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Pierce Conran

This article contains spoilers.
Lead cast: Park Eun-bin, Kim Hyo-jin, Chae Jong-hyeop, Cha Hak-yeon
Latest Nielsen rating: 8.7 per cent
The eager-to-please K-drama series Castaway Diva washed up on our screens with a broadly appealing melange of adversity, mystery and powerful pop ballads.


Yet perhaps its greatest asset so far has been the relationship between its titular character, a woman who has just returned to society after spending 15 years on a deserted island, and the K-pop idol she has always idolised.
Castaway diva Seo Mok-ha (Park Eun-bin) and washed up diva Yoon Ran-joo (Kim Hyo-jin) have led lives off the beaten path which few of us can relate to. Their unique experiences have made them special, but they have also come at a cost.
Castaway Diva: Park Eun-bin returns for another K-drama treat
As a star, the now 40-something Ran-joo has all but faded, and instead of adoring fans she now surrounds herself with numbing bottles of alcohol. Her loneliness is only matched by that of Mok-ha, who has spent her entire adult life stranded and alone.
In episode three, brief flashbacks show the two characters at their most vulnerable points. In mirror images, the past and future divas remove their shoes and step off their paths and onto different ledges, beyond which awaits the promise of sweet oblivion.
In both cases the source of their despair is their loneliness. Mok-ha reaches her nadir six years into her Robinson Crusoe existence, when she stands atop a cliff before casting herself into the water far below.

Ran-joo is on the roof of a hospital, where she has just learned that she has nodules on her vocal cords. This malady will doom her singing career and thus cost her her legions of adoring fans.
As Mok-ha lets herself sink to what would have been her watery grave, she notices a cooler floating above her. Her curiosity piqued, she swims up to it and hoists it ashore. Within this fisherman’s icebox she discovers an old pack of instant noodles.
In a nod to the Korean cult classic film Castaway on a Moon – in a which a modern-day Robinson Crusoe on an abandoned island in the middle of Seoul regains his will to live when he finds a seasoning powder pack for instant noodles – she boils it up and, while eating it with tears in her eyes, finds the strength to persevere.

No more instant noodle packs wash up in her subsequent nine years on the island, but she does eventually manage to seduce a seagull to be her dinner partner using potato crumbs.
Ran-joo doesn’t have a serendipitous cooler moment and she lacks Mok-ha’s can-do spirit. Instead, she resorts to alcohol and cigarettes to numb her pain – that is, until Mok-ha, her purest fan, appears before her and saves her.
At first blush, Mok-ha and Ran-joo’s relationship excited us through its vicarious thrills. A super fan meets her idol, who embraces her rather than push her away. They even begin to live and work together in short order.
9 of the best new Korean drama series to watch in November 2023
While we can write this off as pure fantasy, in the world of the show this union makes perfect sense. These characters are each other’s saviours. They need one another to survive and thrive.
Mok-ha’s out-of-time fandom is what connects her to the present and gives her purpose in a world that is light years away from the one she left behind.
Mok-ha gives Ran-joo back her self-esteem and provides a reason to carry on. Ran-joo now has a chance to make her greedy manager, Lee Seo-jun (Kim Joo-hun), make good on his promise to give her half the shares in his thriving management agency, which she helped him set up. But she still needs to sell 80,000 albums in the next six months.
Mok-ha is already living the dream as Ran-joo’s agent and she also gets to sing, although only in the shadows as she lip-synchs for Ran-joo.
She soon gets her own chance to step into the spotlight, but she’s still no closer to achieving her real dream.

What she really wants is to track down Jung Ki-ho (Moon Woo-jin), the boy who saved her as a teen before she was cast away. What she doesn’t know is that he’s already right beside her.
Castaway Diva teased us, leading us to wonder whether one of the brothers who found her – Kang Bo-geol (Chae Jong-hyeop) and Woo-hak (Cha Hak-yeon) – is actually Ki-ho.
We do get our answer, but it’s rooted in a secret that has so far been the show’s weakest link – the relationship between Ki-ho and his violent father, Jung Bong-wan (Lee Seung-joon). Bong-wan’s escalation from abusive drunk to psychopathic killer has been unconvincing and more than a little distracting.

Hopefully Mok-ha and Ran-joo can do what they do best and wrest the spotlight away from him in the show’s closing weeks.
Castaway Diva is streaming on Netflix.


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Netflix K-drama midseason recap: Castaway Diva – Park Eun-bin’s character’s bond with fading K-pop idol excites, but show has a weak link

Kim Hyo-jin (left) and Park Eun-bin in a still from “Castaway Diva”.

Park Eun-bin as Seo Mok-ha, who returns to society and meets her K-pop idol after 15 years stranded on a desert island, in a still from Netflix’s entertainment-world K-drama “Castaway Diva”.

Kim Hyo-jin as washed up K-pop star Yoon Ran-joo in a still from “Castaway Diva”.

Park Eun-bin (right) as Seo Mok-ha, who returns to society after spending 15 years on a deserted island, and Chae Jong-hyeop as Kang Bo-geol, one of the brothers who found her, in a still from “Castaway Diva”.

Cha Hak-yeon as Kang Woo-hak, one of the brothers who found Mok-ha, in a still from “Castaway Diva”.

Kim Hyo-jin (left) as Yoon Ran-joo and Park Eun-bin as Seo Mok-ha in a still from “Castaway Diva”.

Who is Park Eun-bin, the charming, relatable K-drama actress and star of Castaway Diva and Extraordinary Attorney Woo?

Park Eun-bin in a still from “Castaway Diva”.

Park Eun-bin (above) hit the big time with her title role in Extraordinary Attorney Woo, but her stardom didn’t happen overnight. We look back at her acting career, which started when she was five years old.
Photo: Instagram/@eunbining0904

Park Eun-bin as Seo Mok-ha in a still from “Castaway Diva”.

Park as Woo Young-woo in a still from “Extraordinary Attorney Woo” (2022).

Park as musician Chae Song-ah in a still from “Do You Like Brahms?” (2020).

Park as baseball team manager Lee Se-young in a still from “Hot Stove League” (2019).

Park plays a crown prince and his female twin in “The King’s Affection” (2021).

Park as Woo Young-woo and Kang Tae-oh as Lee Jun-ho in a still from “Extraordinary Attorney Woo”. Photo: ENA

Park (left) as former castaway Seo Mok-ha and Kim Hyo-jin as Yoon Ran-joo in a still from “Castaway Diva”.

The 15 best school K-dramas of all time, from Dream High and Boys Over Flowers to Weak Hero Class 1 and Twenty-Five Twenty-One

Lee Min-ho (second from right) leads the cast of the megahit series “Boys Over Flowers”, set in a Korean high school.

Kim Tae-ri (left) and Nam Joo-hyuk in a still from “Twenty-Five, Twenty-One”, one of many popular Korean drama series set in high schools. Photo: Netflix

Netflix K-drama midseason recap: Strong Girl Nam-soon – tacky action comedy with more fat shaming and drug demonising than story building

Lee Yoo-mi in a still from “Strong Girl Nam-soon”.

Lee Yoo-mi as the titular character, Gang Nam-soon, who uses her superpowers to try to rid Gangnam in Seoul of drugs, in a still from Netflix K-drama “Strong Girl Nam-soon”. Kim Jung-eun, Kim Hae-sook, Ong Seung-wu, Byeon Woo-seok co-star.

Byeon Woo-seok as drug company CEO Ryu Si-o in a still from “Strong Girl Nam-soon”.

Kim Jung-eun as Gang Nam-soon’s mother, Hwang Geum-ju, in a still from “Strong Girl Nam-soon”.

Ong Seung-wu as narcotics detective Kang Hee-sik in a still from “Strong Girl Nam-soon”.

Lee Yoo-mi as Gang Nam-soon in a still from “Strong Girl Nam-soon”.

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Park Bo-young in a still from “Daily Dose of Sunshine”. Photo: Yang Hae Sung/Netflix.

Lee Jung-eun (left) and Park Bo-young as head nurse Song Hyo-jin and nurse Da-eun in a still from “Daily Dose of Sunshine”. Photo: Yang Hae Sung/Netflix

Park Bo-young (left) and Yeon Woo-jin as nurse Da-eun and doctor Go-yun in a still from “Daily Dose of Sunshine”. Photo: Yang Hae Sung/Netflix

Jang Dong-yoon as Da-eun’s lifelong friend Yu-chan in a still from “Daily Dose of Sunshine”. Photo: Yang Hae Sung/Netflix

Park Bo-young as nurse Da-eun in a still from “Daily Dose of Sunshine”. Photo: Yang Hae Sung/Netflix

Yeon Woo-jin as doctor Go-yun in a still from “Daily Dose of Sunshine”. Photo: Yang Hae Sung/Netflix

K-drama Moon in the Day: Kim Young-dae, Pyo Ye-jin in fantasy tale of romance and revenge that is epic in scope and modest in its ambitions

Pyo Ye-jin and Kim Young-dae in a still from “Moon in the Day”.

Kim Young-dae as warrior Do Ha in a still from K-drama series “Moon in the Day”. He kills a general, whose daughter (Pyo Ye-jin) then kills him. Fast forward to today, and Do Ha’s  doppelgänger (Kim) seeks revenge against the daughter’s present incarnation (also Pyo).

Pyo Ye-jin as slain general’s daughter Han Ri-ta in a still from “Moon in the Day”.

Kim Young-dae as top star Han Jun-o, and warrior Do Ha’s doppelgänger in the present, in a still from “Moon in the Day”.

Pyo Ye-jin as firefighter Kang Young-hwa in a still from “Moon in the Day”.

Pyo Ye-jin as slain general’s daughter Han Ri-ta and Kim Young-dae as the general’s killer, Do Ha, in a still from “Moon in the Day”. Han avenges her father by killing Do Ha. 

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After 15 years stuck on a deserted island, Park Eun-bin’s protagonist returns to society and meets her idol, Kim Hyo-jin’s alcohol-soaked, washed-up K-pop star
The relationship between the two as they save each other from loneliness is so far the show’s best asset. Hopefully it stays this way in the season’s final weeks


In Netflix K-drama Castaway Diva, Park Eun-bin’s titular protagonist returning to society after 15 years on a deserted island and saving her idol, a washed up K-pop star (Kim Hyo-jin) is what excites.
