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.
Encounter
(남자친구 / Namjachingu / Boyfriend)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10
Hello everyone! I’m finally back! As I mentioned in my previous in-between review, it’s been taking me a LONG time to finish the K-Drama I was watching. Due to a change in my personal situation, starting a new job (back in the office full-time) and an increasing lack of energy in my now sporadic free time, I really haven’t been able to get back into watching dramas as quickly as I’m used to! So yes, it actually took me 2 months to finish this drama.
I’m really glad I did finish it and am now able to get on with my list.
This time, I didn’t exactly have a problem getting through it like I had with The Beauty Inside. It was a combination of the fact that this drama is incredibly slow-paced and doesn’t really have an eventful storyline, and that I’ve sort of returned to my daily routine of working from 9 to 5, coming home tired, in which my weekends feel too short with everything I want to do and don’t get to. I went back to watching casual stuff on Netflix for a while, stuff I didn’t really have to concentrate on that much because I had a hard time getting back into really focussing on stuff with real emotional depth. Anyways, I really wanted to get back my love for watching dramas even though my weekly life is back to business, so I made an effort to finish this by the end of this month.
When I first saw a trailer/advertisement about this drama, I knew I had to watch it. With Song Hye Kyo and Park Bo Gum as the main leads, this had to be a worthwhile drama. Also it seemed to have a pretty big budget, what with the international filming locations and all, so I was really curious about the story. From the pictures I thought it would be a pretty serious and mature love story, and that turned out to be the case, although I was still surprised by their dynamic and the kind of drama they got involved in. All in all I thought it was a pretty good drama, even though it took me a while to get through it.
Encounter is a 16-episode drama (each episode about 1 hour and 15 minutes) about the relationship between Cha Soo Hyun (played by Song Hye Kyo) and Kim Jin Hyuk (played by Park Bo Gum).
Cha Soo Hyun is the daughter of a politician who is running for government, and to promote his reputation she has been married to the son of a big conglomerate called Taegyeong Group. However, he cheated on her and they divorced. Despite their divorce, Soo Hyun is still very much under the control of Taegyeong Group and namely her ex-mother-in-law. Her own mother has completely succumbed to pleasing Mrs. Taegyeong and forces Soo Hyun to act according to her bidding as well, even though Soo Hyun is very unhappy. She is literally living like a puppet, unable to break loose from the strings that tie her to the people who are responsible for her father’s success. If she ever chose to break from them, they would withdraw their support for her father’s campaign and her family would fall to ruin. Mrs. Taegyeong doesn’t play nicely. Soo Hyun is currently the CEO at Donghwa Hotel, a worldwide hotel chain, which again, falls under the control of Taegyeong Group.
On the other hand, we have Kim Jin Hyuk, a much more easy-going and free-spirited young man who just starts out at Donghwa Hotel as a new employee. He comes from a simple but warm family and is always kind and generous to people around him.
These two people from complete different worlds meet each other for the first time in Cuba. Soo Hyun is there to check out a potential site for a new Donghwa Hotel branch and Jin Hyuk is taking a last holiday before starting his new job. Jin Hyuk’s hobby is to take pictures, and he coincidentally comes across Soo Hyun walking by herself barefeet, in search of a famous tourist spot. They spend one evening together amidst the bustling Cuban night life and it makes a deep impression on both of them. They both find out about each other when they meet as boss and newly hired employee back in Seoul.
So the drama starts off with the refreshing scenery of Cuba, and it really got me in the mood. The scenery shots, the music, the night life, and then these two Korean people finding each other against Cuba’s exotic backdrop setting.
The *encounter* they have here will change their lives forever. Of course, when they come back to Korea and they meet each other again at Donghwa, their situation changes. For Soo Hyun, Cuba really felt like a dream, and the fact that she was able to warm up so easily to Jin Hyuk also probably had to do with that he was the closest friendly Korean person around, but afterwards she probably thought she’d never see him again and that made it a little easier to return to her secluded life back home. However, back in Korea, the fact that she’s his CEO doesn’t stop Jin Hyuk in pursuing her. I think it’s safe to say that it was pretty spot-on-at-first-sight for him in Cuba, or at least after that one night they spent together. When they meet again, he’s the first one that starts to think that there might be a trace of destiny at work.
As they slowly get closer outside of work, at some point the press gets a whiff of Soo Hyun spending time with someone in her private time and starts to sniff this out. This of course leads to gossip about Soo Hyun dating someone, and when it is revealed that it’s someone from her own company AND a younger guy to boot, the strings she’s attached to start to tighten again. Mrs. Taegyeong -her actual name is Kim Hwa Jin – (played by Cha Hwa Yeon) starts reminding her that she’s not allowed to do this kind of thing, that she has to remember her ties to Taegyeong. At the same time, Soo Hyun’s ex-husband Jung Woo Seok (played by Jang Seung Jo) is suddenly starting to show interest in her again, and also tries to one-up Jin Hyuk a couple of times.
Soo Hyun definitely starts feeling more and more tension regarding her own situation as her relationship with Jin Hyuk deepens, but she also doesn’t want to stop since being with him makes her feel so happy and free from her ties.
But, as Jin Hyuk and his family also start to get impacted by her reputation, dark clouds start looming over them. Soo Hyun becomes more aware of what her situation is doing to Jin Hyuk and his loved ones and even though he rushes on and never shows her that he’s struggling, she finds it harder and harder to ignore it.
They end up at different sides, after all. Jin Hyuk is the person who wants to keep fighting for their love and who is confident that if they’ll fight through it, their love will conquer all. Soo Hyun, through her past experiences, is a bit more anxious and even though she initially promises him she wants to make an effort as well, seeing him and his family start to struggle because of her relationship with him eventually causes her to decide to break up.
I’m going through my summary really fast now, haha, but I feel like I need to tell the storyline in its essence rather than focussing on every tiny little detail. You may understand that spending two months on a series kind of also fades away the memories of many specific events in the first half of the series ^^”
Anyways, the most important theme of this series is really the relationship between Soo Hyun and Jin Hyuk and how they, as two people from different worlds manage to make their love work in the end, despite their differences in age and social status. They encounter a lot of hardships, unwanted attention, gossip from their surroundings, but the story is about how their love conquers it all in the end. How Soo Hyun eventually manages to break free from her ties and is able to go to Jin Hyuk without anything holding her back.
Honestly, I think one of the several good things about this drama was how the lack of real storyline leaves a lot of time to focus on all the different characters’ relationships. Even the side characters all got just enough screentime to build up sympathy for. For most of these characters, even if I personally didn’t find them that interesting, I constantly thought ‘oh well, it’s not like there’s a lot happening at the moment anyway, so they might as well give everyone some character development’. And I didn’t feel like there was anyone or anything that fell out of place.
The focus was of course always on Soo Hyun and Jin Hyuk, but we also get to meet their friends and families well enough to develop an opinion about them. Even though I really didn’t feel any attachment to the Taegyeong Group people, I do feel like it was important to show them because that emphasized how hard Soo Hyun’s life under their control was/had been.
I love how the drama started with a short introduction runthrough of Soo Hyun’s life and that the camera followed her from the back. We see everything that’s happened to her up to the point where the series’ story begins, so how she’s helped her father in his campaign, how she married Woo Seok, how she divorced him, etc. It was pretty interesting, also cinematographically, that they chose for this intro into Soo Hyun’s life. Showing her like that, from the back, not showing her face or the expressions she’s making as she walks through this pre-determined path, like a kind of puppet who has no control over her own life (at least that’s how I interpret it in retrospect), was pretty powerful.
As a seemingly detached, cold woman who doesn’t smile that often, Soo Hyun really wasn’t looking for romance, especially after going through that awful experience with her ex-husband. It really just ‘happens’ with Jin Hyuk and it takes a while before she also lets herself agree to it. Because of her experiences she tends to focus more on the outside, what her surroundings will say and think, and since she’s lived as a puppet of Taegyeong for so long, she initially doesn’t have the courage to step out of that by herself. When Jin Hyuk starts helping her with that, she’s as much surprised as she is relieved to discover how good that actually feels.
Of course she has people around her who are on her side and also wish that she could do as she pleases.
First and foremost, her secretary and friend Jang Mi Jin (played by Kwak Sun Young). Mi Jin is very professional at her job and tries to help Soo Hyun to keep a low profile as much as possible as to not get into trouble with Taegyeong, but whenever she gets the chance, she loves to let loose in her free time. When she’s with Soo Hyun in Cuba in the beginning, she urges her friend to come have fun with her, but Soo Hyun is bent on going to sleep early – she also takes sleeping pills for that. Mi Jin is also very active on dating apps where she looks for business-minded guys who fit her high standard. She’s a very loyal friend to Soo Hyun and despite her initial discomfort with the main couple’s relationship, she eventually still tries to help them out as much as she can.
Besides that, there is Mr. Nam (played by Go Chang Suk), Soo Hyun’s driver and a close friend of her father, who is also very supportive of the couple’s relationship and immediately sees what a good guy Jin Hyuk is and how good he is for Soo Hyun. We occasionally see him arranging for them to meet in secret or driving them to go see each other etcetera. Jin Hyuk’s boss Kim Sun Joo (played by Kim Hye Eun) is also friends with Soo Hyun’s father and Mr. Nam, and she kind of watches over Jin Hyuk at work, although she doesn’t really get involved in their relationship. When the news gets out that Soo Hyun and Jin Hyuk are in fact dating, she’s one of the few people who doesn’t make a big deal of it.
As for Jin Hyuk, besides his family he has one good friend and colleague at the same company, Jo Hye In (played by Jeon So Nee). She has had a crush on Jin Hyuk since they were in college together, but when she finds out about him and Soo Hyun, even though she’s uncomfortable with it at first, she decides to be the bigger person and lets her crush go. I liked that even when she was offered a chance in the beginning to contribute to an article to give Soo Hyun a bad reputation for dating an employee, she didn’t take it and decided to not get involved with it, no matter her personal feelings towards Soo Hyun. She turned out to be a really loyal friend to Jin Hyuk, even when she did confess her past feelings to him in the end, she never forced him to accept them or do anything with this knowledge. I liked her character.
Outside of the office, one regular place the main characters often end up at is Chan’s Moon Snails, a restaurant that an acquaintance of Jin Hyuk’s owns, Lee Dae Chan (played by Kim Joo Heon). He isn’t really kept inside of much of the stuff that’s happening, but he’s just a good friend and he eventually gets into a special kind of friendship with Mi Jin.
Within Jin Hyuk’s family, his relationship with Soo Hyun also has repercussions. His father (played by Shin Jung Geun) runs a fruit stall and his mother (played by Baek Ji Won) often makes syrups from these fruits. His younger brother Jin Myung (played by Pyo Ji Hoon / Block B’s P.O.) just came back from the army and is the typical messy carefree type. By the way, I was kind of shook by how much P.O. actually looked like the woman who played his mum? Like, she could’ve been his real mom for all I knew xD Anyways, together they’re a very warm and cosy family, but when Jin Hyuk’s mother gets a whiff of the rumors surrounding her son – and when she realizes it’s because he’s dating his boss – she starts worrying a lot. Their family gets involved in different situations, people around them start asking them for favors because they think their connections to Soo Hyun can get them or their family members somewhere, and this is pretty inconvenient for Kim Jin Hyuk’s family. Jin Myung even gets in a fight once because his former classmate starts gossipping about Jin Hyuk. In the end, Jin Hyuk’s mother goes to see Soo Hyun and asks her to please break up with her son. Even though this isn’t the only reason, it’s definitely one of the main reasons she decides to break it off with Jin Hyuk. She can’t handle seeing the person she loves suffer because of her, and to stop that she’d rather take her distance from him than watch him deal with it and allthewhile feeling guilty about it.
I read a lot of disapproving comments regarding this action of Jin Hyuk’s mom. Of course, and she was more than willing to admit that herself as well, she shouldn’t have gotten involved. It was only natural for her to worry about her son, but nothing gave her the right to go behind his back and ask the woman he loved to leave him. She defends herself by saying ‘I’m not a very understanding person’, but you could see she really regretted what she did after they actually broke up. I couldn’t hate the mom, I think she was a really nice lady, and when I think about how she really just did it out of concern for her family, I can understand why she did what she did. But yeah, it wasn’t the best way to go.
There’s something to say about the way Soo Hyun broke it off with Jin Hyuk, as well. Of course we’ve had our share of break-ups in K-Dramas, everyone uses another way to do it, but in this case I think, even though she was reasonable enough to be at least partly honest with him, she did leave him out of the discussion. She had her reasons, but he was as much a part of the relationship as she was, and it was him who had to deal with this ‘suffering’, so I really think she still should’ve discussed it with him before just ending it without even letting him know she was contemplating this.
On the other hand, while I get that Jin Hyuk respected her decision but didn’t completely agree with it, he really didn’t leave her alone after that. Even after she’d made clear she wanted to end it, he kept messaging her, he kept calling her, he kept confronting her that he would get her back. And even though I understood both sides, I still felt like he didn’t really respect her boundaries either. I still wanted them to work things out of course, but I feel like they both could’ve taken better paths to ‘fix’ things. In the end, Soo Hyun went overboard when Jin Hyuk sent her a bunch of pictures he took of her when they’d been together and she only realized how much she loved him when she saw her own expressions on those photos… and that was suddenly all the reason she needed to go back on her decision.
I have to admit that was a little sudden for me haha, I mean, she’d already admitted how much she cared for him, but suddenly this visual proof of how she’d looked when they were together was the final piece of evidence for herself?
By then, her father had already taken matters into his own hands, he’d seen how his current position was making his daughter suffer and he openly declared giving up his government position, going against Taegyeong to accuse them of providing him with illegal political funds. He literally threw everything overboard to save his daughter from remaining in this lifestyle and that was so brave and sweet of him.
I would’ve understood if Soo Hyun would’ve wanted a short break with Jin Hyuk just until things had settled down after what her father did and once Taegyeong would’ve been gone completely, before getting back together. But I didn’t get why it had to be over forever, especially when at least one party was still very much willing to go to great lengths to keep it going.
I really liked episode 14 because it was the episode where Soo Hyun really let go for the first time. She finally cracked, so to say, she finally expressed her feelings. She cried, she talked to Mi Jin about her struggles… all the things she had been swallowing down until then came out in that episode and I really liked that. Until that point she’d been holding back so much all the time, she constantly remained this slightly stiff lady and I really wondered what it would be like if she really let go of that, and then she did. This was probably the most important for Soo Hyun’s character, since she was the person who needed to let go the most. Jin Hyuk had always been really clear about his feelings and intentions. Although sometimes he could be a little straightforward and tactless (when he started to talk about marriage it nagged me a little that he wasn’t considering the fact that she’d been through a terrible marriage – of course she’d be hesitant to make the next step, no matter how much she loved Jin Hyuk) but he really put in a lot of effort for her. He made her things, he thought about her so much, every day, whatever he was doing.
The part with the masked ball where he’d ordered a special mask for her so that he alone would be able to recognize her… He just did a lot for her. Because that’s who he was, when he found something or someone he liked, he didn’t look back. And this was probably a bit difficult for Soo Hyun, since she was used to holding back and not giving too much after what happened in her previous marriage. Literally every single movement she made was being watched, so she never got to let loose. But she was definitely impressed with how much love Jin Hyuk was giving her and she was trying to give back as well, a little more modestly.
As I mentioned before, I wasn’t really interested in the Taegyeong family side of the story. All we needed to know was that Mrs. Taegyeong only cared about her group and she only used Soo Hyun’s family to hold onto the shares of Donghwa Hotel. She didn’t really care about Soo Hyun’s father, she was constantly threatening her and her mother that she could let go of his support just like that. So I really liked it when Soo Hyun’s dad suddenly decided to break with them himself.
I also found Jung Woo Seok a strange kind of character. In the end, I really didn’t know what to think of him. He was made out to be the jerk in the beginning, and when he suddenly started getting involved in Soo Hyun’s life again it first seemed like some jerk-action because he wanted to get back with her for some reason no one understood. And then suddenly he was all serious about her again? And at the very end they revealed that he had faked his affair because he saw how miserable Soo Hyun had been and he’d wanted to free her from his family. When he finally told Soo Hyun this it was so random and too-little-too-late and Soo Hyun was like ‘what do you want me to do with this information at this point’, lol. I really didn’t get it.
So yeah, I wouldn’t really call him the second male lead because he never stood a chance against Jin Hyuk from the start. He gave away his shot. He’s mentioned as part of the main cast together with Soo Hyun and Jin Hyuk, but I actually don’t agree with that either.
There were a lot of beautiful scenes, beautiful sceneries, and moments that were just really precious in which Soo Hyun and Jin Hyuk confirmed their love for each other. I loved that Cuba kept coming back as well. Not only when they went there physically, but also in their memories, that one song kept coming back, and just little things like the pictures Jin Hyuk took, Soo Hyun’s shoes that he kept the whole time… Just to emphasize how it would always be a place they’d return to as it became so important to them.
I also loved the animated sequences at the beginning and ending of each episodes. It reminded me so much of the animations in It’s Okay to Not Be Okay! It basically showed the silhouettes of Soo Hyun and Jin Hyuk as they went through several hardships, and they made beautiful fantastical animations to express these situations. At some point there was this big scary wolf keeping an eye on Soo Hyun, and then by the end of the episode the wolf was extinguished and at that point it had become clear in the episode that the wolf symbolized Taegyeong and Soo Hyun has brushed them off and still chose to be with Jin Hyuk. I really liked these symbolical representations!
I loved the scene where Soo Hyun came to visit Jin Hyuk in Seokcho, when he was transferred there to work at another hotel branch (also as a result of the gossip) and she just followed her heart and went to him and they had that rendezvous on that pier, with the sea in the background and the quote from that book: ‘if it’s the purpose of the sea to make waves, it’s my purpose to think of you’ ~ So romantic!
I liked the masked gala as well, when Jin Hyuk came from Seokcho in secret with the help of Mr. Nam, and he was like ‘This has nothing to do with work, I’m just here to bring Ms. Cha’s boyfriend to her’ and they had their first kiss outside of the assembly hall. I remember thinking ‘lol they’re in full view of the entire hall right now, if anyone looks behind…’ xD
As I said I really liked the scene between Soo Hyun and Mi Jin in episode 14, when Soo Hyun finally came clear about her feelings to her friend, and the two of them were just gross sobbing about the situation together.
I’ve probably already forgotten a lot of details about the first half of the series (super sorry), but overall I thought the acting and the cinematography were really good. I would’ve probably gotten through it a lot faster if the episodes had been a little shorter, but that can’t be helped. This format helped the build-up in all the relationships a lot.
I loved how mature Soo Hyun and Jin Hyuk were in their relationship was, too. There wasn’t even that much need for physical intimacy, they only kissed like 3 or 4 times, but there were a lot of scenes where they were just walking together, holding hands or just looking at each other fondly. Those scenes alone showed such pure adoration and affection, I thought they depicted their relationship very strongly. I think the main actors had pretty good chemistry together, as well.
I’ve only seen Song Hye Kyo in Descendants of the Sun, but of course I know her reputation as a big Hallyu star. It’s just that I haven’t seen enough of her acting so far to really get a good impression of her overall skills. I did think she portrayed a completely different character than in Descendants, I think Soo Hyun must’ve been a pretty challenging role to play. I liked how she kept herself to be this composed, even when she fell hard for Jin Hyuk she kept holding her head high, she never got super giddy or anything, it was just fond smiles at her phone when he texted her, when she was thinking about him… And then in episode 14 she really showed how this composed woman completely broke apart by the thought of having to leave him. I still want to see more of other stuff she’s done!
I’ve only seen Park Bo Gum in Moonlight Drawn by Clouds, but he already managed to capture my heart through that drama. I was really excited to watch him in Encounter. He was such a precious puppy T^T His smile is truly contagious! I think the role of the carefree, open-minded Jin Hyuk suited him very well. Especially the look he had in the first episode, when he was in Cuba, it looked so natural on him! I really enjoyed his performance in this drama <3
I’ve seen Jang Seung Jo before in Wife I Know/Familiar Wife where he also played something like the second male lead? I remember liking him in that series. Because of the ambiguous intentions of Woo Seok and how they were only revealed at the very end to be well-meant, it was a bit hard for me to find him sympathetic throughout the series, but I think that was just how his character was written and had little to do with the actor himself.
There were a couple of actors that I also knew from different dramas, it was fun to see Kim Joo Heon since I really only just saw him in It’s Okay to Not Be Okay and I didn’t know any other things he’d appeared in. I knew P.O. from Hotel Del Luna where I loved him, and he also had a fun character here. Besides being the careless younger brother he really did show how much his family meant to him and that also gave him a little more depth in my opinion.
Overall, as I said, I think it was a good drama in terms of acting performance, cinematography, the only thing was that the pace was really slow and I think it’s easy to lose concentration if that kind of series aren’t really your cup of tea.
Even though it took me two months to finish it, in the end my review isn’t very long because ultimately there’s not that much to talk about except the build-up in the relationship between the two main leads.
My apologies for undoubtedly failing to mention certain parts, but I really felt that ‘capturing’ the essence of the story was more important than summarizing each part individually. It was a story of a love between two people who, despite all the social forces that tried to push them apart, learned how to hold on and choose for their love for each other. The way they depicted these influences, ties to rich families and taboos about the private lives of well-known people and how connections with influential people can have so many repercussions on others who are less high in the social classes, was very contemporary and it’s scary to think that this is how it still goes in parts of the world. On many occasions I was thinking, ‘Why aren’t they leaving Soo Hyun alone? Who says she’s not allowed to date??’ but I guess that will remain my question for many more K-Dramas to come xD
The soundtrack was also really praiseworthy in my opinion, not just the Cuban song, but there were several songs that really struck the right chord and really fitted the theme and the emotions of the drama.
I’m really excited to go back to my list, next up is another hyped one on Netflix that I’ve been looking forward to for a while! Since it’s on Netflix, I’ll probably go through it a little faster, haha.
Until my next review! Bye-bee~
