W
Once I finished watching the amazing k-drama Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, as always, I asked Jesika what I should watch next. She advised me to see W, adding the affirmation that I would like it because the plot is very unique and the actors very talented. She was totally right.
W, also known as W – Two Worlds, is a K-drama written by Song Jae-Jung. The series has 16 episodes, with 60-70 minutes approximately, and was aired in 2016. Namely, this wonderful story is starred by Lee Jong-Suk as the main male character Kang Chul and Han Hyo-Joo as the main female character Oh Yeon-Joo.
(Contains Spoilers)
It all begins with Kang Chul tragic young years. With only seventeen years, Kang Chul is living the dream representing South Korea in the Olympic Games and making his country proud with his victory in target shooting. The teenager gets instantly famous, yet all of this is ruined when he is falsely accused of killing his entire family one night. He sees his life gets even worse when a malicious prosecutor named Han Cheol-ho (Park Won-sang) request a death sentence upon him. Favourably, Kang Chul is finally declared innocent following a long and painful process. However, he has nothing or anyone to return to. He gets depressed for the loss of his family and decides to commit suicide over the Han River. Fortunately, our protagonist finds his strength, stopping himself at the last moment. Kang chooses to live, to become successful, and to find the murderer that ruined his family.
Ten years after the initial events Kang Chul becomes a multimillionaire. He creates Project W in order to catch the real criminal behind his family’s death. In addition, he manages a television broadcasting company entitled W. If you are wondering what’s the meaning of the initials, W stands for the questions “who” and “why”. To support him, he has Yoon So-hee (Jung Yoo-jin), Chul's assistant and a childhood friend that has feelings for him, Seo Do-Yoon (Lee Tae-hwan), Chul's loyal bodyguard and close friend, and Son Hyun-Seok (Cha Kwang-soo), the director of Project W and the general manager of the broadcasting channel W.
Furthermore, the World of Kang Chul consists in the story of a very renowned Webtoon, named W, whose owner is Oh Seong-moo (Kim Eui-sung), the female protagonist's father. He dedicated years of his life to the Webtoon, however, he reaches his limit when he realises that the World that he created might be real, that the characters and all the set-ups have come to life in a different dimension. and that Kang Chul has his own will resisting to the fate that is drawn for him sometimes. This way, he decides to put an end to the plot killing the main character.
In the comic, Kang Chul receives a mysterious call one evening and gets severely injured by the same obscure Murderer, that killed his loved ones, at the rooftop of his penthouse. Moreover, that’s when in the real World Yeon-Joo is informed by her father's assistant cartoonist Park Soo-bong (Lee Si-eon), that the creator of W went missing while drawing the last chapter of the comic in which Kang Chul is bound to die, bleeding to death after the brutal attack of the Murderer. This way, Yeon-Joo goes to her father's office and is shocked to see on her father's tablet a scene of the dying Kang Chul. While she gets distracted, reading a note left behind by her dad, an arm suddenly extends out of the screen of the tablet, and suddenly she finds herself on the rooftop of a building next to a bleeding man. Oh Yeon-Joo is a doctor, so she manages to save him. Then she subsequently realizes that the person she saved is Kang Chul and that she was standing on the rooftop of his penthouse.
As Kang Chul is carried away by the medics, Yeon-Joo sees the words "To be continued" glowing and floating in mid-air and unexpectedly she is back to the real World. She could think that the sequence of events was a mere imagination, yet a new chapter of W, in which she and Kang Chul are portrayed exactly the same as what she actually experienced, is automatically published. She quickly assumes that somehow, she was dragged to the Webtoon, that the World that her father created and that she grown used to read was after all very solid. In the webtoon world, Kang Chul becomes curious about Yeon-Joo, proclaiming her to be the key to his life. In this scene, my thoughts were concentrated in the facts that maybe Kang Chul knows that there is someone who is in charge of his fate, that there is something in his life, in his story that doesn’t make sense, and that Yeon-Joo has all the answers that he desperately desires.
The story proceeds and various amazing events take place in Kang Chul and Yeon-Joo lives. Eventually, Chul learns the truth about the meaning of his life: Yeon-Joo tells him that he is a character in her father's Webtoon, that none of his World is real. Kang Chul gets shattered, and when he becomes conscient about his life, he gets the chance to go to the real World. There he finds and reads all the books of W, getting even more aware and ultimately finds Yeon-Joo in the hospital where she works.
Further, he was supposed to wait for her to finish work, but he can't handle his emotions and he goes to meet Oh Seong-moo (which in the meanwhile appeared), his creator. He also learns that Seong-moo is Yeon-Joo father, and they share a really intense conversation, in which Oh Seong-moo threatens him for his status of being only a cartoon character. Kang Chul asks Seong-moo to create the Murderer’s face and identity so that he can catch the Murderer and give W its formal end. However, Seong-moo reveals to him that there is no real criminal and Kang Chul’s tragic early life were just set-up to make Kang Chul stronger. Kang Chul was already revolted with all the recent events and chock of reality, so the words of Oh Seong-moo make him even angrier and disappointment. As a result, Kang Chul shoots Seong-moo. He was so devastated due to what he had done, that he writes a letter to Yeon-Joo and commits suicide in the Han River.
The word "End" appears in this last chapter of W, and the World presumes that the beloved character of the comic end up dying miserably, committing suicide, including Yeon-Joo who gets sorrowful.
Later, Yeon-Joo manages to bring Kang Chul to life and continue with the Webtoon. When they meet, Chul rebukes her for saving his life, when he didn't want to live, when the truth about him, his life and his World was too much pain to handle. Yeon-Joo understands but reveals that she brought him back because she fell in love with him.
Chul thinks that their love is enough to keep him living, but the circumstances keep changing and the situation even more complicated. Consequently, in order to make things right in the real and Webtoon worlds, Kang Chul pleads Yeon-Joo to remake the storyline so that they will not ever meet each other starting from the scene in the penthouse rooftop. Hesitantly, she agrees. When she draws the scene and sees that in fact, he does not remember her, she gets heartbroken.
However, some things are just destined to be. This way, they found their way back into each other’s lives. This time, they do a plan in order to put a real end in the Webtoon and be happy together in the real World. Because things wouldn't be exciting if it went that way, the plan goes in the completely wrong direction. The Murderer ends up taking Seong-moo face, Chul is accused again of the murder of his family, the Murderer shoots Yeon-Joo, she dies, though since she was in the Webtoon, her father manages to bring her back to life, Chul is arrested, between other events.
In the final, Chul avenges his family killing the Murderer, but ends up being shot by Cheol-ho, the prosecutor who wanted him dead, for the embarrassment that Chul put him through when he was declared innocent years before. Yeon-Joo arrives at Kang Chul’s location to pick him up. She was only in the middle of the road when Kang Chul faints due to his injury and W formally ends, sending Yeon-Joo back to the real world. What the readers don't know is that the story in the Webtoon kept going and Chul survived. He was imprisoned, and after three years (one week in the real World), he is finally released. He goes to the real World to find his loved one.
Additionally, this drama has wonderful songs. For example, here are my favourites:
Basick, INKII - In The Illusion
Jung Joon Young - Where Are U
Park Boram - Please Say Something
N (엔) [VIXX] , Yeo Eun (여은) - Me Without You
To sum up, I would like to emphasize that this text doesn't have all the moments that happened in the drama, there are more events, characters and details that I did not refer. Namely, I crave to do some comments about the story in general. Firstly, although I didn't like some attitudes of Oh Yeon Joo’s father, the fact that he sacrificed his life for the happiness of his daughter it's to be praised. He left Yeon Joo’s life in the hands of Chul in hopes that he would take care of her, hoping that he would make her happy.
Secondly, the friendship of Kang Chul and Seo Do Yoon is astonishing. Seo Do Yoon remained loyal to Chul until the very end, even when the odds were all against him and it seemed like he did indeed kill his family. Seo Do Yoon was willing to put his life on the line to protect him, and Chul the same.
Let's be honest, I am not a romantic person and a relationship is not a priority in my life, however watching the scenes between these two (not only them actually, the other couples, of the few other K-Dramas that I have watched until know, as well) made me desire to have this kind of lovely relationship one day, to share special moments like this in the future with someone. I believe that this is the consequence of watching these stories... Anyways, while I was watching some scenes I was like:
Concluding, ultimately, in my opinion, the ending of W was not the one that I hoped for, but it was the ideal one. Oh Yeon Joo didn’t get to live in a world with both her dad and Kang Chul, but that only shows that life doesn't always get the way we want. Not everything can be excellent. Beyond this, I hoped that, in the end, they showed the viewers a little more of Kang Chul and Yeon Joo life as a couple in the real World, and especially his adaptation to his new life. I tend to overthink things, and open endings are not my cup of tea in the majority of cases. Thoughts like "But how did Chul adapted himself? He has a degree but that doesn't count in the real World! What about his identification?" came to my mind after I finished watching the drama. Despite this, I adored it. I can for sure say that W became one of my favourite K-Dramas: it has everything, adventure, action, mystery, drama, love... The plot is indeed unique, and the actors did such an amazing job portraying their characters. If you are interested, I totally recommend you to watch W, you won't regret it.
Here is the trailer of W:
What do you think of W?
Nb: I do not own any of these images and videos and I am not trying to infringe copyright here.
I hope you are having an amazing week.
Mariana Nunes
