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Pierce Conran

This article contains minor spoilers.
2/5 stars
Lead cast: Lee Yoo-mi, Kim Jung-eun, Kim Hae-sook, Ong Seong-wu, Byun Woo-seok
Latest Nielsen rating: 10.4 per cent


She came, she saw, she conquered. Now will she please go away?
In its finale over the weekend, Strong Girl Nam-soon squeaked past the ratings peak of its predecessor Strong Girl Bong-soon once again, as it became the seventh cable-TV drama series of the year to cross the 10 per cent ratings threshold in South Korea.
Strong Girl Nam-soon midseason recap: too much fat shaming, drug demonising
K-dramas are not always bound by the same rules as other narrative media. Star power can trump character building, logic often takes a back seat to meme-able moments, and narratives may pause to make way for full-blown adverts that are often baked into shows.
Although this doesn’t hold true for every drama, it certainly does for Strong Girl Nam-soon, a show whose desperate desire to please stands out even in the hyper-commercial realm of Korean dramas.
It’s a K-drama version of a jester abasing themselves in a palace court to curry the favour of the king.
Each element of the show feels like a distraction designed to mask the emptiness of the story and the sloppiness of its storytelling.
Characters don’t behave consistently and, rather than a narrative, what we’re drawn into is more like an endless parade of vignettes.

At least there’s a nugget of a story to get things started. Kang Nam-soon (Lee Yoo-mi) is accidentally separated from her father in Mongolia as a child and for the next decade her pawnbroker mogul mother Hwang Gum-joo (Kim Jung-eun) searches desperately for her.
After first welcoming an impostor into her home, Gum-joo is eventually reunited with Nam-soon, thanks to stalwart narcotics detective Kang Hee-sik (Ong Seong-wu).
Mother and daughter meet in a burning building when Gum-joo catches Nam-soon after a fireball blows her out of the window.
Married with the emotion of the reunion, the show’s silly and surreal action visuals pay off in this one scene. But once the show switches to its narrative about dangerous drugs being smuggled into Gangnam, Seoul, and never looks back, it loses its momentum and we never to get to feel anything like that again.

Nam-soon gets closer with Hee-sik and reconnects with her mother and, to a lesser extent, her grandmother Gil Joong-gan (Kim Hae-sook) during the protracted drug investigation.
Dozens of other characters orbit the leads, some with little to no connection to what’s happening on screen. Most egregious are Nam-soon’s erstwhile homeless buddies Ji Hyun-soo (Joo Woo-jae) and Teacher Noh (Park Gyeong-ree) who keep popping up in head-scratching asides that are utterly divorced from the rest of the show.
Although he is ultimately shown to have a secret criminal role in the proceedings, the unscrupulous financier “Bread” Song (Kim Ki-bum), who keeps butting heads with Gum-joo, isn’t much better.
10 of the best new Korean drama series to watch in December 2023
The show also boasts one of the weakest screen villains of the year in Ryu Si-o (Byun Woo-seok), a dapper drug lord whose entire personality is built around repetitive scenes of him brooding in a dark gym.
The super drug he creates is rather confusing. It sometimes gives people super powers and makes them a little crazy. Si-o’s motivations for making it are very vague and, worst of all, he stumbles completely as a fearsome villain.
Halfway through the show he hires a blatantly undercover Nam-soon as his assistant and, despite her continually idiotic and suspicious behaviour, he never for one moment suspects anything is awry.

One might argue that this is really a drama about family, but even there it fumbles pretty badly. Nam-soon’s adoptive Mongolian mother drops by to visit when the family take a friendly trip to Busan during all the dangerous-drug chaos.
Rather than have someone escort her to the airport when there are dangerous criminals clearly out to harm them, Nam-soon’s family leave her to find her own way. Naturally she is targeted by Si-o, who has someone slip a bomb into the bags she carries onto her flight. And how exactly did that get through security?
Every K-drama is allowed its slips and occasional indulgences, but the ones that work, the ones that endure, do so because they care about their stories, their characters and their audience. Ultimately we viewers were all just a trophy for Strong Girl Nam-soon to parade around on its ratings victory lap.

Plans are already afoot for a third “Strong Girl” series. Let’s hope we get a real story and some characters worth caring about next time.
Strong Girl Nam-soon is streaming on Netflix.


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Netflix K-drama review: Strong Girl Nam-soon – fantasy family drama starring Lee Yoo-mi is an empty, badly written mess

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

Lee Yoo-mi, playing the titular lead character, in a still from Netflix K-drama series “Strong Girl Nam-soon”. The show is let down by sloppy writing and characters that viewers will find it hard to root for.

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

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

Byun Woo-seok as dapper but unconvincing drug lord Ryu Si-o in a still from “Strong Girl Nam-soon”.

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

Ji Chang-wook set for crime-themed series Bulk; Lee Jong-suk, Go Min-si may team up for romance; Strong Girl season 3 confirmed – Korean drama casting latest

Korean actor Lee Jong-suk (above) is considering joining the cast of I’m Against My Romance, to which Go Min-si has been linked. Also in the latest Korean drama casting news, Ji Chang-wook is set to join crime-themed drama Bulk. Photo: Instagram/@ jongsuk0206

Go Min-si in a still from “Sweet Home”. Photo: Son Ik-chung/Netflix

Lee Sung-kyung in a still from “Dr. Romantic” season 3. Photo: Netflix

Lee Dong-wook in a still from “Tale of the Nine-Tailed 1938”. Photo: tvN

Ji Chang-wook in a still from “The Worst of Evil”. Photo: Disney+

Jo Woo-jin in a still from “Happiness”. Photo: tvN

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

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 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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With a story that is a mere succession of vignettes, characters who don’t behave consistently, and a giant supporting cast, this show is hard to root for
It’s not helped by a weak villain whose personality is thinly drawn and motives unclear. A ratings hit it may be, but viewers have been sold short


The story of Strong Girl Nam-soon starts with a child separated from her mother, then reunited. After that the Netflix drama series goes downhill, its narrative incoherent and its characters unconvincing.


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