Itaewon Class

Overall Rating: A+
Subtitles: These subs were OK. My one major complaint is the way they translate the nicknames/honorifics (do we have a good word for this in English?) like “hyung” and “unnie,” because the translation is inconsistent and often misses the mark on meaning. Sometimes this was super critical, like when Yi Seo first refers to Hyun Yi as “unnie,” and if people are watching who don’t understand that these terms are gendered they’d be missing huge moments in the story based on the fact that it’s translated just as her name. There was also some weirdness with the way time was translated– perhaps the translations were literal, but the way they translated made the story very confusing, for example towards the end when Yi Seo says “the other day” referring to an event that happened five years before. Overall I think these were good subs in terms of capturing meaning, but they fell short in some very important ways.
Brief Synopsis: In order to exact revenge on the man who ruined his life, Saeroyi opens a small pub in Itaewon with the goal of disrupting the restaurant business and taking his enemy down. Watch it on Netflix here.

**Full show spoilers below the image. If you do not wish to be spoiled, do not proceed**

Ending Type: Full on happy ending.
Characters:
Park Saeroyi (Park Seo Joon)
Jo Yi Seo (Kim Da Mi)
Jang Geun Soo (Kim Dong Hee)
Choi Seung Kwan (Ryu Kyung Soo)
Ma Hyun Yi (Lee Joo Young)
Toni Kim (Chris Lyon)
Jang Dae Hee (Yoo Jae Myung)
Oh Soo Ah (Kwon Na Ra)
Jang Geun Won (Ahn Bo Hyun)
Full review:
Look, I’ve watched over 100 K Dramas at this point. I love them, don’t get me wrong. The majority that I watch are phenomenal and they make me laugh and cry and scream and feel things. But it had been a good long while since I’d watched a show that made me stay up way too late because I couldn’t turn it off, or a show that I thought about in bed and constantly until I could watch it again.
Itaewon Class got a lot of buzz when it first came out and was highly reviewed and received a whole lot of love. I have no real explanation for why I didn’t watch it immediately, or why it took me so long to get to it. I’m just really happy I finally did.
This show was just a complete slam dunk for me, and based on the high viewership and reviews that’s true of pretty much everyone who watched it. A great story, wonderful cast, gorgeous cinematography, all the perfect sauce for a good show. This one stood out, I think, because of its realism, and because of the eclectic cast of underdog characters.
It got a lot of praise for the inclusion of taboo type characters, which it had in spades. The main character and one of his employees at the pub are ex convicts, neither of them with high school degrees. Both committed violent crime. The chef is a transgender woman. One of the waiters is a half-Korean half-African man from Guinea. One of the heroic type characters might be a sociopath. They’re all misfits, all without much in the way of family support and absolutely no cultural support. And the show does not shy away from showing the kind of treatment they receive for their identities, which is both heartbreaking and moving.
The overall theme of the show is that this group of misfits who lack the connections and family support that are typically required in order to succeed are taking on a huge conglomerate with their sheer willpower and cleverness. It’s an underdog revenge story of the highest order, but it’s also a powerful commentary on Korean society (and honestly Capitalism in general).
All of these things make this show phenomenal.
The killer, I think, is really the characters. Not just because they’re taboo characters in a found family situation and underdogs fighting against the rich and powerful (and corrupt). But because there’s a realism to all of them, and a clear character, and clear motivations, so you understand them and love them all but hate them all a little for some of the choices they make. It’s not necessarily that they keep you guessing– in all situations you can feel pretty confident that you know how any given character may respond. It’s the combination of all factors at play, the third parties that are necessarily involved in all the disputes, the existence of chance and luck especially in the restaurant business that keeps you on your toes.
Some of the main characters are truly vile– particularly Oh Soo Ah who is placed initially like she’s going to be the main love interest. An orphan who was practically raised by Saeroyi’s father, she’s positioned as an ally and close friend. However, she accepts money from Jangga Corp for college and goes to work for them after, and never once (not until the very, very end at least) does her alliance to Jangga waiver, even though she knows the truth behind Mr. Park’s death and Saeroyi’s expulsion and imprisonment. Even as she sees the corruption and dirty dealings of the company day in and day out. Even as she is given tasks to specifically demean Saeroyi regularly. She just goes with it because? That’s her job? And we are supposed to be Ok with that? To be honest I don’t think we are, and I think she was specifically placed as a foil to the many of the other characters because she chooses her own future and security over something like personal loyalty and relationships. And this is a real thing that many people do, but in a story about people whose fierce loyalty guides their lives she looks especially ugly. I was glad she got a backbone at the end, but it was honestly too little too late for me to think of her as one of the good guys. It was especially unclear when she became the whsitleblower if that was even her ultimate goal the whole time– the way those scenes were written it sounded like that was a card she wanted in her pocket but wasn’t really planning to use until the Chariman let her down for the last time. I understand how her story kind of all came together, and it made her seem like she deserved her spot in the overall IC group friendship scenario at least in concept, but it honestly just wasn’t enough for me. By then I was way too over her and hated her way too much to appreciate that she might have been nursing her own revenge plot the whole time. (Honestly I think the thing that kills me is just– if that was really her play from the getgo maybe say something to Saeroyi??? So that you don’t just look like a cold selfish byotch constantly? IDK).
I wanted, so badly, for her to get crushed and disappear from the story early on. Not sure her redemption arc or ultimate decision or whatever you want to call it really changed my feelings about her for the rest of the story. That’s the long and the short of it for me on Soo Ah.
Chairman Jang was a truly vile villain who was absolutely disturbing and completely amoral, very power obsessed, highly corrupt, definitely viewed himself as above humanity, etc. However he was also a fascinating villain because he was actually smart and very difficult to take down and his motivation, however disturbing, was highly believable and compelling– Saeroyi was the person who had refused to bend to his will, refused to get on his knees in front of him. Taking Saeroyi down, and getting the satisfaction of that, was exactly the kind of thing you can imagine a man like him in the final stages of his life would become obsessed with.
We can’t talk about this show without talking about Chairman Jang’s two sons who were both very different and very complicated in their own ways. Having a sociopath father obsessed with his own business will fuck you up for sure, and it was interesting how differently that played out. Geun Won was a classic bully, with few (if any) talents of his own aside from tormenting people and hiding behind his family’s money. Geun Soo was obsessed with apologizing for his family’s mistakes, intent on taking responsibility even when he was not able to do so. Geun Won was easy to hate, from his introduction as a bully to his cover up of Mr. Park’s murder, to his general whiny entitled psychotic adult behavior. Honestly I was cheering for a redemption arc for him, but it makes sense that he ultimately decided Saeroyi was the reason he had suffered and chose to react accordingly. Geun Soo was a little more dynamic, coming in as a sweet kid who just needed people to love him, and turning into someone who took all the advice he was given exactly the wrong way. He came around, but it was painful to watch him betray his friends and sacrifice their trust in exchange for the concept of winning.
Both Toni and Seung Kwan were interesting characters who nevertheless mostly existed inside the main narrative as support, so I won’t take too much time to talk about them except to say that I LOVE that this featured a black actor and the narrative didn’t shy away from the difficulties he faced due to his skin color. I also loved that Seung Kwan was not exactly a model ex-con and struggled with anger issues as well as general lack of belief in himself– his final arc was incredible and I loved watching him learn to believe in himself and value his own life.
Hyun Yi packed some serious emotional punch. I love that we got a transgender story here but also the way the narrative doesn’t shy away from the difficulties this presents for her as well as her courage and bravery to stand up and say, “This is who I am and I won’t apologize for it.” That representation was SO POWERFUL and wow. Just loved everything about her character, especially the beautiful friendships she formed with everyone else on the staff. A+.
Saeroyi and Yi Seo were very different characters in a lot of regards (for example Saeroyi was VERY driven by loyalty and protecting his people whereas Yi Seo was primarily concerned with the goal of the restaurant and initially willing to push anyone aside if it helped with that goal), but at their core they were the same. Two people with singular focus and such intense persistence and determination that they could and would make anything happen for them. This was a revenge story for Saeroyi (and wow that final episode was satisfying), but it felt so much more like the triumph of a man who truly believed in his own ability to succeed and made it happen. Yi Seo, similarly, had the kind of self-fulfilling positivism that was astounding. She said it was going to happen, so she would make it happen. The end.
I Loved their romance as well. This is one of the few K Dramas I’ve seen that makes you wait until the final episode to give you the kiss and the relationship, and I kind of found it a little silly that his confession to her happened while they were literally running for their lives, but I’m not going to complain much. While I obviously preferred Yi Seo to Soo Ah for Saeroyi from the beginning I was bothered by the fact that when her story begins she’s 20 and he’s 30. I was happy the show brought us forward 4-5 years before anything came of it; the age gap itself isn’t that bad, just how young she was initially was a little icky. But by the time he accepts his feelings for her she’s a high powered executive and very much an adult, so it felt right. Overall my favorite aspect of their romance was the fact that they were partners for so long, working together to achieve the same goal, believing entirely in each other and trusting each other completely. It was a beautiful partnership and wonderful relationship and I was cheering for them so hard. The romantic in me wanted to see more of them together, but we were rewarded with a couple sweet scenes at the end so I can’t complain too much.
This is the longest review I’ve written in a really long time and that’s about the biggest indicator of how into this show I was. I truly loved it and highly recommend.
High Points: Everything. Highlight to realistic and wonderful characters and beautiful relationships set in an intense but overall inspiring story.
Low Points: None.