Let's Talk K-Drama: Crash Landing on You

 Hello All!

So today I have decided to write about a K-Drama I just recently finished, "Crash Landing on You," if you like dramas about love literally conquering everything, I would highly recommend this show to you. This will contain spoilers, read at your own risk. Well, let's get to it.

Let's start with a little bit of the plot with the first episode. The show opens with a fly over of North Korea and then Seoul, South Korea. This is where you meet Yoon Se-ri, a successful business woman of a fashion company meeting up with her date and being caught on camera by the paparazzi. At work a couple of days later, they are having a meeting of what to tell the press when they ask about this scandal, she dismisses the whole thing, and go visits her store and she gets a lot more attention than usual. As Se-ri is visiting her store and commenting on the attention she is getting because of the body guards her assistants hired for her, she gets a phone call from her eldest brother telling her about how their father was getting out on probation that day. The call ends and some time later, she is at her parents' house. After much banter back and forth and all of the siblings airing out the others' dirty laundry, her dad nominates her as the successor to their company over her older brothers. Everyone is in shock because she estranged herself from her family a long time ago, and this is the thing that jump starts the rest of the plot set up. Se-ri gladly accepts the position and leaves the house without looking back. Some time passes after this and we get to the launch of her sport wear and product, RIGHT before the shareholders meeting where her father's company's sucessor will be announced, and she is paragliding to test out the merchandise herself. You learn that she spent some time in Switzerland (this is a main focal point of the show, do not forget Switzerland). She then takes off, and, gets caught in a Tornado while paragliding. She has a paragliding accident and this is the next major part of the plot line that introduces the male lead. 

As mentioned above, she got into a paragliding accident (no, she didn't die or there would be no show), and landed in North Korea. North Korea, the home of the male lead and forbidden place for Yoon Se-ri to end up, this is where half of the show takes place. The male lead's name is Ri Jeon Hyeok and he is the Captain of the civilian police battalion of the village closest to the North-South Korean Demilitarized zone closest to Seoul, who has also been engaged to Dan Seo for about 7 years (even though it was a one-sided love on her part and she later falls in love with Gu Seung Jun, a.k.a Alberto Gu a European business man and con man). You see Captain Ri and his Unit-consisting of Staff Sergeant Park Kwang Beom, Soldier Kim Joo Muk, Junior Soldier Keum Eun Dong, and Sergeant Major Pyo Chi Soo-doing rounds around the grounds and running into treasure thieves (sent there by Cho Cheol Gang who is the main villain of the show in North Korea) running from South Korean Soldiers. Captain Ri and his unit stop them and are in a standoff with the soldiers for a few minutes and then the South Korean soldiers gave them back so that the thieves could be punished by the North. After these thieves were turned in, they patrolled the area until dawn and early the next morning, he finds Yoon Se-ri stuck in a tree by her paraglider and this meeting ends the plot set up for the show.

The show continues from there with Se-ri accidentally finding the military outpost village-after Ri Jeon Hyeok gave her actual directions on how to get back over the border while he was stepping on a mine in a minefield-thinking she had made it back to Seoul but then she slowly realizes that that wasn't the case. The rest of the time Se-ri is in North Korea she spends the majority of her time in Captain Ri's house hiding from the security and military departments of North Korea. Another thing to add here is that her brother Sa-yeong and his wife are the main villains of South Korea, who eventually works with Cho Geol Gang because they want to get rid of Se-ri, no matter the cost, to take over the company and it works towards both parties interests because as the show goes on, Se-ri becomes the main arbiter of Geol Gang's Demise. 

The show gets very intense as it goes on as everyone in North Korea start to find out that she is from South Korea and starts to hunt her like she might be a spy. Even as everyone starts to close in on Yoon Se-ri, Captain Ri does his best to help her escape and he is eventually able to help her over the military demarcation zone. The second part of the show takes place in Seoul, South Korea. Se-ri gets back just in the nick of time to save her company from being taken over by her sister in law and second oldest brother. After her time in North Korea, she had changed. Let's be honest, can you really blame her for changing, in a good way by the way, after going through as much trauma she went through while in the North, I wouldn't. Back in the North, Gang Cheol is arrested and found guilty for a number of smuggling charges and stealing national treasures to sell, murder and, he blames Se-ri for his downfall. Gang Cheol blames Se-ri fo his downfall because Captain Ri literally submitted the evidence to arrest him as soon as he knew Yoon Se-ri was safe in the South. After the court reaches their decision to strip him of his tanks and send him to a work camp, he escapes during transport and flees to the South to find and kill Se-ri.  Ri Jein Hyeok finds this out and goes after him so he can protect Se-ri from Gang Cheol. After Captain Ri goes, his father sends his unit after him to bring him back in two weeks, after the military sports festival.

After all of the twists and turns and plots and sub-plots, the show comes to a very pleasing ending. This show is quite the emotional roller coaster, especially in the last 3 episodes of the show. The show was a very good show that had a lot of moving parts that were put together very well. You are provided with the perspectives of the villages, the parents, Yoon Se'ri's family, everyone. The perspective switches flow very well with the rest of the show with very clean transitions that make the story feel cohesive, despite the amount that there were. Now, how does this show fit the trope of "Love conquers all?" Well, to put it simply, their love grew through adversity- and a lot of that adversity was related to the threats to her life, his life and their families' images- which led to their happy ending. 

To end this post I will tell you some of my thoughts on it and why I think you should watch it if you are into K-dramas. To start off, I feel like the pacing in this show was really good considering the amount of sub-plots were in this show. I also feel like the character development of a lot of the characters was really good as well. I think the only thing that i didn't like very much about the show was how long Gang Cheol was in the show, but I do understand his need to progress the story and that his prescence was needed, I just really hate his character because of how petty I thought he was especially because he eventually became the pawn of her brother Sa-yeong as well. Overall, i would highly recommend this show for K-drama lovers, that is, if you haven't already seen it, as I know it's a bit on the older side, 2019, I believe.

Thank you to everyone who read until the end. You're the best.