K-drama midseason recap: Divorce Attorney Shin – engaging legal drama starring Cho Seung-woo plays to both sides with elastic social agenda

This article contains mild spoilers.

The Cho Seung-woo vehicle Divorce Attorney Shin, in which the Stranger star plays piano prodigy-turned-divorce lawyer Shin Sung-han, has displayed some exceptionally strong ajeossi (middle-aged Korean man) energy.

Sung-han, his office manager Jang Hyeong-geun (Kim Sung-kyun) and Jo Jeong-sik (Jung Moon-sung), the property agent working below their law firm office, spend a lot drinking or singing karaoke and then nursing their hangovers together. They also go over their cases while playing catch or commiserate while swinging away in batting cages.

This comes as something of a surprise, since the show was written by Yoo Young-a, the writer behind the feminist smash Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 and last year’s female- friendship drama Thirty-Nine with Son Ye-jin – although this show is based on a web comic written by Kang Tae-kyung.

This ajeossi energy proves to be both the show’s strength and its Achilles’ heel.

Its strength because the male camaraderie on the show is endearing and refreshingly light on machismo, though certainly not devoid of it – Sung-han remains in many ways a typically aloof and arrogant male K-drama lead.

Divorce Attorney Shin: Cho Seung-woo leads Korean legal drama on Netflix

Sung-han and Hyeong-geun enjoy wonderful repartee as they lightly rib each other or delight in the same small pleasures, whether a bowl of instant noodles at a noodle shop run by Kim So-yeun (Kang Mal-geum) or the moment that former radio host Lee Seo-jin (Han Hye-jin) fixes the office’s sliding door when she puts herself forward for a job in their firm that they did not know they were hiring for.

The weakness emerges in the case that unfolds in episodes seven and eight. Sung-han begins representing Ma Chun-seok (Choi Jae-sup), a middle-aged man living a hardy existence far down south in the countryside.

Chun-seok is married to the much younger Vietnamese woman Dinh Thi Hoa (Kim Huong Ji-yun), who is seeking a divorce and custody of their child, claiming her husband was abusive.

Compared to the other cases that Sung-han takes on, this one proves to be a bit of a headscratcher. He has been very picky with his cases so far, considering for a long time whether he should take on clients and only doing so when he finds something in their story that he can relate to.

Chun-seok appears in his office after having received his card from Jin Yeong-ju (Noh Susanna) from the powerful Keumhwa Law Firm that represents his wife.

Yeong-ju is also the stepmother of Sung-han’s beloved nephew Seo Gi-yeong (Kim Joon-eui) and has been trying to cut Sung-han out of her stepson’s life. Sung-han takes the bait, but we do not really understand why.

The case becomes a national issue and, in the face of a public outcry, Sung-han needs a bold strategy. He finds it by inserting himself in the narrative. He reveals his past as a brilliant pianist, sharing a video shot by lawyer Choi Jun (Han Eun-sung) that he spent the earlier episodes of the show trying to take down before Jun switched from Keumhwa to his firm.

All is not as it seems in Chun-seok’s case and it eventually transpires that he himself was a victim.

Divorce Attorney Shin may be fiction but, like other recent legal dramas, it follows a narrative approach that stitches together cases which embellish ripped-from-the-headlines issues. Earlier cases in the series reflect this approach, but Chun-seok’s case goes against the prevailing winds.

Thanks to the declining birth rate and the exodus of young people to major cities, men in the Korean countryside have for years faced meagre marriage prospects and women from developing countries, often brought in through arranged marriages, have stepped in to fill this need. But life is often very difficult for them as they adjust to rural Korean surroundings that can be patriarchal and xenophobic.

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Keumhwa, as the firm representing the Vietnamese wife, should be on the right of the issue (statistically), but the show engineers it the other way around, with the middle-aged man becoming the sympathetic figure.

This gives Sung-han a unique legal challenge, but it is an odd social hill for the show to plant its flag on.

Another awkwardly sympathetic middle-aged male is Choi Jeong-ho (Jeon Joong-yong), a cheating husband with liver cancer who will die if he does not marry his mistress, since his wife will not donate her liver to him; his mistress legally cannot.

This may prove just a blip in a series that has otherwise championed marginalised figures, such as Seo-jin, who was terrorised by a possessive husband who tarnished her image with a sex tape, or housewife Park Ae-ran (Hwang Jung-min), who suffers under the thumb of her abusive mother-in-law for 20 years before finally snapping.

Another refreshing aspect of the show is that, while Sung-han is positioned as a brilliant legal mind – an image he plays up himself – in truth he has not been terribly effective as a lawyer so far.

He favours bold tactics but they occasionally backfire on him and some cases, like Ae-ran’s, resolves themselves completely in spite of his role in them.

Perhaps in an effort to please a broader viewing public, Divorce Attorney Shin plays to different audiences from case to case, giving the show a social spectrum that is so elastic that it risks both pleasing and annoying viewers – but for different reasons.

Yet, aside from its seesawing morals, it is often a comforting ride, with an engaging leading turn from Cho and solid assists from the supporting cast, particularly Kim Sung-kyun.

Divorce Attorney Shin is streaming on Netflix.