Weightlifting Fairy: Kim Bok Joo Part 2

Moving swiftly ahead in the style of this drama, it’s no surprise that circumstances conspire to bring the one-sided romance to an end. A weightlifter attending a diet clinic?  What can go wrong there? Those who enter a contract of lies have to keep building the wall between themselves and the truth increasingly higher.  Bok Joo uttered a lie about her field of study.  The cello as her major at university popped into her head and out of her mouth unbidden.  That lie is reinforced by Joon Hyeong, who unintentionally gets caught up in the ill-fated affair.  He even gives credence to the lie, albeit weaving references to the weightlifting truth into the narrative.  He, further, provides her with information about his brother, going so far as spending a month’s allowance on theatre tickets with side-by-side seats for them.  Only his brother is not in on the ruse. Bok Joo is.  When things start to spiral out of control, then quickly plummet towards discovery, Joon Hyeong’s efforts turn to protecting Bok Joo's heart as well as the inevitable embarrassment that will follow. It's for the best that the lies Bok Joo has been living pertaining to her pursuit of the good doctor are exposed. Her efforts, in any case, are wasted.  Dr Jung Jae Yi is more unaware of emotional cues than infatuated Bok Joo is.  Otherwise, whilst he may have missed the “Do you like Messi?” ambiguous chat up line, her gaping mouth and puppy dog eyes, her distraction in his presence, and the giggly person she turns into, should have given him enough clues to understand and curtail her romantic hopes. 

That she turns up at the same half-empty theatre and has the seat beside him is so blatantly fixed that only an imbecile would not have realised that someone set it up.  That person can only be his younger brother, as the common factor in the lives of the two theatre goers.  Still, Bok Joo never expected him to return her feelings, but she did want him to like her as a person. Ironically, Bok Joo turns to Joon Hyeong for comfort, which he provides faultlessly and sincerely.

On a daily basis, his careless, critical mouth is part of an act hiding, well, just the opposite.  Jung Joon Hyeong is, without doubt, a contradiction waiting to be solved.  His public persona hides a troubled, fragile heart. With Bok Joo, the criticisms are quickly replaced by words of support and hints of his attraction to her. His juvenile attempt at romance is over.  Despite the nonchalant attitude he usually adopts, keep looking at his face. Jung Joon Hyeong’s emotional states are plain to see. His true nature is hard for him to hide. Joon Hyeong wears his heart on his sleeve, whether it's toward Bok Joo or his ex-girlfriend, Song Shi Ho. Towards the former, you see unrequited, genuine affection. Toward the latter, there's unresolved pain, hurt, disappointment. Still, whilst he makes it known the relationship with Shi Ho is irreparable, his intrinsic nature prevents him from being truly harsh with her.  He’s rude to her, and his message should be clear in that he avoids her, refuses to go anywhere with her, leaves the cafeteria if she sits at his table.  Joon Hyeong’s body language when Shi Ho accosts him is closed and unwelcoming.  His facial expression is blank.  His voice lacks both interest and desire to converse with her. I guess that though those responses would be clear evidence of a lack of interest to most people, Shi Ho seems determined to wear Joon Hyeong down through sheer bloody-minded willpower. The trouble, however, is  that when she’s in crisis, he becomes the nice person she knows he is. He will always turn up to save her, thereby feeding her hopes of eventual success. Perhaps dating someone else will penetrate her shield of denial and stop her renewed pursuit of him.

We soon find out why they broke up. She, Song Shi Ho, ended it. We find out why the breakup remains so painful for him. The message one gets is that Jung Joon Hyeong was an easy touch, a slave to his emotions and a target waiting to be betrayed because of the degree of trust and need he instils in the love he gives. In Song Shi Ho, he found someone only able to see their own pain, their own troubles, and their own needs.  There was no room to provide the kind of love and emotional support that Joon Hyeong needed.  Like the other pains in his heart, Joon Hyeong rises above it but is not clear of its consequences.  Healing takes time, but that does not prevent him from trying to live well in the meantime.

Like with Jung Joon Hyeong, it's clear that something is being covered up by his ex-girlfriend. Yet, it's harder to empathise with or be interested in her plight. Quite simply, the first impression she gives is of selfishness, bitchiness, unreliability. An old adage comes to mind: First impressions count (and are enduring). This is compounded when her relationship with Kim Bok Joo sour very quickly after they become roommates and Bok Joo’s friendship with Joon Hyeong triggers Shi Ho’s jealousy. It forces us to take sides. It was always going to be the weightlifter fairy who won the crowd. As a woman slowly losing her mind from external (career) and internal (emotional) stresses, one can relate to Shi Ho’s situation. Yet, that she lashes out at our hero as a scapegoat for her gymnastics woes, whilst such is part of the symptoms of her malaise, it is still unacceptable. How could this woman with such a negative core nature provide the support that fragile hearted Jung Joon Hyeong needs to resolve the deep trauma that continues to squeeze his heart? Too, by exposing Bok Joo’s visits to the clinic for obesity patients, Shi Ho places herself in an already complicated drama and causes a storm for those directly involved.  Especially for Bok Joo, whose intention was never to lose weight, as Joon Hyeong makes clear.  The disclosure causes misunderstandings and a real potential for a harsh beating for Bok Joo from her father, and actual physical punishment from her coach [hard to believe that was legal]. Even the good doctor is implicated by Bok Joo’s father’s assumptions that he took advantage of her.  For Joon Hyeong, being the apparent reason cited by Shi Ho for her reprehensible behaviour, not only was there never a chance that he would reconcile with her, the hurt and harm caused to Bok Joo increases the attention he gives the victim and pushed him further away from the perpetrator.  It was an action both cowardly and unforgiveable by Song Shi Ho.  That said, it triggers the falling down of the precariously stacked lies Bok-Joo had built, which was, in fact and nonetheless, still not Shi Ho’s place to trigger.

In many ways, this drama resembles the saga in My Name is Kim Sam Soon [1]. The relationship between Kim Bok Joo and Jung Joon Hyeong grows slowly, then explodes. The commitment to one another even before love mutually blossoms is beautiful to watch. Also, like Jin-heon towards Sam Soon, Joon Hyeong seems unable to not physically interact with Bok Joo.  He has to touch her in greeting, grab at whatever she is carrying, physically tease her whilst holding her hand or draping his arm around her shoulder. If there’s an opportunity to embrace her, he turns it into a viable reason to do so.  Rather than move away from a threatened punch from an irritated Bok Joo, Joon Hyeong lights up at her responses.  Similar to Jin-heon, he doesn’t seem to understand personal space when it comes to Bok Joo.  The closer he stands beside her, the happier he appears to be.  Of course, Bok Joo must be happy with all these physical displays of affection, as she does not protest nor try to avoid them.  And one must not forget that he, Joon Hyeong, follows her whenever the opportunity arises. They are very much morphing into a couple.  Only, Bok Joo is blinded of this by her continued obsession with older brother, Jae Yi.  The humour they spark in their dance towards uniting as lovers makes the viewer smile and nod in approval.

 When you run to him whenever he calls; when he holds you tightly in his arms and asks you to stay that way for just a bit longer; when he tells you if he catches your cold he will kiss you to give it back to you; and when you make a wish and pray for his success at his latest competition, things are no longer as they were. The relationship has moved to the next phase for both of you, though only one knows it. Kim Bok Joo has some catching up to do. Luckily, Jung Joon Hyeong has had ten years of learning those life lessons.  He's become a master of concealed emotions.  Waiting for Bok Joo is no different. If anything is different, it is that if his brother really went after Bok Joo, he would step so far back that neither Bok Joo nor Jae Yi would ever know how he felt about her. Again, this is not the norm in dramaland, where conflict between love rivals is used to break up friendships and families alike. 

Meanwhile, Shi Ho’s dirty trick has put Bok Joo in the type of bind that gets worse before it gets better.  Her coaches and her father are trying to close the stable door to prevent her from putting her identity as a woman ahead of her responsibilities as a weightlifter.  Though they don’t know it, as the beating she gets is because of a man, that particular hope is already dead.  Having taken the punishment, including round-the-clock supervision and force feeding to counter the weight loss from the obesity diet plan, a recommitted-to-her-sport Bok Joo is given leave to go home for the night.  She’s to come back the next day ready to resume her training in earnest.  In response, the resilience of youth has to be admired. Bok Joo is waylaid by Joon Hyeong, who wants to take her out for a meal to cheer her up.  What about curfew?

“Do you think demerit points exist in vain?  They are there for us to earn them”.

With that Inspired explanation, instead of going home and acting the humble and humbled daughter, Bok Joo perks up and follows Joon Hyeong for a meal, then to a club.  She’s letting loose and shrugging off her problems.  All night long.  The next morning, both of them seemingly happier, normal routine is resumed. Joon Hyeong has berated Bok Joo gently for being careless with the dieting diary.  Try as she might, she can’t explain how it ended on the floor of the gym when she is certain she hid it in her dorm room, at the bottom of her bag.  Something is stirring inside Joon Hyeong’s mind.  It takes a while, but he identifies the culprit who betrayed Bok Joo.  The viewer saw ahead of him that it was Song Shi Ho.

With all the angst that living as two people causes, it's a relief, then, when the house of cards finally collapses, and Kim Bok Joo’s true identity is revealed to her love interest, Dr Jung Jae Yi.  Perhaps one should blame Joon Hyeong for the delayed revelation of the truth.  In trying to protect Bok Joo, he actually compounded the situation.  Responding to his own emotions, Joon Hyeong lost perspective on the situation between his brother and this woman he, himself, cares deeply about.  His place as the common factor between Bok Joo and his brother should have been uncomfortable, even emotionally painful.  But it wasn’t.  Simply put, his loyalty is closely connected to his love for them both.  Allowing Bok Joo’s true identity to be exposed would have caused her to suffer embarrassment for a short time only.  Instead, the lies went on and on, became more and more convoluted, involved greater and greater deception, and resulted in true punishment in addition to mortification for Bok Joo.  But we understand Joon Hyeong’s reasons.  He wanted her to be happy.  If chasing his brother was what she wanted, he was willing to help make it happen.  He already knows she has no intention of expressing her true feelings to her doctor crush.  Indeed, she even explains to Joon Hyeong that part of her reason for liking Jae Yi is that he woke her up to the fact that she is an attractive woman.  Bok Joo understands that her obsession is a passing phase.  Reasonably, too, Bok Joo’s distress is over becoming known as someone who repeatedly lies.  Her tears reflect the shame such a reputation carries, especially if charged as such by someone she likes.

Every time Bok Joo and Joon Hyeong lock eyes, his heartbeat accelerates.  Bok Joo’s reflects a warm glow. Her language about his attractiveness has already changed towards the positive.  Spending more and more time with Joon Hyeong means that Bok Joo is drifting away from her girl friends.  And isn’t that natural?  Isn’t it the first step in a girlfriend-boyfriend relationship?  When he holds her, she no longer fights to break free.  When he hugs her as he leads her for a meal or other event, she fits right into his embrace.  His number is the first she dials when she is upset or needs advice. “Where are you” becomes the cue that has Joon Hyeong dropping whatever he is doing to literally race to wherever Bok Joo is.

So clever to use the throwing of coins into a ‘fountain’ to counter misery, as Bok Joo does, and simultaneously showcase our duo as a couple.  With Joon Hyeong handing her coin after coin, it’s like him feeding her food or drink. The concept works doubly well as the fountain is where Bok Joo makes wishes, and she seems to be paying on account for things to come.  It’s cute.  Here’s hoping that the keeper of the gate, Brown Fountain Toad, fabled granter of wishes, does its job well.

The language towards one another is increasingly less combative.  Trust has moved into the relationship for both of them as they share truths and secrets.  Her uncle, Kim Dae Ho, explains very clearly to Bok Joo’s father that their girl is in love after seeing her behaviour towards the first male friend she has ever brought home. He even identifies Jung Joon Hyeong as his future ‘nephew-son-in-law’.

Leonora

asiandramaobserver@gmail.com

[1] 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