9-year-old Hye-na (Heo Yool) shrinks back as her mother’s boyfriend Seol-ak leans towards her. Just then, her mother Ja-young (Ko Sung-hee) returns and the terrified girl runs to her. Instead of protecting her, Ja-young flings Hye-na to the floor, berating her for being “disgusting”. Livid, she stuffs her into a bag of trash and throws her out in the cold night, then goes off with Seol-ak to watch a movie.
Hye-na’s teacher Soo-jin (Lee Boyoung) comes by to return the girl her notebook when she notices the odd trash bag. Horrified to find Hye-na in it, she hatches a plan for the girl to run away with her. Shortly after, Hye-na disappears and is assumed to have drowned.
This enthralling show tells the story of Soo-jin and Hye-na, now with a new identity as Yoon-bok, on the run, carving a new mother-daughter relationship and their story takes us back to Soo-jin’s adoptive family, then further back to her birth mother, who had ‘abandoned’ her when she was six. It delves meaningfully into family relationships and child abuse, and also makes us examine the way we look at people and at life.
Does doing the wrong thing for a “good’ reason make it right?
Technically, Soo-jin has kidnapped Yoon-bok to protect her from further abuse. Soo-jin’s family helps, of course, and so do even strangers, such as the father and son at the camp-site who throw the police off their scent. The dogged detective’s assistant increasingly finds himself in a dilemma and asks if they can just let the pair off since, after all, everyone can tell how much Soo-jin cherishes Yoon-bok and no one wants her back with Ja-young. Senior says they need to stop the pair to prevent further harm. The ends do not justify the means, this means.
How much do we judge people based on assumptions we have about them?
Child abusers have their own stories. Even Hye-na understands that Ja-young struggles with the idea of being a mother. The young single mum ends up taking out her frustrations on her child and grows dependent on a boyfriend who preys on single mums. Ja-young’s pain and grief for the ‘dead’ Hye-na is still heart-rending. It is revealed that young Seol-ak strove to please his dysfunctional mother, and was always reprimanded for crying and not behaving himself. Finding her dead in her wardrobe broke him. It turns out that Soo-jin’s mother, whom Soo-jin grew up hating for cruelly abandoning her, killed her boyfriend, who had been abusing Soo-jin, and then left her outside an orphanage before turning herself in.
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| the abusers |
What makes a mother a mother?
We have moving portraits of mothers – single mums overwhelmed by the responsibility of bringing up a child alone, adoptive mums who would do anything for their children, mums who make the painful decision to be separated from their children, ‘mothers’ and care-givers for children under state protection, substitute mums such as the teachers who tried to protect Hye-na and reported their suspicions (which came to nothing). Soo-jin’s adoptive mother was always there for her, even after she lived independently, and her birth mother of course never forgot her, motivating herself with the hope that they might meet again some day. Significantly, Yoon-bok never renounces Ja-young as her mother.
Lee Boyoung and Heo Yool are outstanding in their nuanced, sensitive acting. Every happy and sad moment is superbly delivered, such as all their heartfelt conversations in the hotel rooms, the heartbreaking scene when the police catch up with them and also when Yoon-bok calls Soo-jin’s home from her foster home because she misses her so much.
Yoon-bok is slowly healed by the outpouring of love from Soo-jin, her two new grandmas, Soo-jin’s family and her friends. Soo-jin is healed of her past hurts by lavishing her love on Yoon-bok. There are also touching father elements, such as in the father and son pair, and the family friend who has been like a father to Soo-jin’s family (the real father of one of her sisters!).
There is a surprise appearance by Mother Mary, too! When Seol-ak ties up Soo-jin and Yoon-bok in the disused orphanage where Soo-jin had grown up, Jin-hong, another family friend, finds them and smashes Seol-ak’s head with a statue of Mary he found in one of the rooms. Was this was a deliberate plot element? Well, there we are, the mother of mothers to the rescue!
This was the first serious drama series that I liked from beginning to end and that’s why it is my first ajumma post. I also loved all the outdoor scenes, especially the bird-watching sequences.
The show, Boyoung and Heo Yool won awards and it was nominated at the 1st Cannes International Series Festival!
16 episodes, tvN
All photos from Hancinema
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