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Profile:  Hyun Jin-heon - Part 4

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There’s nothing left to peel away.  Jin-heon is now emotionally bare!  Nothing hidden; even his pride is cast aside.  Except Sam-soon does not receive the messages. She left her phone behind when she headed for Mt. Halla. She’ll complete the climb to match the cleansing trek Jin-heon described doing after that fatal road traffic accident.  Following that climb, he was able to unload the crippling feelings of guilt over his brother’s death.  It enabled him to move slowly towards ‘living’ again.  Similarly, for Sam-soon, too, it’s a final connection with Jin-heon.  It’s his adventure, and although he didn’t keep the promise to share the journey with her, she’ll know what he experienced despite that.

 

Sam-soon’s triumphant ascent of the mountain is stamped with a self-acknowledging declaration that it’s over with Jin-heon.  She is, as well, celebrating the end of a lifetime of embarrassment and being shamed because of the name her grandfather saddled her with.  Her name change has been approved.  Shouting “it’s over” at the top of her voice must add reality to it. Unsurprising to the viewer, her plan for emancipation from her past is rudely interrupted. A disembodied voice booms:

 

“Who says it is?” 

 

It’s “The Wizard of Oz” [1] at the crest of a mountain in driving wind and rain. Clearly, a challenge to Sam-soon’s intentions, Jin-heon is not accepting this ending.  Having learnt Sam-soon’s whereabouts from her sister, he rushes to the airport, rushes to Jeju Island, rushes up the mountain on what are truly dodgy legs. All to be with Sam-soon.  It’s to apologise for everything he’s put her through and to commit again to a future together.  It’s also her birthday, and he doesn’t want her to spend it alone. 

 

As we’ve seen before, “When [he] was good, [he] was very good …!”[2]  That Jin-heon sure knows how to manage Sam-soon emotionally.  Now, they’ll sign a 100-year love contract.  This time, however, the emphasis is on their mutual love with nothing fake about the relationship.  He’ll tie her to him with an even bigger loan than the first one.  And skinship is not only allowed but encouraged.  Jin-heon’s humour is on fire, and so are his hormones.  This all-or-nothing trait of his is dizzying.  Sam-soon, of course, takes it in her stride: 

 

“Stop playing around … Announce it to the world, why don’t you … I’m only drinking this soup so your backpack is lighter on the trip down the mountain”. 

 

They are so in tune you understand why they are together. You wonder how it could have taken as long as it has to get where they are now.  Again, and however, straight after having spent the night together (in a manner of speaking), that pesky voice of reason intrudes. What about Hee-jin?  That question again?!  Sam-soon is like a one-line song.  One guesses Jin-heon understands how close he came to losing her.  One can, further, guess he’s on his way to end things with Hee-jin.  Otherwise, he’s really not worth bothering about and kicking him to the curb will be Sam-soon’s only option.

 

The gentle Jin-heon is back for good and his parting with Hee-jin is as kind as he can make it.  But he is now also a truthful Jin-heon.  As a consequence, when Hee-jin asks him whether he loves Sam-soon, he answers honestly.  She asks three times, and he answers accordingly: he keeps thinking about Sam-soon, he misses Sam-soon, he’s happy when he’s with Sam-soon.  One more question from Hee-jin and he would have added that he can’t live without Sam-soon (as the dash to the mountain showed).  And finally, he tells Hee-jin that although life is hard, one must live on.  Indirectly, Jin-heon is telling Hee-jin that the past is the past and it’s time to move on.

 

The degree of hurt Hee-jin caused Jin-heon takes time to heal.  Thus, even when his relationship with Sam-soon is the real thing, even when her love for him is transparent and without question, he still worries, demanding now that she not ignore his phone calls, tell him where she is every hour of the day, and such nonsense.  He no longer fears being betrayed for another man; now he fears that something else might happen to take her away from him.  It’s an exercise of unintended exposed vulnerability rather than possessiveness.  Sam-soon does not bother to react nor respond.  He has, himself, caused Sam-soon a lot of hurt along the journey to their eventual permanent union, but she’s still with him.  He made her cry multiple times.  He has abandoned her.  He has pulled her to him and pushed her away so many times that even the viewers have lost count.  But she’s steadfast in her commitment to him.  Jin-heon eventually comes to understand that Sam-soon is there to stay, expressing this with the confident words that she understands him.  In other words, he has full faith in the love they share. 

 

Jin-heon no longer needs to protect his heart.  With that, his attitude, his behaviour, and his expressed affection towards Sam-soon all change, reverting to that of the man he used to be:  loving, gentle, romantic, and playful. He still can’t help picking fights with Sam-soon, but there’s no heat in them; it’s simply the way they communicate.

 

Still, his love for Sam-soon cannot suddenly dissolve his past love for Hee-jin and, reasonably, he will always carry their memories in his heart.  With that, he makes a promise to always care about her.  It’s a promise that unexpectedly comes back to bite him when Hee-jin asks him for a favour.   That thread he kept attached to their respective hearts has turned into a lifeline for Hee-jin. She wants him to accompany her back to America, to her parents, for a week.  Is she testing his resolve to end with her, or is she testing his loyalty to Sam-soon?  Jin-heon’s face clearly tells Hee-jin that her request is too much.  She does not retract it, instead repeats it, and he agrees.  Right now, he could do with some of the blunt and uncompromising attitude that he lived by until recently.  He should have asked Hee-jin whether she was crazy?  He should have discussed it with Sam-soon before committing. It seems the new version of Jin-heon is equally complicated. At times like these, one has to believe in fate.  Otherwise, how can anything good come out of such a situation?  

 

Sam-soon is not happy.  She is not accommodating of his request for permission to jet off with his ex-girlfriend to a far away location for a week.  He’s testing that famous ownership of one another thing they keep boasting about.  Right now, Sam-soon’s reaction threatens to put the union in jeopardy, even though it is Jin-heon who compromised it.  In the mist of the stand-off, we see Jin-heon expose one final layer of emotion.  Mijoo, his niece, suddenly starts to talk after three years as a selective mute.  She’s been silent since the loss of her parents in the same road traffic accident that almost destroyed Jin-heon’s will to continue living.  It is in response to his arguing with Sam-soon about the Hee-jin America trip.  Irrespective, she’s talking, and he’s stunned. 

 

Sam-soon has never seen him so emotionally naked.  His love for Mijoo is like an invisible force giving off waves of protective energy as he kneels before her.   He was wrong. He and Sam-soon will stop arguing. Please stop crying. Unable to resist Jin-heon at the best of times, Sam-soon’s own heart is close to bursting, too. It’s no surprise, then, that Sam-soon subsequently agrees to Jin-heon taking Hee-jin home to her parents. Who would have believed there could be a silver lining to something that, under most circumstances, could easily split a less solid union of hearts apart?  That deep relationship they share must be in tatters by now!  Perhaps, opposite to the dementors in the Harry Potter[3] series, which absorb and transform pain and adversity to strengthen themselves, the ‘deep relationship’ this couple share is strengthened and bestowed back to them as positive emotional energy.

 

Love almost destroyed Jin-heon.  Love, similarly, saves him.  As a character, Jin-heon experiences a steep learning curve starting the minute Sam-soon comes into his life.  The change that is witnessed in Jin-heon teaches us not to automatically take what we see as the whole truth.  “If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for, or against, anything[4]” is a lesson worth heeding. 

 

To understand why someone acts a certain way, especially in an unfavourable manner, we must suspend disapproval and wait for the whole truth to surface, as it surely will with time.   Jin-heon matured from being with Sam-soon, a growth he completes when he extends his time in America from one week to two months to do market research on hotels before returning to run the family hotel with his mother.  It is also in preparation for asking Sam-soon to marry him.  That trip, his silence during his absence, the confusion over the lost (wrongly addressed) postcards he sent Sam-soon every day, and Sam-soon’s reluctance to forgive him, really tested their deep relationship (again). Perhaps fate is challenging their mutual commitment to one another one last time. 

 

One step at a time is good enough. They’ve survived it all: the trials, the tribulations, the madness.  Jin-heon and Sam-soon have settled truly happily as a couple.   They still ‘fight’ occasionally, but even these are noted as ending within minutes and with open public displays of affection, leaving no doubt about their ownership of one another. Still, there’s one last thing to overcome. 

 

The challenge ahead is as difficult now as it was at the beginning of the relationship. Jin-heon and Sam-soon successfully surmounted a mountain of their own creation and of other people’s doubts to claim their love for one another.  That love was one literally conquered at the summit of Mt. Hallasan on Juja Island.  But there are still barriers to cross, resistance to manage, his mother, President Na, to placate.  The drama My Lovely Kim Sam Soon[5] repeatedly showcases that seldom are we in charge of the path our lives take.  We do, of course, have input into its direction, just as we simultaneously impact that of others.  For our lovers, that path wove a hard and perilous emotional journey.  The road ahead continues to throw up unexpected challenges.  That’s life. Thankfully, some obstacles are known, though the solution may not be.  In this case, even Jin-heon knows he can’t resolve the problem of his mother easily or alone, asking:

 

“What are we going to do about our President Na?” 

 

Leonora

 

END


[1] The Wizard of Oz 1939 (Film): Wizard of Oz (1939). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg8PrPVqCd8

[3] Prisoner of Azkaban (1999) by JK Rowling. Book & Film variously available.

 [4] Attributed to Seng Ts'an, Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for, or against, anything (Unknown): https://web.csulb.edu/~wweinste/HsinHsinMing.html

[5] Ji Soo-hyun, My Lovely Kim Sam Soon. Kim Sa-hyun MBC, 2005. Rakuten Viki, https://www.viki.com//tv/1476c-my-lovely-sam-soon

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