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Delightfully Deceitful: Episodes 1-2

A genius ex-convict with zero empathy meets a lawyer who’s way too empathetic for his own good — this could be a recipe for either the perfect partnership or a perfect storm of manipulation and moral grayness. Either way, we’re in for some interesting character studies and a ten-year-old mystery that’s far more complex than it first appears.

 
EPISODES 1-2

Chun Woo-hee in Delightfully Deceitful: Episodes 1-2

For a show with “comedy” as one of its descriptors, Delightfully Deceitful starts off quite chilling and bleak. The creepy opening sequence shows us glimpses of the terrible arson/murder that landed our heroine, LEE RO-WOOM (Chun Woo-hee), in prison for fifteen years. The victims were her parents, and she (only nineteen at the time) confessed to the crime upon being found at the scene.

Since then, she’s been making a name for herself as a psychopath by stabbing correction officers in the neck (to be fair, he was horrible) and threatening her fellow inmates to the point of panic attacks. But suddenly, ten years into her sentence, a new culprit is arrested, having been found in possession of the missing murder weapon. For the first time, people start to question whether Ro-woom might have been innocent all along.

Enter lawyer HAN MU-YOUNG (Kim Dong-wook). His powers of empathy make him an expert at getting sentences reduced or suspended, but they’re also a fatal flaw that his psychiatrist, MO JAE-IN (Sojin), is helping him learn to control. His unique brand of empathy is so strong that he tends to get overly, even dangerously, immersed in others’ emotions — so much so that it makes him physically unwell.

To counter the empathy sickness, Mu-young sticks to clients he doesn’t have to care too much about and turns his back on people who genuinely need his help. This earns him his own nickname — “Vampire” — and leaves him feeling unfulfilled and fraudulent.

Chun Woo-hee and Kim Dong-wook in Delightfully Deceitful: Episodes 1-2

When Ro-woom’s case comes back up, Mu-young volunteers to defend the newly accused YE CHOONG-SHIK (Park Wan-kyu). But when Choong-shik gleefully describes forcing teenage Ro-woom to murder her parents, Mu-young snaps. Against Jae-in’s advice, he leaks a recording of the conversation to the media, ensuring Choong-shik’s life sentence and Ro-woom’s release.

It’s basically career suicide, but his boss gives him one last chance: Ro-woom is suing the government for damages due to wrongful imprisonment, and she wants Mu-young to defend her. Mu-young agrees, and at their first official meeting, Ro-woom cries because he’s the first person to believe her. They’re crocodile tears, though, meant to wrap him around her finger. But while Mu-young knows exactly what she’s doing, he also catches bits of truth strewn in, like her comment about actions speaking louder than words.

Chun Woo-hee in Delightfully Deceitful: Episodes 1-2

Then Ro-woom sets out on her own, and we’re hit with a bit of tonal whiplash as she breaks the fourth wall to take us along for an elaborate con. It starts with her posing as a police officer to confiscate “stolen” merchandise from clothing and jewelry shops, and escalates to cheating at a casino to get herself a hefty cash settlement in exchange for leaving the premises without a fuss.

Even after catching her with a bag full of money, and even as it becomes increasingly apparent that Choong-shik wasn’t the true culprit after all, Mu-young refuses to give up on Ro-woom. He remembers meeting her on the set of a game show as kids, where she wowed the audience with her incredible memory.

But in the middle of filming, little Ro-woom had frozen up and run off to hide — not because she couldn’t remember the answer to the question, but because she was overwhelmed by the pressure. For better or for worse, Mu-young senses that Ro-woom is still just as lonely and frightened now as she was back then.

Chun Woo-hee and Yoon Park in Delightfully Deceitful: Episodes 1-2 Chun Woo-hee and Yoon Park in Delightfully Deceitful: Episodes 1-2

Ro-woom, however, brushes off Mu-young’s questions and carries on with her schemes. The one thorn in her side is her incessant probation officer, GO YO-HAN (Yoon Park). He seems to spend at least 90% of his time following his probationers around trying to catch them slipping up and then magnanimously “letting them off the hook.”

After much nagging on Yo-han’s part, Ro-woom gives him her new phone number… so she can call in her friends — hacker JUNG DA-JUNG (Lee Yeon) and polyglot errand boy RINGO (Hong Seung-beom) — to track his phone and photograph him overlooking probation violations. Then she blackmails him with the photos so he’ll leave her alone.

Ro-woom breaks the fourth wall again to lead us on a second con, which she prefaces with the story of a man who started with a paper clip and kept trading for bigger items until he got a house. Similarly, she enters a hospice as a visitor, transforms herself into a nurse, gets the password to the medicine safe, steals vials of morphine, enters a patient’s room… wait, this isn’t just a con. This is a murder.

The man in the hospital bed was a professor involved with the mysterious Jeokmok Foundation where she spent part of her youth, and he was also complicit in her parents’ deaths. Now Ro-woom is here to take revenge.

Fortunately, Mu-young has been digging into Ro-woom’s past, and he arrives just in time to stop her. He wonders aloud what Jeokmok Foundation must have done to turn her into a cold-blooded killer, but she spits back that she was born this way, thank you very much — and she’s only employing to him to win the lawsuit, not to “fix” her.

Ro-woom is exactly the kind of person Jae-in has warned Mu-young about all this time: someone who will take every opportunity to prey on his empathy to get what she wants. But while he’s determined to help her, he also has a plan to keep her from walking all over him. At the damages trial, instead of making his opening argument, he asks that the lawsuit be suspended until Choong-shik’s retrial (which he pushed Choong-shik to initiate) concludes.

Now Ro-woom can’t just kick Mu-young to the curb, because no other lawyer will willingly take up her lawsuit. And he’ll only continue to help her if she at least tries to learn how to care about other people’s feelings. Ro-woom’s response? “You’re fired.”

Two episodes in, I’m still kind of on the fence about these characters, but I think that’s the point. Ro-woom, with her complete lack of empathy, is naturally difficult to relate to, especially when pulling off a murder is just as much a game to her as rustling up some quick cash. But her fourth-wall-breaking, while jarring, is also charming, and she has moments of vulnerability that seem to confirm Mu-young’s suspicions that she’s scared and lonely and just trying to survive in the only way she knows how.

On the other hand, Mu-young, being hardwired to see the humanity in literally everyone, should theoretically be easy to root for. And in some ways he is, like how he doesn’t just accept the assumptions that everyone else uses to write Ro-woom off as a lost cause. But he also weaponizes his own empathy to manipulate people and engineer the outcomes he thinks are best.

I was struck by Jae-in’s caution that him learning to set other people’s feelings aside for his own mental and physical wellbeing is the treatment process, not the goal. I can see how he might run the risk of overcorrecting so much that he starts ignoring others’ emotions altogether except to use them to his own — and, probably, Ro-woom’s — advantage. Who knows? Maybe he’ll learn to maintain a healthy amount of emotional investment, or maybe that “Vampire” nickname isn’t so far off, after all.

Chun Woo-hee and Kim Dong-wook in Delightfully Deceitful: Episodes 1-2

 
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Just popping in to say that although I haven't yet finished the first two episodes, I liked what I saw so far. The writing and directing seem tight which suits the story, and the characters are very gray at this point yet still engaging. There's a lot of interesting things going on, and it feels somewhat fresh and unpredictable which I appreciate.

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Asdghkl I actually almost stopped watching cos of the fourth wall exposition.
This style of fourth wall breaking is just not a narrative device I really enjoy.

There's a lot to turn me off this, (e.g. the tonal mish mash, the editing, the unsatisfactory set up), but I also literally have nothing else to watch right now and could see myself potentially enjoying the dysfunction. We'll see.

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I didn't quite enjoy this as much as I thought I would. The FL is very much unlikable at this point. And it's distracting me from the story.

However, the side stories are holding my attention - Byeol appa's case and the insurance murder case. I hope they did not just drop those plots for simply world building sakes. I want to see the end of the two cases.

And I can't turn away from Kim Dong-wook. I'll end up coming back to watch it anyway :)

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What's people's obsession with a female lead being the "likeable one" but the same standards aren't set for the male leads. There are women in real life that are shitty too,the female leads character in relation to the plot is going to be unlikeable,her character is an obvious reflection of how she feels in the inside coupled with her past,as far as I don't tolerate bad behaviours , there's still no denying that people's morals can be compromised by their past and from what I'm watching it doesn't seem like she had a smooth one. I think kdramas are shifting away from the women are "flawless and uncontroversial" because that's absolutely not true,and I also don't see anything wrong when shows give an introspect on women that are controversial except it's executed wrongly.

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🤣🤣🤣🤣. Don't get me wrong. The fact that a FL is unlikeable to me doesn't mean I do not extend the same standard that make FL's unlikeable to male leads.
I like well nuanced characters that have a nice controversy to themselves.

And if you know the amount and kinds of Korean dramaverse k-nationwide and dramabeans loved ML's that I found unlikeable, perhaps it'll give more introspection into my definition of unlikeable.

"someone who will take every opportunity to prey on his empathy to get what she wants"
This is why I found her unlikeable. I know that this is the premise her character is built on. And that is a controversial character makeup that I like. It doesn't change the fact that I do not like this trait will be played on good guys as well. I'm not saying she should be play the good guys with remorse, I have no issues if she plays them with remorse but she doesn't mean the remorse. Just...give me a reason why you're not sorry and so far she hasn't. She's flawed, yes. Well nuanced in what I just mentioned? My answer is no. I can't get behind her playing good guys simply because of how her past informed her present. Don't just be controversial for the sake of it. Give it substance. And I find her unlikeable cause I've not seen that substance.

Likeable is not equal to sweet, supportive, flawless and uncontroversial, in my textbook. You have to make me root for you, help me understand you, make me respect you, whether you're flawless and uncontroversial, or flawed and controversial. You're not doing something along the line of any of those three things, then you remain in my bad books.

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"you have to make me root for you"
I personally think this all boils down to personal choice, I mean we choose what we want to view. And when watching shows that feature female leads like this ,I don't see them as role models instead as human beings and I don't think women in shows should camouflage their unlikable traits before they're seen as humans or important in whatever journey they're in the show. And honestly I see myself getting bored with shows where the characters esp. the female lead are written in a manner to just please the viewers and be "relatable" at the expense of making a real , multi dimensional character, it's just funny 😂. And I noticed that unlikable female characters give a more accurate representation of the SPECTRUM of womanhood, the ones that are real and nuanced of course as you said and not the ones that feel too cringy and forced.
"Likeable is not equal to sweet, supportive flawless and uncontroversial....."
All I'm asking for too,is good and nuanced writing of characters,
whether they meet my moral standards (or not) they should just be dimensional and real, maybe I'm asking for too much😂.

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Real and multidimensional or not, the FL here remains unlikeable to me. I can't say for future episodes but I can say so for now.

Delightfully Deceitful is not a dumb show that'll require me suspending my brain and also not expect some measure of accountability from.

The FL is almost grounded. She's realistic, unpretentious, and sensible. But I need to see why it is sensible for her to view the world the way she does. I am not accepting "the past informing her present" as the reason for that. You should have a line you cannot cross or a standard of operation. So far, she hasn't done that cause all I see is a character who is shitty for the sake of shitty. Maybe I'm asking for too much.

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And if you know the amount and kinds of Korean dramaverse k-nationwide and dramabeans loved ML's that I found unlikeable, perhaps it'll give more introspection into my definition of unlikeable.

Heh, exactly me. Not only the MLs, but also the number of SMLs loved by all whom I find unlikeable. Case in point: Go Kyung Pyo in Jealousy Incarnate. Not only I never got SLS, I consider him an unlikable manipulator.

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I hope it doesn't seem like I'm forcing you to keep on watching the show 😂 even if you think the FL is too shitty and needs reasons for her unlikable traits.
It's just that I've seen a lot of hate comments on Korean platforms that hate a show so much just because the FL doesn't meet the viewers' moral standards for things that the Ml's are traditionally allowed to do and are never seen as a reason to drop a show and most times those ML's never get a character arc or development which is a must for a female lead that started out unlikable and it just irks me , it's like there's some internal misogyny if some sort . But anyways we're just zigzagging round our distinct opinions, you said you don't believe and you aren't buying into the fact that her past can affect her present while I believe a person's past is enough to infect their present perspective. You said you need a reason why she's a bitch and I feel the unlikable traits of female lead shouldn't be camouflaged. That's just it,we have different takes.

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Oh no. I'm not running away from something so delightfully deceitful as this. I came in here for Kim Dong-wook and I'm gonna see it to the end for him. And I made it a goal to finish the movie Vertigo before DD's premiere so I can have an introduction to Chun Won-hee. I never intended to leave, I only stated an opinion.

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this drama premise doesnt interest me at all, but I really like all the actors involved so I'm still contemplating if I should just pick it up from ep 3... I will still wait to finish my perfect stranger bcs my brain cant compute two kim donwook's at the same time lol

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- Kim Dong-Wook seems to have gotten his Perfect Stranger time machine fixed and is using it to time-skip between two concurrent Monday night shows.
- Sojin is also busy lately, appearing here just days after her performance in Bo-ra. She was such an asset there I hope they give her more to do here.
- "Ro-woom" sounds like it should be a vacuum cleaner.

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-Don't ignore the huge differences in the characters Kim Dong-Wook is playing. In Perfect Stranger, he's playing someone who is on the surface restrained and somewhat cold but whose actions show him to be empathetic. In this show he's playing someone who on the surface suffers from excessive empathy, but whose actions show him to calculating and cold. It requires an enormous acting range.

-As far as Sojin, why is she already typecast in secondary roles? I'm hoping her psychologist role here becomes central in stopping the plot of the evil foundation for the exploitation of gifted youth!

Too bad they couldn't have cast Rowoon as the ML. Then it would be a Rowoon-Rowoom romance.

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Chun Woo-hee is in full 'movie star' mode in this drama, its easy to see why she's got 25 films on her resume. This isn't her first psychopath role, either. 'Idol' in 2019 was downright disturbing.

There's a certain type of film that critics don't seem to have the vocabulary the describe properly so, most of the time, they get lumped in with 'comedies'. I've seen some mighty non-comedic 'comedies' in my day.

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'to' describe properly, 'to'. Not 'the' (sigh).

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Chun Woo-hee portrayed so many sides/personas to the FL. I liked her before, but was really impressed.

The promos were pretty off in terms of describing the drama, but this is one of those dramas that don't fit quite right into a genre. I think the closest would be black comedy, but that also isn't quite right either.

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Even after reading the recap and comments, I have a hard time figuring out how seriously the show wants the viewer to take it. Is it just one more absurdly complex and dark revenge drama? Or, with that title, is it a semi-parody?

First, since I am a simple man, let me say I could have enjoyed a bit more straightforward show. Would it have hurt the writer to have Ro-woom JUST be an on-the-surface cold and brilliant con woman who periodically breaks the fourth wall; and Mu-young be a regular nice guy who gets pulled along and has to confront his longstanding love for Ro-woom vs. her unethical behavior? I don’t think so. Chun Woo-hee sure is a beautiful actress, and she plays the role of con-woman well, I think. It could have been Delightful rather than Deceitful!

But alas, we have the suspicion of parricide, the attempts at murderous revenge, a sinister foundation that takes gifted youth and turns them into sociopaths (Maybe serial killlers?) and a lawyer whose obscure psychological disorder of “excessive empathy” becomes a life threatening disease. Ro-woom’s breaking of the fourth wall becomes a little disturbing: is it in fact a gimmick, or is she instead a psychopath talking to her imaginary friend?

Now that I describe it, it does sound like a kind of over-the-top jokey show. But the overall tone and the continued scenes of the female lead in front of her parents burning to death sure didn’t feel like it. I do like that in restraining his seizure-causing excessive empathy disorder, Mu-Young becomes even colder and more manipulative than the heroine. So that’s an okay twist that might be an attempt at humor.

But I’m still not sure that I need to watch another healing drama of corruption, murder and revenge, so I’ll see if next week the kdrama fairy again blesses my Internet connection with the miraculous ability to view this show that is not legally streaming anywhere in the United States.

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what you wrote about the straightforward show is precisely the story I was expecting until reading this recap. no murders and dark revenge. maybe it's my fault for not paying attention to teasers or press conferences, but after reading this recap, I'm happy that I didn't spend too much time actually watching because I would have been disappointed.

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So far this is not a feel good year in kdramas, that's for sure!

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I had the opposite reaction. I almost dropped this because at seemed straightforward at first - a brilliant lawyer heroically rescuing a tragically accused innocent girl , fated to be with each other and btw, they met as a child. I thought 16 hours to watch that usual plot is not for me.

But the twists and dysfunction of the main characters captured my interest and in time so this looks like a good watch. I am liking the hint of an ensemble of gifted teens outsmarting the adults and I like watching growth (or descent) of morally grey characters - always fun guessing what path they will choose next.

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what I expected from this drama was a con artist lady doing all sorts of schemes and this correct lawyer having to deal with her shenanigans, either by her side or going after her. I like the idea of them being gray characters. didn't expect childhood connection at all and never thought she was going to be an innocent girl. I just didn't think there would be murders. I don't mind the dysfunction of the main characters, but I still thought it wouldn't be as dark as this recap made it to be for me.

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Of course,I totally understand how true kdrama fans might go for this kind of show, since, lets face it, its pretty much classic kdrama: a sinister secret foundation-led conspiracy, an unsolved murder, an obscure psychological dysfunction, and a met in child romance. I'll probably stick with it myself.

I have to disagree with you on whether that's unusual. Its exactly usual in my kdrama experience--my hopes for something different were based on false expectations.

I also have to disagree with you on whether the lawyer was heroic from the start. How was he heroic? Defending the cheating gambler? When everyone pointed out how he was called the vampire because he only helped clients who could pay him? When he was begged by two women to help them and he refused? In fact I thought exactly the opposite--a typical cold hearted, self-centered arrogant ML at the beginning, who by the end is a reformed man. I still think that's true, with the ironic twist that he has this classic kdrama obscure "excessive empathy disorder," which makes his behavior a reaction rather than his essential nature. But I'm sure he'll overcome that in the end, And even that triumph is totally within the kdrama framework!

So as you say, it could very well be a good watch, but it IS not really unexpected. I was just hoping for something a little different from this year's grim litany of shows--no murders, no brutal revenge, no sinister violent conspiracy etc.

I have no trouble with morally grey characters, though, and that's where we agree!

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What is usual or different would indeed be unique to each kdrama fan based on their 'watched' catalogue. This is different or unusual for me, which is probably because I either skipped dramas like this before or they simply were not available to me.

Anyway, this is interesting to me so far, will see if that continues.

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Agree with everyone that the talking to the screen bit isn’t working. It only happens when she’s running a scam, so I guess we should be happy that we’ll get it in small doses. I would dislike this less if the information that she’s doing us the favor of providing, always with a get-ready-to-be-dazzled smirk, were interesting or surprising or impressive. Maybe it's because I’ve watched a lot of movies and shows about scam artists and capers.

Anyway I’m shaking off this negativity and just enjoying watching Kim Dongwook through heart eyes.

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Yesss!!!

"I would dislike this less if the information that she’s doing us the favor of providing, always with a get-ready-to-be-dazzled smirk, were interesting or surprising or impressive"

100%. It is so unnecessary. I would also like to add just because you have an eidetic memory, doesn't make you a genius. It just means you have a good memory. Knowing and understanding are not the same.

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Not everyone is complaining about that. I'm not complaining about that.

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I....I don't know what to make of this show just yet. There's so much I can't really make sense of yet, which is definitely on purpose, but I'm not sure if I'm interested in watching all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. At the very least, I don't think it's a show I'd watch week to week. Seems like something to watch once it's finished airing.

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Hmmmmm, the character intros in this drama and the 4th wall breaking is not great. It is mixing narration with 4th wall breaking, so it makes it seem like two different dramas. These first two episodes did not pull me in and then the childhood connection made me roll my eyes. It would actually be inventive if she did kill her parents, but she didn't so it loses some of its oomph. I am hoping it gets better.

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I don’t think I can start this before My Perfect Stranger finishes. It will be too jarring for me otherwise. Ha!

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This drama was peculiar... Still intriguing though. Not liking anyone yet. The main leads are both mysterious. I wasn't expecting the characters' mental disorders. I wonder how well the writer will develop this part of the story and the outcome.

The tonal changes were a bit jarring, but I liked the fourth wall breaks maybe because of the lighter tone and I got to see Ro Woom transform.

Looks like someone else good at hacking/tracking contacted her in the creepy cliffhanger.

I looked up Mu Young's disorder because it was something I hadn't heard of before (oh, kdramaland).

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I also like the fourth wall breaks, even if it's just her explaining what she's doing, since she seems like a black box. It makes her less mysterious, even though she's still plenty mysterious.

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I started this mainly because of Kim Dong-wook (I really liked Find Me in Your Memory). And yes, the first two episodes were entertaining enough that I'm looking forward to next week, but there was something that distracted me a lot, namely, the world-class facility with which the FL operated her scams after 10 (TEN) years in jail.

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And what about her associates? Has she been running a gang of crooks out of JAIL?

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I enjoyed the first two episodes of Delightfully Deceitful.

Time will tell if the ride will be fun, but it is off to a good start. It will be a game of cat and mouse b/w the leads; however, I think the ML will have his hands full w/ the FL because at times she is out of control and wishes to do major damage to people that have wronged her.

Note(s)…
-Actor, Kim Dong-Wook, has a strong one, two punch on M, Tu w/ My Perfect Stranger and now Delightfully Deceitful.
-Love breaking of fourth wall a la Deadpool.
-Nice Bat Cave for the Jeokmok kids(?).
-I’m getting the evil vibe from Jeokmok Foundation.
-Byeol’s Mom. My spidey senses are tingling. What is the story?
-Jang Young-Nam is on the show. Strong actress. It will be interesting to see her story unfold.
-Sojin in another supporting role. Sojin’s previous show – True to Love has recently wrapped up. This lady is appearing in some notable k-dramas.
-Mu-Young’s mom is actress, Ok-Ja. Ok-Ja also has a role in My Perfect Stranger.
-At first I thought the FL was actress Kim Se-Jeong from Business Proposal.
-I didn’t recognize actor, Yoon Park, until second episode. The hair in his eyes threw me off.

My source of reference is AsianWiki

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I'm quite enjoying so far mostly of how grey the characters are and not the cupboard goodie goodie we so much see in our standard heroes...
Curious if there is more to Yoon's Park than meets the eye...

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Wow, quite a bag of mixed takes on this so far. Its nice to get Beanies opinions on a show that you are not sure if you should go for it or not! But, Kim Dong-wook invited me in to watch so I'm gonna try it for him.

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The problem is, I did not like anything about the drama - not the leads or the story. It lacks certain spice to make it interesting. It feels very disjointed.

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