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.

Drama Special: What Is The Ghost Doing?
(귀신은 뭐하나 / Gwisineun Mwohana)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

Hi everyone! I wanted to get in another short review to make up for the long radio silence, haha. And I also just found out that this was only one episode, since I hadn’t really watched any of these ‘Drama Specials’ yet! I figured they were maybe 3 episodes or something, but they’re actually more like short movies!
I think I’ll watch more of these short special single drama episodes, they’re actually quite nice and easy to watch.
Honestly, I don’t even remember why I put this on my to-watch list, maybe it just sounded interesting to me.
This will be a short review, but I hope it’s still enjoyable to read 🙂
Let’s go!

What’s The Ghost Doing is the 5th episode from KBS Drama Special Season 6 (2015). The story is about Goo Cheon Dong (played by Lee Joon), who got dumped harshly by his girlfriend Cha Moo Rim (played by Jo Soo Hyang) 8 years prior, as he was about to propose to her – or actually, in the middle of his proposal. She told him the reason was that he was a loser, both in daily life and in the bedroom, and left him. This has had a major impact on Cheon Dong, as not only has he not been able to get over this cruel and unexpected rejection, he has also had issues with ‘performance’ in the bedroom because of what she told him. Her words still follow him everywhere, and he wishes that ghosts would just take her (or her image, at least) away from him so he would be able to go on with his life.
One time, when he is at the hospital for another examination regarding his ‘performance issues’, he somehow ends up at a funeral ceremony that’s being held in the same hospital (for patients there), and he finds out it’s Cha Moo Rim’s funeral. Not only that, she is sitting right next to him, in a white dress, sighing about how she doesn’t remember how she died. So, before even getting over the fact that his ex-girlfriend who dumped him 8 years ago has passed away, he immediately has to face the fact that she is now a ghost, and he is the only person who can see her.
She says she doesn’t know how she died, and asks Cheon Dong to help her out, first of all by finding her boyfriend. Cheon Dong refuses at first, but with some ghosty tricks she eventually scares him into helping her out.
At her house, they find an ID card belonging to a doctor at the hospital they were both at, a psychiatrist called Seo Joon Hyuk (played by Oh Sang Jin). Moo Rim asks Cheon Dong to tell the doctor what she wants to convey to her, but when Cheon Dong finally gets the chance to speak to Joon Hyuk, Joon Hyuk’s fiancée comes in.
Moo Rim is devastated, believing that her boyfriend was cheating on her, and disappears. When Cheon Dong confronts Joon Hyuk and even punches him in the face for being such a jerk, they both end up at a police station. When Cheon Dong mentions his name to the officer, Joon Hyuk immediately recognizes it and tells him that he was Moo Rim’s doctor before she died.
So then Cheon Dong finds out the truth, about Moo Rim’s death, but also about why she dumped him all those years ago. It turns out that Moo Rim had been suffering from early age Alzheimer’s and as her health and memories were deteriorating, she decided to break up with Cheon Dong to spare him the hurt, even though it became a bit more messy than she’d hoped. She even showed up when he enlisted, to see him one more time, but he misunderstood and thought she came to see off someone else, her new boyfriend. After that he never saw her again.
Because of her deteriorating health, she started mistaking Joon Hyuk for Cheon Dong, and that’s how she probably had the lingering feeling that Joon Hyuk was her boyfriend.
With the advice of another patient at the hospital who’s also able to see ghost because of her former occupation as a fortune teller (played by Lee Yong Nyeo), Cheon Dong goes in search of the place that holds the happiest memory he and Moo Rim shared, the place they first fell in love. He finds her there, all pale and about to vanish, but when he calls out to her with a phrase from when they first met, she ‘wakes up’ and recognizes him again and they are able to have a proper make-up and goodbye before she has to leave for real.
After she vanishes, Cheon Dong goes on with his life in peace, working at his parents’ guesthouse, but he still sees ghosts of people standing by their living relatives who are still grieving their deaths.
The series ends at quite a humorous note, as another ghost approaches Cheon Dong for help since Moo Rim has apparently been going around telling other ghosts that Cheon Dong is great at helping ghosts with their final wishes.

So yeah, you could say there is both light and dark in this drama special. In the beginning, it felt like kind of a joke, the whole dumping and how miserable Cheon Dong was being pestered by Moo Rim’s last words to him. And I kept wondering what the real message would be, even after Moo Rim appeared as a ghost. The way she acted towards him was really casual and it almost seemed like she had no feelings whatsoever about the way she had treated/broken up with him. Especially when she started talking about her boyfriend, and how Cheon Dong was mean for not understanding how much it hurt to not be able to say goodbye to someone you love – I really felt bad for Cheon Dong for a moment there. But afterwards, when the whole Alzheimer’s story became apparent, it struck that she genuinely didn’t remember. She didn’t even remember he was her boyfriend, she referred to him as a normal friend, which was already a little odd. But even as a ghost, she didn’t remember, and Cheon Dong had to help her to.

It was really all a matter of perspective here, and I think they were both a little ‘at fault’, even though I don’t want to point fingers since they both were helpless in one way or another. Of course there is something to say for Moo Rim wanting to push Cheon Dong away rather than putting him through Alzheimer with her, but by not telling him anything she also made him go crazy with ignorance. For Cheon Dong, it was easy to just blame her for everything, since she was obviously the ‘mean witch’ who had shattered his pride by dumping him with those words.
But what was important is that, at the end, when they both found out what they didn’t knew or remembered about their relationship, they immediately reconciled and reaffirmed their feelings for each other. Cheon Dong was able to let go of her quite fast when she said that she had to go now, because something had also fallen off him with her reaffirmation. He was able to reflect and apologize, and so was she.

When they showed Cheon Dong afterwards, seeing all these ghosts standing by their living relatives, it really hit me that that was it: it was about how the people we love will always stay with us after they pass. Maybe not in a literal sense, they might not actually be ghosts standing next to us of course, but their memory will always be as clear as that. And I found the imagery of it, the little boy stroking his mother’s arm, the husband walking with his wife and kissing his little child on the head, the daughter locking arms with her father, really heartwarming. Because why would they stop doing those things after they died? It had a more heartwarming than freaky feeling, and that was pretty interesting for a ghost-themed drama because this theme usually brings with it more darkness than light. So in that sense I thought it was quite refreshing.
Of course the end made me think of The Master’s Sun all over again, a living person becoming a medium for ghosts who want to finish something in the living world, so maybe that was kind of a reference to that? I don’t know.
It was short but still filled with varying emotions and despite my impression at the beginning I did actually enjoy watching it. It stopped being silly as soon as the Alzheimer’s was introduced, also because Moo Rim was only 29 and it just put the whole thing in perspective.

I don’t think I knew Lee Joon from anything else before although he looked a bit familiar… In the beginning, as he is still acting a little crazy due to being haunted by Moo Rim’s breakup words, his acting might have been a little over the top, but I think as soon as the theme of the special became more serious, he also adapted to that pretty well and in the end he really showed some serious and good acting skills.

I knew Jo Soo Hyang from a couple of things, and she has been cast as the snooty and even the bully character quite some times. It was fun to see her as a ‘good’ character, acting all cutesy and tsundere to get what she wanted. I don’t think I’ve seen her smile this much as she did here. Of course this special is from 2015 and she’s done a lot since then. I’d like to see more of her!

I saw Oh Sang Jin was in My Love From Another Star and 20th Century Boy and Girl but I honestly don’t remember him from there… oops. Anyways, we are led astray about his character from the start, as we believe what we’re fed. I totally went along with Moo Rim’s story that he had been two-timing her, but it became clear pretty quickly that he was oblivious to what was happening.

Lee Yong Nyeo is just basically typecasted as the fortune teller/shaman lady! I hope it’s not a completely consistent stereotype since she’s really good, so I’d like to see some other kind of roles from her as well.

So yeah, I actually enjoyed watching this. Even though it was only one ‘episode’, it still had a good build-up, I was still flowing along with all the plot twists and the ending was just really sweet and touching.
It was a nice short watch before I’m resuming with my list – next up is another recent hype item that I’ve been looking forward to a lot! Hint: it’s also on Netflix. So I will see you soon with a new review!

Bye-bee! 🙂