Korean drama "Start-Up": Episode one recap

 

 Air Dates: October 17th until December 6th on tvN... Saturday and Sunday nights at 9:00 pm

tvN is a cable network so the ratings for it will be a bit lower, for this show it was 4.35% and the viewership was 1.2 million which is an impressive number

Main Cast: Wrote this up after viewing the first episode so will be tweaking the bios and possibly adding in a few characters

Bae Suzy as Seo Dal-Mi.... 27 year old(?) woman who will have dreams of beginning her own startup company but in what is currently unknown. She's lived with her grandmother for the past fourteen years since her father died and has helped her out at her two food cafes. She's the younger sister of the next character who had gone fourteen years without seeing each other until episode one.

Kang Ha-Na as Won In-Jae.... The reason for their different last names is that In-Jae lived with her mother after she got divorced from the father. The mother remarried to a wealthy man, she's been living off and on in America for fourteen years. She's the CEO of a successful company which she began with money from her stepfather.

Nam Joo-Hyuk as Nam Do-San.... Didn't see much of him in the first show but he'll playing such an important role in this series. He's been a mathematics whiz since a young age but fortune hasn't smiled on him as he's struggling with his new startup company Samsan Tech.

Kim Sun-Ho as Han Ji-Pyeong.... Grew up in an orphanage but at sixteen was kicked out for being too old(?), he then lived with Dal-Mi's grandmother until attending college in Seoul. When he lived with the grandmother be pretended to be Do-San as he wrote Dal-Mi letters to comfort her after the divorce. He's now a team leader at SH Venture Capital.

Kim Hae-Sook as Choi Won-Deok... The grandmother of the top two characters but hasn't seen In-Jae in fifteen years. She's raised Dal-Mi since she was thirteen and they still live together, Choi used to run a cafe but now owns a small corn dog truck. She was also responsible for Ji-Pyeong being successful as she let him stay with her when he left the orphanage.

There's a few others who will definitely be added in but will wait until they're introduced. Playing the father of Dal-Mi was Kim Joo-Hun but he died in this episode so didn't add him in but he did have a large role in this first show.

 Whewwww(!), at 82 minutes this was the second longest Korean episode I've ever viewed and had no clue it would be that long going in. Hope all shows aren't that long as I may not be able to keep up with this series on a weekly basis but tvN is known for having longer dramas or at least the ones I've seen. Haven't watched the second episode yet as it hasn't aired, will probably view it halfway through this recap. This may be one of the longest recaps I've done and at 82 minutes long there's no way around it plus all first posts for a drama are usually the longest. Though this was such a long show it never dragged at all and it was interesting all the way through.

 What will make this first recap a bit different is that most of the action took place fifteen years before or 2005-06. Would say 70% of this episode took place in those years so not enough Suzy in this show but there will be in the next fifteen episodes. It's okay we didn't see enough of her as it was important for us viewers to get a thorough background of the main characters, have a slight feeling things could get a bit confusing but that wasn't the case for this show. It did begin off in the year 2020 but will save those scenes for the end and the majority of the recap will be looking back at the years 2005-06. Didn't notice any mention of what the name of the town was but it seemed to be in suburban Seoul.

 Top screenshot is of the two sisters, In-Jae on the left is a bit older and presumed she was fifteen. Am estimating Dal-Mi was twelve as their ages were never mentioned, she'll be in the pigtails. Second screenshot is of the father Chung-Myung who worked at an office but has dreams of starting up his own company. His wife A-Hyun is dead set against that as though his job isn't too high paying it's enough to support the family. The word divorce was uttered by her if he should quit his job to begin his own company and that's exactly what happened as Chung-Myung had been abused badly one day at his office, it wasn't the main reason for him quitting but to him it was now or never to begin a company. 

 So with Chung-Myung's decision a divorce did take place which separated the sisters as Dal-Mi was much closer to her father and wished to stay with him. In-Jae didn't share her sister's views on dad as she thought he was just wasting his time dreaming of opening a company and not wanting to be part of his struggles lived with the mother who we didn't see after the divorce. The sisters though did remain close and for the next year would out to a restaurant weekly, we never did hear their conversations during their get togethers but was under the impression they were drifting apart. Not just a little apart but it's soon to be an ocean away as one day in the Spring of 2006 In-Jae told her sister their mom was going to remarry a very wealthy man, least this takes the father off the hook for his ex-wife's alimony.

 We never did meet In-Jae's stepfather but have a feeling we will in the future as he's part of the cast list. When I said an ocean apart it's because her new father was bringing the family to America to live and 

In-Jae was ecstatic on leaving Korea. It was a sudden move too as the it was taking place the same day and it was the final time the sisters would see each other for fourteen years or 2020. In-Jae didn't leave under good terms with Dal-Mi as she really lashed into their father saying what an inept person he was. She just couldn't stop with the barbs, Dal-Mi just couldn't take the venom her sister was spewing and the pair's final encounter for fourteen years ended up being a brawl! The day was probably in early May and that day ended up being the worst one of her life for Dal-Mi, not just because of the fight with her sister but what was to become of her father.

 Not going in order with the story as this event with the father took place near the end of the episode. But thought it'd be so much easier to understand if it was done in a chronological order instead of flipping back between 2006 and 2020. Dal-Mi's father Chung-Myung is a decent fellow and he was certainly overjoyed when Dal-Mi decided to live with him. He has struggled with his new tech startup company which is one designed to deliver food and other minor things to customers. Not just your usual delivery service but Chung-Myung had created an app for restaurants and such to use, back in 2006 it was a novel idea. But it was hard selling the idea to investors and for a year he's seen his life savings dwindle. But one company was extremely impressed with Chung-Myung's creation and it appears they'll be backing him.

 That successful meeting with the investment company took place on the same day when Dal-Mi and In-Jae had their final encounter. Chung-Myung was running a bit late for the meeting and needed to catch the bus, he saw it departing and ran across a busy street in an attempt to catch it. In that middle screenshot above is what happened to Chung-Myung crossing the street as he was bashed by a car yet was able to get back up and catch his bus. However he was much more injured than he appeared and in his meeting Chung-Myung really struggled with his coordination, especially with his hands. He also had a cut on his cheek and bled from his nose on occasion but the company was still so impressed with his ideas and they were ready to invest in the company. Ching-Myung's good fortune was sadly short lived as his condition got much worse on his way home to celebrate with Dal-Mi. On the bus other passengers thought Chung-Myung was drunk because he couldn't speak and no person offered to help him. That was a shame as he soon passed out, not drunk like the others thought but he slowly died in his seat and perhaps he could have been saved.

 So you can see what a tragic day it was for Dal-Mi who first lost her sister who was leaving Korea and now her father who she loved more than anyone in the world. The thirteen year old Dal-Mi moved in with her grandmother who was her father's mother and Dal-Mi was quite close to her, so much fourteen years later she still lives with her. That was the last we saw of either Dal-Mi and In-Jae until 2020, now it's time to introduce this episode's other major character who is Ji-Pyeong. He grew up in an orphanage but at the age of sixteen he was told to leave for being too old(?), they did give him two million Won to live on but that wasn't nearly enough to survive. Ji-Pyeong was quite an intelligent young man who had even won an entrepreneur award but not much he could do with it at such a young age. He had no place to live and that was noticed by Dal-Mi's grandmother Choi who invited him to secretly live in a room behind her small cafe where he ended up staying for a year. 

 Hope we're past the halfway mark but so much can happen in 82 minutes. During his first night at in the small room Ji-Pyeong did notice a coffee bin crammed with quite a bit of Won notes. Choi remembered the following day that she left the cash there and dashed to the room, to his credit 

Ji-Pyeong was still there and hadn't touched the money. That cash totaled close to eight million Won and Choi had never had a bank account as she had no clue on how to open and manage one, with the help of Ji-Pyeong she eventually did get an account. When Ji-Pyeong moved in it was when Dal-Mi's parents were getting divorced and she was quite down in the dumps. Choi came up with a plan for 

Dal-Mi to have a secret admirer to take her mind off the divorce and have her feel as she was wanted by someone in the world, she enlisted Ji-Pyeong to write the love letters.

 ....Just viewed the second episode which was all of.... seventy seconds shorter, grrrrrrr....

 Those letters worked well as far as cheering up Dal-Mi goes but perhaps too well. She responded to the letters and thought her secret admirer was a slightly older boy named Do-San. Ji-Pyeong and the grandmother needed a name for a boy, he picked up a recent newspaper with that name on the front page and thought what are the odds Dal-Mi had ever heard the name? Do-San was a wunderkind who won a prestigious math competition and had such a rosy future but that wasn't to be. For a year these letters went back and forth between the two and on the day Dal-Mi's father died is also when the letters stopped arriving. How they 'sent' them to each other was to put them in a small bird feeding box outside of Choi's cafe, you'd have thought Dal-Mi would have been bummed out when the letters stopped but she really wasn't.

 The letters ceased from Ji-Pyeong on that same day as the father's death. he's leaving his small bedroom at the back of Choi's cafe to attend college in Seoul. When he had opened that bank account for the grandmother he was given free rein on handling of it as Choi had no clue about banking. It may have been a devilish thing to do but Ji-Pyeong invested some of the money and was extremely successful. So much that the account went from eight million Won to eighty in one year! But one day Choi closed the account to give the cash to her struggling son Chung-Myung, she was amazed at how high the account was. In a  misunderstanding Ji-Pyeong thought she had given the eighty million to her son but that wasn't the case, Ji-Pyeong had the entire amount to bring with him to Seoul. He's a bit of a cold hearted youth and it's easy to see why growing up in an orphanage but it was a warm scene when he left for Seoul thinking he'll never see the grandmother again.

 

 Sixty minute shows usually have redcaps that consist of three segments so if you figure twenty minutes a segment this episode and future ones should have four. So no matter what it takes will promise no recap will be longer than four so this is the final section when we finally get introduced to the modern day sisters. Of course we know all about their backgrounds but we didn't learn too much in this show what they're doing these days, a bit bit much more in the next show.

 This episode did begin off with the sisters seeing each other for the first time in fourteen years. The location was a special SANDBOX event for up and coming startup companies, will discuss SANDBOX more in the next recap. In the crowd we met two men from the SAMSAN Tech company whose leader is Do-San. He's the fourth main character in the show and as you may remember it was his name signed to the letters for Dal-Mi. We didn't meet him officially until the final few minutes and even then we learned nothing about Do-San so will skip over him for this post but you'll be seeing plenty of him in the next post. Another person in the audience at the major event was the present day Dal-Mi who is above dressed in blue. She asked a question but it wasn't one about starting a company up but instead was a personal one directed towards.... her sister In-Jae!

 In-Ja was a special guest and she's been very successful in those fourteen years. She resides in America and directs her own company though as Dal-Mi pointed out the money was put up by her wealthy stepfather. Also on stage was of all people Ji-Pyeong who has been quite a success too as he's one of the main directors at SH Venture Capital and he too was there to give advice to those wanting to start their own company. The sisters still have no clue who Ji-Pyeong is as they never learned he slept in the back of their grandmother's cafe. But when Dal-Mi said her name it rang a bell, where has he heard that name before(?) but of course it was because he wrote the letters to her fourteen years ago. After the event the sisters did have a mini reunion and In-Jae had to lace into her sister for being a nothing while she's on top of the world.

 Dal-Mi denied that 'loser' talk and said she too was starting up a company which was a lie. But she was so convincing In-Jae said to bring her partner to another conference the following week, the first name to pop into Dal-Mi's mind was... Do-San! 'Oh no, what have I done?' she thought to herself and the next episode deals so much with her tracking this man down. Their reunion was short lived for now but they'll meet again at the next conference, meanwhile Ji-Pyeong was so baffled on who Dal-Mi was so he tailed her after that meeting with In-Jae. He followed her to a seaside corn dog truck and of all people who should be running it but the grandmother who helped him out so much in the past! As the episode finally came to it's conclusion Ji-Pyeong went up to the woman after Dal-Mi left, at first glance Choi knew who he was and that scene begins the next show.... WHEWWWWWWW!!!!

 Whew is right on the money and not much to add in after that lengthy recap but in all honesty could have been much longer though of course couldn't discuss every single detail. Can't believe the next episode is also over eighty minutes but if then again it was such an excellent view, just means it takes a little while longer to watch and write a show up. Least now the events will be in present day and we do know the main characters so perhaps the recaps can be shortened up a bit. Of course have plenty of screenshots to help you follow the story better and it is an easy one to follow.