Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

Café Minamdang
(미남당 / Minamdang)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

Hey-ya-ho, I’m back again before the end of the month to share another review! I’m glad I was able to find time to finish this within a couple of weeks, which is rare these days! I’m going to become more busy the next couple of months until I graduate, so it might not be possible for me to finish as many shows per month as last year.
This is the fourth show my Spin the Wheel app picked out for me and I was able to watch it on Netflix, which allowed a much more enjoyable watching experience than my previous watch. Even though I finished it quite quickly, I still went back-and-forth between other shows in-between as well, so there are bound to be details that aren’t as clear in my memory as I would like. Still, I want to share my thoughts on this show. All in all I’d say it was amusing to watch. It had a nice cast of characters and actors, and I had a good time watching it overall. I look forward to sharing my more detailed opinions in this review!

Café Minamdang is an 18-episode Netflix K-Drama with episodes of about 1 hour and 3 minutes each. The title refers to the café ran by the main character, Nam Han Joon (played by Seo In Gook) and his team. His team consists of his partner and good friend Gong Soo Cheol (Kwak Shi Yang), his younger sister Nam Hye Joon (Kang Mi Na) and their rookie member Jo Na Dan (Baek Seo Hoo). Han Joon and Soo Cheol formerly worked at the police force, Han Joon as a criminal profiler and Soo Cheol as a detective. After both getting dismissed after a certain incident, they eventually decided to start running a new ‘undercover’ private detective agency together with Hye Joon and Na Dan. With Han Joon’s excellent profiling skills, Soo Cheol’s brutal strength, Hye Joon’s genius hacking skills as a former National Intelligence Service employee and Na Dan’s agility and skill to get away with the slightest interference, they’ve started a fake shaman fortune-telling business to cover their ongoing case-solving. Using Café Minamdang as their cover, Han Joon has become famous for his reliable predictions as a shaman, while he’s actually financially extorting his clients. He pretends to be enlightened by the spirits to see the truth about his clients’ situations and while he tells them to stick to certain life styles or rules to ward off spirits of misfortune, he and his team go about solving their clients’ situations for them behind their backs, which results in huge amounts of reward money when their clients come back to tell him that he was right and their troubles did disappear/get solved. All of this to build Han Joon’s reputation as an excellent, reliable and highly skilled shaman. The accuracy of his (self-fulfilled) prophecies has even led to his nickname, “The Miracle of Yeonhae-dong”, which is where the café is located. However, we eventually learn about Han Joon’s true purpose of continuing this detective work even after being dismissed from the force. Six years prior to the start of the story, his best friend Han Jae Jeong (played by Song Jae Rim), who was a prosecutor, was killed by a serial killer Han Joon has come to nickname as “Gopuri”. In Korean shamanism, there is a ritual in which a white cloth is tied into several knots, and the untying of these knots is called gopuri. The signature trademark of this serial killer is that such a gopuri cloth is left at each crime scene, hence the nickname “Gopuri”. This also likely contributed to Han Joon’s decision to use shamanism in his detective façade, as he may have thought it would help him get closer to the killer in one way or another.
On the other hand, we have Han Jae Jeong’s younger sister, Han Jae Hee (played by Oh Yeon Seo), who is a police officer. After her brother was killed and she and her parents moved abroad for a while, she changed her name from Jang Mi to Jae Hee, and is still determined to find out the truth about what happened to her brother. She knows Han Joon as well, as she used to get taekwondo lessons from him when she was a teenager. She had a crush on him at the time, but never got to confess her feelings. Now, so many years later, she’s stunned to meet Han Joon again when the cases they work on keep colliding. Jae Hee’s team, Major Crimes Investigation Division Seven, further consists of Officer Jang Doo Jin (Jung Man Shik), Kim Sang Hyeop (Heo Jae Ho) and rookie Na Gwang Tae (Jung Ha Joon). Another person she becomes close with is Prosecutor Cha Do Won (played by Kwon Soo Hyun), who starts helping out the police team with cases and even develops a crush on Jae Hee. The two get closer throughout the investigation and Jae Hee comes to trust him a lot, even though she never reciprocates his feelings.
The story starts out as a tug-of-war between Han Joon’s Minamdang team and Jae Hee’s police force team as they keep crossing paths while solving the same cases and continuously clashing as they go about it in significantly different ways. Eventually, when Han Joon and Jae Hee finally reveal their respective connections to Han Jae Jeong, they start working together on catching Gopuri. Their relationship also develops from a rivalling one to a romantic one.
The investigation of Gopuri ultimately reveals a lot of shady businesses orchestrated by a group of very influential people and leads the police and Minamdang teams to go after several different suspects, which include Cha Do Won’s older brother Cha Seung Won (Lee Jae Woon), a guy called Goo Tae Soo (Won Hyun Joon) and a mysterious shaman lady called Auntie Im (Jung Da Eun).

Before expressing my main criticisms about the show, I’d like to go over the main characters one by one and discuss them individually in a bit more detail.
First of all, Nam Han Joon. He’s the typical ‘acts silly but has a serious backstory’ type of person. When he’s pretending to be a shaman and running his business, he basically has dollar signs in his eyes at all times. He doesn’t really seem to sincerely sympathize with his clients or other people when it doesn’t bring in money. However, we do get to sympathize with him when we see what he went through when Jae Jeong was killed. Seriously, the scene where he found him in his house and wasn’t able to save him, the way he broke down on the floor crying GUTTED me. These types of scenes in-between the sillyness are initially what got me really interested in the story because I like it when it’s not just comedy. I like it when there’s something serious behind the comedy which drives these characters. I also found it interesting that, despite the constant emphasis on what a genius Han Joon was (be it as a shaman or a profiler) he still remained a human being who made mistakes and didn’t immediately pick up on every single thing. It took him a long time to realize who Gopuri was, after the viewers already got that information. The fact that he also went into something with Soo Cheol and didn’t anticipate beforehand what could go wrong was pretty ironic for someone posing off as a shaman who gives others advice about what to look out for. But in a way, I liked that because it proved that he was just another human being trying his best. He wasn’t a professional detective and certainly no Sherlock Holmes, so of course he still made mistakes. It would’ve been neat if he just picked up on everything automatically and figured out everything from the start, but that wouldn’t have been as thrilling as seeing him fail and having to face his own flaws in the process.
I liked how he became more and more sincere throughout the story as well. He started out as a purely money-obsessed fraud, but through being reunited with Jae Hee and realizing how much his team meant to him, he did have some solid character development. It was nice seeing that, despite his casual behavior, his friends and family meant the world to him, and he carried the guilt of not being able to protect Jae Jeong with him every single day. Honestly, I thought his consistent loyalty to Jae Jeong was very endearing, even when it came to getting his blessing to get romantically involved with Jae Hee. He actually held himself back for his best friend and that also proved how much he meant to him. I thought the way in which they gradually showed his sincerity bit by bit throughout the story was very effective, because in that way it really felt like slowly getting to know him better rather than adding in an abrupt change in his character. It even made me sympathize with his decision to create the purpose of Minamdang. Even though he just seemed to be plain greedy at first, everything he did after Jae Jeong’s murder was in some way connected to catching Gopuri. The fact that it all had a purpose in the end also helped me sympathize with him more, because he was actually working towards something and not just extorting money out of people purely for personal gain.

When we meet Jae Hee for the first time, she’s just been appointed as the new leader of Division Seven of the Major Crime Investigation department. Her nickname at the force is ‘Ghost Han’ because when she gets serious about catching a culprit, she’ll move as swiftly and quickly as a ghost, and this has earned her a reputation as well, even though it’s mostly a scary one. Still, once she and her team mates get to know each other better, they get along just fine. I personally really liked her teamwork with Officer Jang and the mutual respect that grew between them.
I thought the revelation of what she was really like matched Han Joon’s case as well. We first get to know her as this reputed and esteemed police officer, but she too makes a lot of mistakes and judgement errors, and we see that she too is just a regular and flawed human being. She starts caving to Han Joon’s charm again from the moment she’s reunited with him, and basically starts acting like a love-struck girl trying to push away her feelings towards her crush. This side of her stood in stark contrast with the intimidating impression she made during her first introduction. Still, I liked how she too went through a major character development, even though it also included a lot of betrayal and pain while working on her brother’s case and finding out who Gopuri was all this time. I really appreciated that she got a breakdown scene after finding out about Gopuri’s true identity because this must have been so hard for her to accept. To find out her brother was killed by someone she’d trusted and worked so closely with, someone who even confessed his feelings for her. I’m glad they paid attention to that betrayal and made a deal out of it rather than brush it off with a simple “that bastard!✊🏻” and be done with it. It made me sympathize with Jae Hee a lot to see how her trust in people suffered such a blow in that moment.
Admittedly, there were times when I felt like she wasn’t actually as good a police officer as she was made out to be in the beginning, but I also don’t think it’s fair to expect her to pick up on things all the time. It was basically the same as with Han Joon, they had the qualifications to work at the force but that didn’t mean that they were intuitive about every single thing.
One thing I do want to mention that I found kind of ridiculous was the flashback from around the time that Jae Jeong was killed. Jae Hee was still a rookie officer at that point and she and another officer were chasing this lady who’d been stealing strawberries from a greenhouse or something (?). They stumbled upon this suspicious truck that literally had blood trickling out of the back door. As the place in itself was already super remote, making it a perfect hiding spot, I honestly couldn’t believe that they actually went, “Ehh, I certainly hope that’s not blood!” “Yeah, I hope not!” and LEFT without even checking it out. Like, seriously, what was that? The fact that they didn’t even inspect the truck – because it definitely was blood – and just walked away?! Like, at least call back-up or someone else if you don’t want to inspect it by yourselves but don’t just shrug it off and leave it for what it is! 😂 That was the only time I actually doubted Jae Hee as a police officer, lol. Sure, there were other moments where I thought she could’ve thought things through a bit more, but you can’t expect someone to be flawless, even in the police force, so I won’t judge her too much for it. We’re all human beings, after all.

To say something about the relationship between Han Joon and Jae Hee, I thought it was cute. I liked the scenes from before they officially got together, when it was the two of them just holding back the urge to kiss each other, lol. The tension between them built up pretty fast and it created a nice push-and-pull vibe.
One thing that did confuse me was the age difference between them. I don’t actually know how far apart in age they were, but in the flashback of Jae Hee (Jang Mi at the time) getting taekwondo lessons from Han Joon, Jae Hee is actually a teenager. As in, she’s portrayed by a teenage actress (Kim Min Seo) while Han Joon is consistently portrayed by Seo In Gook. In that flashback, it seemed like there was a significant age gap between them, as he looked like an adult while she was clearly still a kid. Moving ahead to the period in which Jae Jeong was murdered, six years prior to the present story, Jae Hee is an adult by now and played by Oh Yeon Seo. So how long ago was the taekwondo lesson flasback scene? And why didn’t they use a younger version actor for Han Joon when clearly about ten years had passed?🤔 Jae Hee must have only been slightly older than his own sister Hye Joon. To look at that flashback scene and picture them as a couple would be kind of inappropriate age-wise, so I’m actually curious about how much they differed in age. This puzzles me all the more since I found out Seo In Gook and Oh Yeon Seo are the same age in real life. Other than that, as with all the romantic relationships in this show, they ended up being very lovey-dovey, talking to each other in baby voices and stuff. Again, since this stood in such stark contrast with how they were introduced as well-reputed impressive people, I found this kind of funny.
What I also found funny was that, despite them both having such close connections to Jae Jeong, they apparently had no idea they were both connected to him. Like, they all knew each other individually but it seemed like Jae Hee/Jang Mi didn’t know her taekwondo teacher was her brother’s best friend and Han Joon didn’t know Jae Hee was Jae Jeong’s little sister. As in, he knew that Jae Jeong had a little sister, but he didn’t know she was the girl he taught taekwondo. I found that a bit odd.

If we’re going to talk about Cha Do Won, I’m proud to say that I didn’t trust this bastard from the start. At first, I thought this purely had to do with my association regarding the actor, as he also played a sociopath killer in Abyss, and I tried to set aside my bias towards him. But then there were all sorts of situations where he just conveniently disappeared and only ended up supporting Jae Hee from the sidewalk. The scene that sealed the deal for me was when they were still after the person they initially suspected for Jae Jeong’s murder even though Han Joon was convinced it wasn’t him. This suspect was in a hospital bed and Jae Hee and Do Won were watching him. What happened was kind of wild, because they pretty much allowed a suspicious-looking doctor inject something lethal into the guy’s IV-drip and just let him walk away while the suspect immediately showed a strong physical reaction to whatever he’d been injected with. When Jae Hee went after the doctor guy, she left Do Won behind in the room with a single instruction to “Take out the IV-drip and make sure he’s safe!” After the whole ordeal, Do Won had just disappeared completely and, big surprise, he hadn’t taken out the IV-drip. He literally emerged from the shadows as soon as Jae Hee was alone again, being all “aw shucks, we didn’t catch him”. That’s when it started going 🚩🚩🚩 for me. Every time he ‘cooperatively’ went after a bad guy and ‘accidentally’ let him escape, I just went “yeah, right”😒. So yeah, it wasn’t a surprise to me that he turned out to be Gopuri, but there’s still something about the revelation of it that didn’t sit fully right with me. The show used this specific way to introduce new characters by pasting a name tag on them (in an almost comic book kind of way), and this also happened with Do Won, they just pasted ‘GOPURI’ on him and I was like, “oh okay, they’re not even going to beat around the bush about his identity?”😅 At that time I was only 100% certain that he was involved, but not that he himself was Gopuri, so for me it kind of killed the suspense having it revealed like that. Personally, I would’ve liked to first get to the bottom of his involvement with Goo Tae Soo and Auntie Im before just being served the de-mystified truth on a platter. Because now the story became more of a ‘how long until Han Joon and Jae Hee figure it out’ game and it definitely took away part of the thrill in my opinion.
I’m also still a bit confused about Cha Do Won’s timeline. We find out that he’s been a psychopath ever since he was a kid, and after he actually ended up murdering someone his parents hired a specialist in hypnosis therapy to brainwash him and make him forget he did it. Worse, they made him believe that it was actually his older brother Seung Won who did it, because he already had quite violent tendencies at the time. Like, if you’re going to brainwash a murder from a kid’s memory, at least make him believe the victim died tragically in some other way, why was there a need to put it on his brother’s tab? The therapist continued monitoring and hypnotizing young Do Won with a clicker device – the clicking sound triggered him to hold back his urge to kill or physically harm.
When the police and Minamdang teams start looking for dirt on Cha Seung Won as a part of their investigation of the group of influential men involved in an illegal prostitution deal, Han Joon and Jae Hee come across the incident in which Seung Won allegedly killed a kid when he was a teenager. When they visit the building in which this took place together with Do Won, this is where Do Won starts getting weird flashbacks for the first time. It’s almost as if his memory is triggered and he suddenly remembers two versions of the same accident. However, it doesn’t seem like he fully realizes that he did it himself yet – unlike me, who immediately went, “it was him himself, huh”🙄. The way they made that look was that he didn’t actually remember being that psychopath kid and killing someone way back when.
On the other hand, it’s revealed that he basically went around killing people his entire life. While he personally went after people that evaded the law (like a self-appointed vigilante, very fitting for a prosecutor), he made his accomplice Goo Tae Soo kill other people like Jae Jeong, who came too close to the truth and therefore needed to be silenced. So it’s not like brainwashing him into forgetting one specific incident as a kid stopped him from becoming a serial killer. It just made me feel like in the end, the whole brainwashing thing didn’t really amount to anything, even though it was also suggested that he became a serial killer exactly because he found out he’d been brainwashed. As in, he might have turned out okay if they didn’t alter his memory as a kid – well I don’t think so. All in all, it just wasn’t clear to me if he was aware of the fact that he’d been brainwashed as a child. I found it a bit confusing how long he’d been conscious of anything and if maybe he’d remembered everything from the start.

To explain a bit more about his brother, Goo Tae Soo and Auntie Im – here’s what I gathered.
His brother Seung Won was involved in a land development project that involved all a group of influential old men who signed up for an illegal prostitution deal. He was a lawyer and therefore quite influential. While he didn’t get involved in the prostitution deal himself, he did help cover up a bunch of things which made him an accomplice. Having been a bully since childhood, he was also inclined to get violent when things didn’t go his way.
Goo Tae Soo used to be a victim of domestic violence when he was young, and he ended up killing his alcoholic father and setting his own house on fire. While he was very fond of his mother, he walked away from home and was unfortunately picked up by a young Cha Do Won and Auntie Im, who was already by his side then. Do Won immediately appointed him as his ‘magpie’, like a pet, and that’s what he’s been treating him as ever since. Goo Tae Soo was basically manipulated into believing that Do Won and his accomplices were on his side, and he obediently killed anyone that posed a threat to Do Won. What ultimately cost him was his attachment to one of the idol trainees that was selected for the prostitution deal. He got attached to her since she reminded him of his mother, so killing her did actually affect him. The teams figure this out by the shoes the victim was wearing when she was found, as they were identical to the ones his mother wore on an old picture, and they realized they looked alike, they had a similar smile or something like that. I actually pitied Goo Tae Soo a bit because he was definitely done dirty as a human being and he just ended up trusting the wrong people. I did feel for him when they reunited him with his mother at the end and let her come visit him in prison. The way he broke down behind the glass made me empathize with him a little. Not that I condone anything he’s done, absolutely not, but I did feel like he was forced to join the dark side when he was in a very fragile state after the whole ordeal with his dad.
When it comes to Auntie Im, there’s still a lot I don’t understand. Apparently she was once an actual shaman-in-training but got caught doing something illegal and was kicked out, and this made her vicious enough to set her former training temple on fire. I’m still not completely sure how she ended up at Do Won’s side and also how she looked exactly the same in the flashbacks of twenty years prior. Like, in the scene where child Do Won meets teen Goo Tae Soo for the first time, she’s portrayed by the exact same person as in present time when Do Won and Tae Soo are both adults. If she was that much older than Tae Soo in that flashback, she should’ve been a granny in the present time. There’s no explanation about that and any further mystery surrounding her character was debunked when Do Won killed her just to frame Han Joon for it. Anyways, Auntie Im was the person who prepared the gopuri cloths for each execution and we learn that she helped influential people get rid of opponents through voodoo-like rituals, so she was definitely a skilled shaman herself, even though she mainly used her ‘powers’ to help the wrong people. She found out she chose to side with the wrong people too late and died at Do Won’s own hands.

I have to admit that in the part about the land development plan where all those influential people were introduced I found it very hard to keep up with who was who and what was happening. There was a lot of name dropping and I was barely able to figure out what the whole deal with Auntie Im and Cha Seung Won, let alone all the other people that were involved. I hope I at least got it right in essence in the above paragraph. At some point there were just too many involved parties being thrown into the mix and I found it hard to keep track.

To go back to the Minamdang team, we need to talk about Soo Cheol. I think that out of all the characters, Soo Cheol was probably intended as the biggest comic relief character. From the way he talked to the way he walked, there wasn’t much to take seriously. I think he was made to be a caricature of the brute force with the smallest brain, even though his heart was undeniably in the right place. I did wonder what he was like as a police detective before he got dismissed though, because I just can’t picture him in a position of bearing responsibility for the nation. Still, when it came to being loyal, he took the crown. I enjoyed Han Joon and Soo Cheol’s constant bickering and the way they’d always slapped each other’s ass, lol. I found it interesting that they both saw each other as brothers but also always rejoiced when one could get away with something the other couldn’t. There was this playfulness to their friendship, and I feel like even though they did push each other under the bus occasionally, those cases didn’t hold much weight because they both knew each other’s loyalty. They were always there for each other in the moments it truly mattered, and that was the most important thing. Honestly, Soo Cheol covered Han Joon on so many occasions. He pretended to be the café’s shaman so that Han Joon’s very Christian mother wouldn’t get a heart attack. He allowed himself to get kidnapped and beaten unconscious without a second of hesitation. That’s an incredible level of loyalty and I appreciated him for that.

I wanted to know SO BADLY what happened to Hye Joon’s career at the NIS. I don’t even know if she quit or got fired, and how she was even able to still access so many systems from her own room without attracting the attention of the feds. I would’ve liked some more backstory on Hye Joon, to be honest. There were so many interesting things about her that weren’t really explained. For example, how did she get from the NIS to becoming this unhygienic hermit that hacked clients from her room for money? Also, I found her active dating life very contrastive to her image as this floppy girl who didn’t even care to wash her hair once a week and cussed like a sailor. There were constant jokes about how badly she smelled and how dirty she was, but she still managed to present herself as an attractive young woman to the outside world. I would’ve really liked to understand her a bit better as a person. I did like that they established some similarities between her and her brother, for example the mole under their right eye but also how they could lash out and hide their affection for each other behind strong language but always ended up hugging each other while gross-sobbing it out after getting out of a dangerous situation.

I thought the romance that bloomed between Soo Cheol and Hye Joon was really sweet. Sure, it became very lovey-dovey, but I really liked the scene where Hye Joon just kept kissing him until he finally broke and allowed himself to kiss her back. I don’t know, something about the way he resisted to allow himself to finally be lucky in love was really endearing. I also found it quite respectful of him not to immediately throw himself on Hye Joon but instead let her convince him that she was serious about him as well. They were really sweet together.

Jo Na Dan joined the Minamdang team when Han Joon and Soo Cheol helped him and his friend out of a loan shark situation one time and after that he was so impressed with these two hyungs that he wanted to join ‘their club’ at once. As his main task is serving at the café, Na Dan is only asked to carry out small tasks like planting a tracking device somewhere or checking a certain place for evidence when no one else is around. I liked that they didn’t involve him in the most serious cases like Gopuri, because he was still a minor (I think?) and his safety meant a lot to them as well. Na Dan was a very uncomplicated and cheerful boy and I wonder to what extent he was actually aware of the fraud they were committing. In any case, he was mostly at the café to set the mood and entertain the guests, and he was really good at that.
He was such a pure child, I remember when Do Won threw him off the stairs at one point and I went, “NO NOT MY BABY BOY😭”. He was too innocent and pure to get involved in a serial killer case and I kept being afraid something would happen to him. If it were up to me though, I would’ve probably tried to shield him way more from a lot of things than the other Minamdang members did, because they still asked him to do illegal stuff.

For a Major Crime Investigation Division, you could say that a lot of comic relief also came from this place. Especially when it came to Sang Hyeop and Gwang Tae, and I have to say that this actually started to get on my nerves a bit at some point. Officer Jang was the only one who actively joined Jae Hee as a solid partner and came close several times to capturing Goo Tae Soo on his own, actually risking his life. I respected him because he was the only one who didn’t keep screwing things up. Of course he also contributed to the comic relief, but it was more subtle than with the other two guys.
Honestly, at some point I just wondered why Sang Hyeop and Gwang Tae were even included on missions at all, because they always managed to screw things up for the stupidest reasons. I think they were responsible for most of the slapstick action besides Soo Cheol, to the point where it just started to piss me off, lol. I mean come on, how the heck did Gwang Tae manage to down an entire bottle of relaxants on the most important day, when they were literally going to corner Do Won? And how did Sang Hyeop let himself get scared out of his mind by a couple of plastic skeleton dolls, like some kid in a haunted house? How did they follow someone they hadn’t even identified as the actual culprit yet onto a ship without thinking about the fact that it was being boarded for departure and they’d get stuck at sea if they stayed on it for too long? Like, slapstick is slapstick and comedy is comedy, but it still has to keep making sense for police officers to act this way.

Speaking of unthoughtfulness, how did both teams look at Do Won blatantly revealing himself on three different CCTVs and not realize he was trying to lure them there by splitting them up so that he could get to them one by one? That just didn’t make sense to me. He was literally looking into the cameras, basically waving “come and get me” and none of them thought of a better plan to figure out what his actual location was so they could confront him as a group? Of course the additional goal was to save the three people he was still targeting, but it still didn’t make sense to me why they split up the way they did, especially in the case of allowing Hye Joon and Na Dan go out together when the chance that Do Won would appear was so big. There should’ve been at least one (former) police person present in each team. I’m just glad they didn’t get killed.

Apart from these main characters, I want to give one shoutout to some funny side characters that became regulars, and with that I mean Lee Min Gyeong (played by Hwang Woo Seul Hye) and Do Won’s cousin Park Jin Sang (Baek Seung Ik). Min Gyeong was a VIP client of Han Joon who firmly believed in his shaman powers and even tried to pursue him in terms of marriage. Park Jin Sang was in charge of the Joyce entertainment company that ‘provided’ the young women for the prostitution deal. He was Goo Tae Soo’s boss but he didn’t know anything about the deals that were being made with the female trainees at his company. Min Gyeong and Jin Sang were brought together after both being saved by Han Joon’s shaman powers, and they kept appearing together in several scenes, always ready to aide Han Joon. At the end of the show, it’s revealed that they became a couple and even got pregnant, so that was kind of sweet, especially because Min Gyeong was initially so bent on pursuing Han Joon. I just found them a cute side character couple and wanted to mention them.

Now that I’ve presented my character analysis, I’d like to explain my relatively low rating for this show. I’ve seen a lot of really positive reviews and ratings of Café Minamdang and I just want to make clear that I’m not trying to hate on it, not in the least. In fact, I had a really good time watching it, it was amusing while it also had serious parts and great acting, and my general watching experience was good. I’m also very aware that the main point of this show is to not take it too seriously, trust me, I get that. Still, there were some inconsistencies and imbalances between the different genres that threw me off a little bit.
Besides the confusions that I already mentioned in my character analysis, genre-wise I found the constant going back-and-forth between the comedy and the crime a bit weird sometimes. The serial killer case had ties to a lot of very heavy themes like fraud and extortion, but also to sexual abuse and even selling young women overseas for prostitution. While dealing with stuff like that, I sometimes found it a bit distasteful to try and make it ‘funny’ by focussing on the main characters’ dramatic reactions to it.
I remember the police force found out the truth about Kang Eun Hye (the young woman Goo Tae Soo got attached to), who became a victim of the prostitution deal and was eventually found dead in the sewers. This was a very serious case, but then they went and made it ‘funny’ by making Officer Jang burst out in overly dramatic tears about what had happened to her. Like, it just didn’t seem right to make a joke of his reaction like that when he was actually crying about a legitimately horrible thing that had happened to someone. Another example I remember was when the two teams (after they started working together) managed to obtain video footage of how these young women were being raped by the elderly men they were being sent to, and the severity of the footage was again debunked by how everyone just started cussing these men out. Like, of course these men deserved to be cussed out, but the way in which they cussed them out again bordered on exaggerated and comical, so it just didn’t feel genuine. There’s a difference between expressing your disgust about a situation and just going, “those fucking bastards! #$@^%#^#@!! 😤😤” A third example I can think of is when Han Joon came into Hye Joon’s monitoring room and found a lifesize doll version of her strapped up to the ceiling, making it look like she’d been hanged. Like, people actually came into their house to do that to warn them to stay away, threatening Hye Joon’s life like that. While Han Joon and Na Dan initially got a big shock seeing that, after the initial shock it just ended with an overly dramatic reunion when Hye Joon turned out to be okay and after that no one thought back on it even once. Every time they decided to split up or just go after Gopuri in their regular clothes without backup I was like, “uhm, has everyone just forgotten about the hanged Hye Joon doll? Wouldn’t that make you think twice about splitting up and just going after a serial killer empty-handed??” Especially when they split up and left Hye Joon and Na Dan in one team together, that just didn’t make sense to me. They wouldn’t have been able to deal with Do Won on their own. In hindsight it made me feel like they added the hanged doll for shock value and nothing else, because it definitely didn’t raise any more caution among them.
These things actually reminded me of when I watched The One and Only, where they also forced in comedy while the story dealt with a lot of heavy themes. I personally feel like it’s important to remain respectful when you’re dealing with topics like that and make sure you don’t ‘accidentally’ make a joke out of something serious. This might just be me being too serious, but I can’t deny that this didn’t bother me in the slightest.
I mean, even the ending had me going, “ehm okay sure?” when they found a lead to another serial killer case. They actually discovered a severed arm (!) and went skipping out all smiling happily like, “yay, we’re going to solve another serial killing case together, this’ll be fun!😃” So yeah, I had some trouble finding a balance between the different genres. Initially I was really into the Gopuri case and the deeper layer it brought to the story. I guess I just prefer it when people are a bit more serious in detective genres, at least when it comes to the investigation. That’s just my opinion🤷🏻‍♀️. Still, as I said, I had a good time watching the show and it both made me laugh and gave me (good) goosebumps at specific moments, so I’m not going to criticize the use of comedy in the show entirely. I just thought they could’ve created a slightly better balance between the genres and put more sincerity in the characters’ reactions to finding out about all the nasty stuff that was happening.

If I had to describe what this show felt to me genre-wise I would have to say that in terms of serial killer case and investigation it reminded me of Abyss while in terms of comedy and sillyness it reminded me of Wok of Love. I cannot even begin to imagine what combining these two shows into one drama would be like 😂. The overall pace of the show was quite fast, and especially when there were a lot of new names introduced at once I sometimes found it a bit hard to keep track of everything that was happening. Also because of the chaotic vibe of the show, with the Minamdang team members all being so eccentric and everyone being relatively loud and energetic, it was definitely a wild party. I was grateful for the occasional more quiet and serious scenes that brought balance to that energy. It definitely kept me on my toes while watching, and in that sense I can’t deny that it kept me interested until the end.
What I also found remarkable about this show was that it was quite vulgar, as in, there was a lot of un-bleeped swearing and people giving each other the finger, lol. I feel like these things are usually a taboo and therefore censored within K-Dramas, but it was kind of refreshing to embrace the chaotic nature of this show even in terms of language use and openly expressed gestures of dislike.😆

I noticed that the alternative title of this series was “Café Minamdang: Case Note”, and this was also how I put it in my app, but the original Korean title is just “Minamdang”, so I don’t know where the “Case Note” came from. It initally made me think there were multiple seasons or something, but it doesn’t look like there’s another season coming any time soon. The way the show ended, leaving way for the investigation of another serial killer case would potentially allow a second season. Let’s see what happens!
By the way, this was also one of those dramas where I never skipped the opening theme. It was so catchy and made me dance along to it every single time. So, kudos to The Dance of Minamdang by Gonia and Yoo Taepyungyang. I really enjoyed the song, it fit both the shaman theme and the chaotic spirit of the series very well. I’m always happy to credit nice music, especially when it makes me dance.🤗

It was nice to see both familiar and new faces in this show. I don’t usually watch K-Drama with comedy as the main genre, so it was funny seeing these actors go out of their way to show funny sides that I hadn’t necessarily seen before.

I really loved seeing Seo In Gook again. I’ve seen him in several things before, such as The Master’s Sun, King of High School, Shopping King Louie and Abyss. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him in a main lead role instead of a guest appearance or cameo. There’s still some more shows of him on my list, so I’m curious when I’ll get to watch those. I’ve been familiar with Seo In Gook’s comical talent since King of High School, which was the first thing I saw of him that made me immediately fell in love with his face, lol. This drama showcased his comical talent on a whole new level that I hadn’t seen before, though, so that was also nice in a way. I really enjoyed seeing him balance the sillyness with the seriousness and just embrace the chaos at some points. I liked seeing him in this show and I hope I’ll get to see even more sides of his acting in further dramas.

Not me realizing Oh Yeon Seo was the little sister in Baby-faced Beauty! I knew I recognized her from somewhere, but I hadn’t made this connection, lol. I see there are more dramas with her on my watchlist as well, so I’m curious to see those. It’s funny when you know an actor’s face but realize you haven’t actually seen them in (m)any dramas before. I thought she was a very interesting casting choice for Jae Hee because she turned out to be much less tough than I anticipated. I never really know what to expect from female police officer characters in dramas, I just don’t know what they’re supposed to be like. I felt like Jae Hee’s reputation of being Ghost Han sometimes fuelled her and sometimes eluded her, like it wasn’t always consistently present whenever she was investigating a case. There was this time where she had to let herself get kidnapped and then two of her police team members were supposed to free her. Of course Sang Hyeop managed to screw it up by himself, but then Jae Hee suddenly went into Ghost Han mode and just freed herself, like, why did they even make a whole plan based on that she would need to be rescued by two male officers? Little inconsistences like that kept happening which made me question whether channelling The Ghost was something she could do willingly or if it just happened at random times when an emergency arose. Anyways, I did like her acting performance and I liked that the show allowed her to showcase different sides of her acting.

I knew Kwak Shi Yang from Oh My Ghostess where he was the quiet cute cook. He also starred in Chicago Typewriter, Fight For My Way and Clean With Passion For Now. I’m probably going to see him in some other dramas that are still on my list as well. This was the first time I’ve seen him portray such an overly comical character, to the point where it became an actual caricature. Although I wasn’t really sure what to make of him in the beginning, Soo Cheol definitely grew on me as the teddy bear that he was, and I really loved seeing his more sensitive side as well once he and Hye Joon got together. I just can’t unsee the image of this big man squealing as Hye Joon rubbed him behind the ears, lol. He might have been one Hulk of a guy, but he was actually as soft as a mochi. I liked how he managed to maintain the chaos of his character and actually made him so unapologetically awkward that you couldn’t help but love him for it.

I had no idea Kang Mi Na was in this, so that was a nice surprise! I’ve seen her before in 20th Century Boy and Girl, Gyeryong Fairytale and Hotel Del Luna and I hope I get to see her in way more in the future. I’ve known Mi Na since Produce 101, where she and Kim Se Jeong were my two favorites, so I’m always happy to see either of them in a drama. I thought she pulled off the glasses and the red curly hair really well, it actually took me a few moments to realize it was her, lol. Up until now I’ve mainly see her play quirky or sassy high school students, so this was the first time I’ve seen her play an adult – despite her immature tendencies from time to time – and it was also funny to see her as such an outspoken character who didn’t mince her words and also swore a lot. Despite the significant age difference between her and Kwak Shi Yang (13 years – she was 22 when this aired and he 35), their portrayed affection for each other never looked awkward to me. I was actually pretty surprised by how many kisses they shared and how natural they looked together. I liked seeing her in this, I feel like I got to see a whole new side of her acting and I’m super excited to see more of her in the future!

I hadn’t seen Baek Seo Hoo in anything before, but I guess that’s also because he only made his debut as an actor in 2020, after initially being an idol trainee and failing to debut. I found him to be an absolute cinnamon roll in this show, and it’s nice that he got to showcase his talents as Jo Na Dan. He was just such a cute puppy and I wanted to take care of him, lol. I’m so glad nothing bad happened to his character. I hope he’ll get even more chances to act in the future!

As I said, I was immediately cautious when I saw Kwon Soo Hyun in this, and although I hoped I could give him the benefit of the doubt in this show – that playing a sociopathic killer in one series didn’t immediately mean he’d be cast as one in every show I’d see of him – I still had the correct gut feeling about him. Because of his very impacting role in Abyss, I really have to see him in a good character role for a change, because otherwise I fear that I’m going to keep associating him with serial killers forever, lol. Apparently he also appeared in High Society, but I don’t remember from there. I did like seeing him as a nicer guy in the beginning of the show. It was nice to see more affectionate expressions and even smiles on his face before his true identity was revealed. I hope I get to see him as a good character in a show some time, because I’m positive that he’s done more than just evil characters. It would be a waste of talent if he hasn’t been cast as any other type of character, really! But he did a good job in this show, and I can’t deny that he’s really good at flipping the switch between nice guy and psychopath, lol.

Jung Man Shik also looked very familiar to me, even though according to MDL I’ve only seen him before in Me Too, Flower! and I Hear Your Voice, which I don’t remember much of in terms of side characters. But I liked that they included his character here as more than just a comic relief character. It was nice seeing different sides to his acting, even if some were a bit over-dramatic. I have to admit that he did a really good job in the subtle humor department. Apart from that time with the over-dramatic sobbing, he never went too far with acting out the funny parts, unlike the other police officers. He created the image of a very reliable police officer who didn’t shy back from getting into scrapes. Seriously, he was threatened with knives more than anyone in this show, including the time Goo Tae Soo literally held one to his throat. He tried to hold on to him after getting hit by a car and being covered in blood, that’s how determined he was to catch this guy. I really appreciated him as a character, he was just such a good person.

I think I’m going to keep it at this for my cast comments, since these were the people I wanted to comment on the most. There were a lot of supporting characters and guest appearances, but as I mentioned before I had a hard time keeping track of the majority of the people that got involved in the investigation, so this will have to suffice. All in all, I really liked the cast, everyone did a good job. Even when they were written to be overly comical, it was clear that everyone took their characters very seriously and really committed to getting their personalities across, and that definitely bore fruit.
What I liked the most about the main characters in general was that, despite their eccentricity, they were all really just people trying to find their own way and find a community of people to work with. I really loved how, even though Hye Joon was his only real relative, Han Joon always referred to his whole team as his family, to Soo Cheol as his brother and to Hye Joon and Na Dan as ‘the kids’. The feeling of finding and creating a family that doesn’t have to be blood-related was very strong in my opinion, and it was nice to see that through all of the messed up incidents and betrayals, Han Joon and Jae Hee were able to stand firm together. There were a lot of nice moments and I definitely won’t say I disliked it. A lot of series that I rated similarly were ones that I still appreciate for a lot of different things, so it really doesn’t mean I disliked it. I appreciate a good serial killer detective case storyline, and I appreciate good humor when it’s appropriately used, and this series lost me a little bit in trying to find a balance, that’s all.

I’m very curious to my next watch, I’ll be spinning my Wheel of Fortune as soon as I publish this and we’ll see how long it takes for me to post the next review. Thank you if you’ve read through this whole thing and found it entertaining in any way, and I promise I’ll be back soon.

Until next time, bye-bee! x