What a view | In Netflix K-drama Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, Shin Min-a plays a fish out of water in a seaside village – will she find common ground with the locals?
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Teething problems abound for the romcom drama world’s latest golden couple in Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha (Netflix, two new episodes weekly).
Yoon Hye-jin (Shin Min-a) is a principled young dentist at a flashy Seoul practice – unlike her boss, who augments the company accounts by recommending expensive treatments that patients don’t need.
When Hye-jin takes the moral high ground and quits her job, she finds herself ostracised by the city’s cosy dentistry community. Meaning there’s only one thing for it, obviously: opening her own clinic in the (fictitious) seaside village of Gongjin (one of the picturesque parts of industrial Pohang).
Hong Du-sik (Kim Seon-ho), meanwhile, is all things to all men and women in the tight-knit village – the plumber, painter and decorator, property agent, fish-market auctioneer, barista and parcel courier, for starters.
Accordingly, he is known as Chief Hong and, as a sort of unofficial village policeman, he gives the seemingly arrogant outsider – whose several social missteps culminate in one stupendous faux pas that antagonises the entire community – a hard time.