How K-drama Designated Survivor: 60 Days changed an aspiring politician’s life, and left him ‘a lot of philosophical questions’
- South Korean TV show Designated Survivor: 60 Days sees the country’s environment minister becomes its president when every more senior politician is killed
- The way the lead character approaches making political decisions – with people at the forefront – left a deep impression on Hong Kong NGO founder Andre Kwok
South Korean television show Designated Survivor: 60 Days (2019), based on the American show Designated Survivor, stars Ji Jin-hee as an academic and the country’s environment minister, who becomes its president when every more senior politician is killed in a terror attack.
Andre Kwok Ka-ming, founder and chairman of the Good City Foundation, a Hong Kong-based organisation that facilitates and arranges financing for urban development projects, tells Richard Lord how it changed his life.
I like movies but I don’t pay a lot of attention to what’s new. This just popped up on my Netflix, and the idea of the narrative caught me; I love this kind of stuff.
The whole cabinet is murdered in a terrorist bombing and only the minister for the environment is left; usually the guy in this ministry is a bit of an outsider. He only has 60 days before the next election.
He had actually resigned on the day of the bombing, because of a conflict between his belief in science and the way politics works. He survived because he wouldn’t compromise his scientific mindset with politics.