Oldies but Goodies: I Have A Lover (K-drama)

This is probably one of my favorite family k-dramas BUT one does need to be brave and get through the first 10 episodes to get to the good stuff. It’s not that the first 10 episodes were bad, is just that neither of our leads came off very endearing at all so it would be tempting to give up before the good stuff gets going. To combat that, instead of doing a synopsis, I will give you a short summary of the first ten episodes so you can choose to watch it or fast forward instead.

I Have A Lover Episode 1-10 Short Summary 

• On the right: Our heroine, Do Hae Gang. An extremely capable lawyer, Hae Gang uses her skill ruthlessly and doesn’t seem to have an ounce of warmth in her.
• Dok Go Yong Gi: Hae Gang’s lost twin sister (but the twins doesn’t seem to be aware of each other’s existence) who is the extreme opposite of her. Warm and caring, Yong Gi is pregnant with her fiancé’s baby and is left on her own to seek justice for her boyfriend’s wrongful death.

• Happily married at one time, Hae Gang’s marriage with Jin Eon (hero) has become anything but happy after the death of their little daughter.

• Faced with a wife that he can no longer find a shadow of her once warm and kind self, Jin Eon can’t imagine living with her anymore.
• Despite her cold attitude towards everything, Hae Gang truly loves Jin Eon and is stunned when she realizes that he is developing an affair with one of his graduate assistant, Seol Ri.
• Hae Gang tries to rescue her marriage by pleading with Jin Eon and threatening Seol Ri but everything she does just seems to push Jin Eon towards the young girl.

• Not caring about Jin Eon’s married status at all, Seol Ri believes that love trumps all and joyfully immerse herself in a romance with Jin Eon.
• After yelling, fighting and even begging, Hae Gang finally gives up when she watches her husband willingly agrees to work for his father… something that he has vehemently refused to do all his life just to get a divorce from her.
• The divorce paper signed, Hae Gang decides to let her father-in-law transfer her to China in order to gain a second chance at her marriage later.
• Unfortunately, before Hae Gang makes it to the airport, her car is stolen by her twin sister Yong Gi and Hae Gang (who is driving in Yong Gi’s car) gets pushed into a lake.

• Backtracking a bit. Yong Gi finds out that her fiancé’s death was not suicide after all. In fact, Yong Gi realizes that her boyfriend was murdered because he was trying to reveal that his company (Pudoxin Medical, Hae Gang’s father-in-law’s company) was selling harmful drugs.
• Pretending to be a “concerned” company management, Min Tae Seok (Hae Gang’s brother-in-law) decides to get rid of Yong Gi once and for all when he realizes she just wasn’t going to go away quietly even if he gives her money.
• However, things get complicated when Tae Seok finds out that his minion had accidentally killed Hae Gang instead of Yong Gi.

• Tae Seok does try to kill Yong Gi again but Yong Gi successfully escapes by leaving the country.
• Rattled that he had accidentally killed Hae Gang, Tae Seok covers up the whole thing and convince everyone that Hae Gang had instead died in a car accident overseas.

• Hae Gang is of course not dead, but because of her amnesia has no recollection of her past. Hae Gang is rescued by Baek Seok who mistakenly believes her to be his first love, Dok Go Yong Gi (the twin sister).
• At first doubtful of what Baek Seok is telling her, Hae Gang has no choice but to believe him when she sees her own face (Yong Gi’s actually) staring back at her in Baek Seok’s high school yearbook.
• Baek Seok is our perfect male second lead who is truly perfect in almost every way.

 

Time Jump, 4 Years later. 

• With no memory and no heartache, Hae Gang, who believes herself to be her twin sister Dok Go Yong Gi spends her day as Baek Seok’s office manager. (He is also a lawyer… but the kind that helps the underdog)
• No longer the cold Hae Gang of the past, Hae Gang is warm and motherly as she takes care of Baek Seok’s siblings and is the champion of justice at work. (They are not Baek Seok’s biological siblings but kids that his father adopted.)
• To complicate things, Seol Ri (the one that had an affair with Jin Eon) is also one of Baek Seok’s adopted siblings. Angry and disappointed over Seol Ri’s affair with a married man, Seol Ri is a forbidden subject at Baek Seok’s house.
• Haunted by images of herself drowning in water while a mysterious man tries to save her (that’s a real memory where she tried to commit suicide but her husband saved her), Hae Gang suffers the same nightmare every night while Baek Seok patiently and lovingly comforts her.
• Baek Seok is actively pursuing Hae Gang and is not shy in showing his affection but she has not accepted him yet.
• Deeply affected by Hae Gang’s “death”, President Choi (heroine’s ex-father-in-law) is still feeling a lot of guilt even after four years and seems to be against the idea of Jin Eon marrying Seol Ri. Yap, they are not married yet…

• Worried about Jin Eon’s impending return to the county, all of Jin Eon’s family is united in (well, other than the annoying half sister) their agreement that they must keep the news of Hae Gang’s death from him or else he would go crazy.
• Traumatized by her daughter’s death, Hae Gang’s mother has lost her ability to speak and has somehow ended up taking in Tae Seok’s (that’s the villain) little brother as a tenant.

• Jin Eon comes back to Korea in Episode 10  and curiously still seems to have more or less a sunbae/student relationship with Seol Ri. (By the way, whatever you do, don’t miss the hilarious scene in the airport about halfway through episode 10 where our hero walks out and hugs his friend. The show is not a comedy but it does have quite a few funny moments.)
• Another side note is that Jin Eon is letting Seol Ri take all the credit on a dissertation without putting his own name on it.

• Our two leads finally meet again at the end of episode 10 when Hae Gang accidentally knocks Jin Eon’s bag over. The episode ends when Hae Gang looks up and Jin Eon freezes as he sees her face.

 

So why in the world would I recommend a show where the heroine is so unlikable and the hero is a cheating jerk?

Well, it has Jin Ji Hee in it… Okay, I am shallow but I do have more reasons than that. As difficult as it is to imagine at first that our two leads could be endearing but that is exactly what will happen later. The writer showed us the worst sides of our leads at the very beginning but layer by layer, we will discover who they really are as they themselves re-discover their love…the love they had thought could be thrown away is something they can’t live without.

For example, our hero had believed he could move on by falling in love with another girl but there are plenty of clues even in the first 10 episodes that he really is fooling himself. In fact, even members of his own family who were happy to see our heroine disappear knew without a doubt that the news of our heroine’s death would completely destroy him and that’s why the whole family worked so hard to make him believe his ex-wife is happily, albeit still heartless, living somewhere overseas.

The other thing I really liked was how well the amnesia trope was used. I know most people roll their eyes when amnesia shows up in a drama and I will agree that it’s a tool that is often abused but in this instance, the scriptwriter used it masterfully. Our two leads’ had loved and hurt each other too much for either of them to imagine a second chance was possible but the amnesia was exactly how the drama gods made the impossible possible. Plus, come on, a well written amnesia is always so awesome and addicting!

Besides the great lead characters, the writer also did a great job with the villains. Redemption is a vital part of this story and there are a few characters I really disliked at first but was surprised that I slowly changed my mind as the story progressed. However, the show wisely didn’t try to “save” everyone. The writer had an uncanny ability to show people at their worst but also slowly reveals different sides of them that humanize even the worst villains. Thankfully, there is no unrealistic whitewashing of the villains at the last minute, in fact, I think this is one of those rare 50 episode dramas where I was mostly satisfied with how justice was served.

Anyhow, give this one a try and let me know how you guys liked it!

 

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