In Case You Haven't Been Watching

Frankly, the last couple of episodes of “Bride From Vietnam” (aka “Golden Bride”) have been such clunkers, you’d think there was a writer’s strike going on in Korea. Scene after scene feels like it was cribbed from a previous episode: Ji-Young running to her mother and declaring she can’t live like this anymore, her suspicious husband Young-Min confronting character after character about her past to no avail, In-Kyong getting increasingly bitchy and making Jin-Ju feel insecure at every opportunity… and how long are people going to keep wondering aloud about the mysterious “other reason” why Semi and Young-su can’t get married? Can we please advance the plot, people? There are at least 20 more episodes of this show to go!

Oh, sorry, you have no idea what I’m talking about? You haven’t been following the last 38 episodes of Bride From Vietnam? You didn’t even know that many Korean dramas are subtitled in English here, are broadcast several times a week and are, even with the occasional off episode, generally light years more entertaining than anything on American television? I’ll go into how and why my addiction to K-Drama developed at some point later; right now, I’ve got to get you up to speed.

For those who DO know what I’m talking about, let’s dish.

Recap of the Last 38 Episodes of “Bride From Vietnam” (major spoiler alerts):

Jun-Wu, a promising young man from a working class family, is cruelly dumped by his fiancée, Ji-Young when she goes to study abroad and meets wealthy Young-Min. Turns out, her freaky, somewhat terrifying mother squandered the family fortune on a gigolo after her husband’s death. Faced with the prospect of not being rich if she marries Jun-Wu, she decides to dump him and go for the sure thing. When Jun-Wu comes after her to change her mind, she even reports him as a stalker and he spends a night in jail. Jun-Wu has a complete nervous breakdown and for the next three years suffers from severe panic attacks and agoraphobia.

In desperation, Jun-Wu’s mother, Han-Suk, decides what he needs is a wife and travels to Vietnam to, uh, find him one. She meets Jin-Ju, who is not a mail-order bride but a translator working for the matchmaking service – she’s half Korean. Jin-Ju’s father was a Korean man who abandoned her and her mother when Jin-Ju was an infant. Jin-Ju’s mother is starting to go blind, so Jin-Ju is desperate to find her father, her mother’s only true love for whom she has waited for 20 years, so her mother can see him once again before she loses her sight.

What ends up happening is Jin-ju and Jun-Wu decide to enter into a marriage of convenience. She gets to come to Korea and search for her father, he gets his mother off his back. Jin-Ju actually falls for Jun-Wu early on, but the messed-up Jun-Wu declares that his heart is full of hatred and that there is no room for love (or something to that effect). As far as everyone else knows, though, they are a real married couple – Jin-Ju secretly sleeps on the floor of their bedroom. The cat gets let out of the bag when Han-Suk tries to take Jin-Ju for a gynecological exam (this is a really weird, to my Western viewpoint anyway, recurring theme on this show and many others – mother-in-laws forcing their reluctant daughter-in-laws to go to gynecologists and get “fertility treatments”. Is this an accurate depiction of family life in Korea? I’m really curious). Jin-Ju refuses to be examined – she’s never done it. The family is outraged, but by this point real feelings have begun to spark between Jun-Wu and Jin-Ju, and they decide that they are going to be a “real married couple” from then on (no, it’s not that believable at first. But eventually enough affection and tenderness between the characters shows through that it makes up for the total lack of sexual chemistry). Slowly, Jin-Ju’s devotion and persistence help Jun-Wu recover, and he even manages to score a job at an investment firm with his old school chum, In-Kyong.

Meanwhile, Ji-Young marries into Young-Min’s wealthy family. As fate would have it, the matriarch of this family is Ok-Young, Han-Suk’s bitter rival ever since Ok-Young stole her best friend Han-Suk’s boyfriend and got him to marry her by pretending to be pregnant. Now haughty Ok-Young lives the high class life with her husband, Sung-Il, the chairman of a huge food company. (Han-Suk’s husband runs a small rice cake factory and doesn’t bring home much, but he is probably the most level-headed character on the show). When Han-Suk finds out about Ji-Young, she lets Ok-Young know that she and her children are like enemies to her, but she won’t say why. Ji-Young’s mother-in-law adores her at first, but things go south quickly once the family finds out about her skanky mom. Ok-Young even uses the phrase “marriage fraud”! It blows over, but it’s just the beginning - Ok-Young freaks out every other episode because of something or other Ji-Young has done. Ji-Young has no interest in being an upper-class housewife or having babies – she wants to be a CEO, much to her mother-in-law and husband’s chagrin. With enough arm-twisting, she gets Young-Min and Ok-Young to accept her working at the family corporation. But Ji-Young still lives in constant fear that the family will find out what happened with Jun-Wu, and will figure out for sure that she only married Young-Min for money.

MEANWHILE, Young-Min’s younger brother Young-Su is dating Jun-Wu’s younger sister Semi, although it takes a really, really long time for either family to find this out. When they do, it hits the fan and the kids are forbidden to ever see each other again. Not surprisingly, this doesn’t work (haven’t they ever seen The Fantasticks?). Even when Ok-Young starts to back down, Han-Suk remains dead-set again it – not because of her rivalry with Ok-Young, but because of the mysterious “other reason” (Ji-Young) that she won’t reveal. Ji-Young knows she’ll be screwed if Young-Su and Semi get married, so she tries to convince Young-Su to go study photography in America. It’s around this point in the show that every episode features Ji-Young calling her mother in a panic: “Mom, I’m really in trouble now!”, followed by a scene at her mother’s where she says something like, “Every time I overcome one obstacle, another one presents itself” or “I can’t go on living like this”. Cynical Mom tells her to either get a divorce, or be prepared to “go all the way”, whatever that means. Young-Min becomes increasingly suspicious of his wife, especially after they encounter Jun-Wu in a business setting. He confronts Jun-Wu, who tells him nothing. Jun-Wu, by the way, is now remarkably well-adjusted for a guy who couldn’t leave the house several months ago. Young-Min then confronts Han-Suk, who won’t give up anything either – she thinks Ji-Young is pregnant, and doesn’t want to break up their family, even if they are her “enemies”.

Jun-Wu’s co-worker In-Kyong is a little more loose-lipped, however. She doesn’t come right out and say anything, but hints that Ji-Young “knows all about” Jun-Wu’s ex. In-Kyong was Jun-Wu and Ji-Young’s good friend in college, and always had a thing for Jun-Wu. Only after she helps him get a job at her company, hoping for a romantic reward, does she find out that he’s married – and to a foreigner, no less! Now she’s overcome with bitterness because her friend Ji-Young “ruined” the man she loved. In her view, Jun-Wu and Jin-Ju’s marriage is a joke and is bound to fall apart sooner or later. She takes every opportunity to suggest that Jin-Ju is not a proper wife – to her face! – and warns her that she’ll ruin Jun-Wu’s career by being a burden on him. Jin-Ju slowly starts to overcome her insecurity and neediness, although she still seems to show up at Jun-Wu’s work a lot more often than you’d think she should. Things really come to a head when at a company party, Jin-Ju overhears In-Kyong and and some important Director lady talking trash about them, saying that Jun-Wu was mentally unstable and “shopped for a wife”. Jin-Ju starts to tell them off and ends up injuring the Director, putting Jun-Wu’s big project in jeopardy. In the latest episode, Jin-Ju tried to go apologize to the Director but was humiliated and forced to actually get down on her knees. Jun-Wu, furious, tells the Director where to go and resigns from the project, much to In-Kyong’s horror.

Don’t worry, we’re getting there. Jin-Ju has decided that to help the family business, she wants to become an artisanal rice cake maker, so she seeks out the greatest rice cake maker in the country – I forget this character’s name, but everyone addresses her as “Grandma” – who happens to be Sung-Il’s aunt. Not only does she run a famous restaurant, but she also seems to give yoga and wine-tasting classes (…?) She was also Han-Suk’s and Ok-Young’s former teacher. “Grandma” is a tough, cranky lady who wears a hanbok and is waited on by her mute assistant, Yeon-Ki. People are constantly coming to her for advice, particularly Ok-Young. Grandma tends to give advice by yelling and telling people they’re idiots. When Jin-Ju first approaches Grandma about learning to make rice cakes, she gets yelled at and turned away. But Jin-Ju persists. Eventually Grandma agrees to take her on as a student, but it’s not really because of her persistence: Grandma has discovered that (get ready)…

…Sung-Il is Jin-Ju’s father! Yes, Rich Dad apparently spent a year abroad on business about 20 years ago. His marriage to Ok-Young was on the rocks at the time, and he was planning to divorce her. But, after falling in love with Jin-Ju’s mother and fathering a child, he was forced to return to Korea when his father passed away. His father’s dying wish was for him to stay with Ok-Young, so of course he never went back to Vietnam. Although he sent money, we learn that the person in charge of sending the money gambled it away, so it was as if the Dad had disappeared. At this point, Sung-Il and Grandma know that Jin-Ju is his daughter, but no one else does. (Jin-Ju confronted him once and asked if he was her father, but he denied it.) Now Ji-Young’s mother is starting to dig up some dirt that will probably lead to her finding out. Ok-Young has said that if she ever found out Sung-Il had done something like father an illegitimate child, she would “kill herself on the spot”, so we all have that to look forward to.

I haven’t even gone into the comic subplots involving Jun-Wu’s older sister Won-Mi and his aunt Gun-Ja. They’re not that important, but in a nutshell: Won-mi, a 30-year-old “spinster”, is about to settle for a boring dentist she’s not that into, but ends up with Dong-Gu, a goofy law student who insists he loves her more than anybody else. Both families are against their getting married, so Won-mi pretends to be pregnant to force them to approve. Currently, they are married and living with Dong-Gu’s wacky mother, who up until the last episode was over the moon about her grandson-to-be. Won-mi just spilled the beans, though. Gun-Ja, the aunt, went to work in her brother’s rice cake factory where she kept bickering with her cranky co-worker Byuk-Su. Of, course, they fall in love and get married.

The very latest: Semi just found out the “other reason”. She’s been buddy-buddy with Ji-Young all along, so this is a real shock (I don’t know why Jun-Wu’s sister didn’t know what his ex-fiancée looked like; I may have missed something in an early episode). Enraged, Semi goes to confront Ji-Young and find out for herself if this is true. When Semi threatens to blow the whistle, Ji-Young manages to get her into her car and drive her over to Scary Mom’s place. Scary Mom pushes Semi down on the sofa, and there’s your cliffhanger.

Tune in on Saturday and Sunday at 7:50 PM, Time Warner Cable channel 76 (check your local listings) to see what happens. By the way, the cable guide will identify the show as Yeon Gae So Mun or SBS Weekend Drama. The titles are rarely ever correct: check the TKC schedule. They also show the previous week’s episodes back to back on Saturdays at 1 PM if you want to backtrack a little.

Now, I’m off to watch Coffee Prince (AZN network, Wednesdays-Fridays at 9). It’s not a new show, but this is my first go-round with it and I’m loving the ride so far.