up to a cohesive viewing experience.
Sometimes, K-dramas need a little bit of runway to take off and fly. Let us hope that is the case with Delightfully Deceitful.
Delightfully Deceitful is streaming on Viu.
