ONE ORDINARY DAY K-DRAMA REVIEW： A Tormenting Question towards Law and Human Heart

First of all - a spoiler alert - If you don't want to spoil your experience of watching the drama, please go watch it first, and then come back to read this review. I found it to be highly entertaining, and I highly recommend it. 

The K-drama One Ordinary Day stars one of the hottest actors, Kim Soo-Hyun, who is also one of my favorites. The drama is an adaptation of the British legal drama series Criminal Justice and HBO’s The Night Of. I found it very engaging and thought-provoking. It raises a profound and even tormenting question about law and humanity in our modern-day societies. 

Simple Plot

The storyline of “One Ordinary Day", which has only eight episodes, is very simple. The main character, Kim Hyun-Soo, starring Kim Soo-Hyun, is a college student in his early twenties. One day he steals his father's taxi to drive to a party. But he doesn't know how to turn off the "empty car" sign, so a young woman gets into the car. And then a lot of things happen. The two embark on nightlong events fueled by booze, drugs, and sex. 

When Hyun-Soo wakes up, he finds the woman lying in bed covered in blood, as if she has died. He panics and immediately flees the scene. 

But he is stopped by the police only 5 minutes later and is arrested as a suspect. 

So, this K-drama is centered around his court trial proceedings that determine whether he is a murderer or not.

The Moment that Captures Me

Frankly speaking, when I watched the first two episodes, I thought it was rather “ordinary”. However, when I saw a certain scene in the second or third episode when the police officer in charge of investigating Kim Hyun-Soo's case takes him away from the detention center, I suddenly felt that Kim Hyun-Soo, as a very young and innocent college student, seems so vulnerable in front of the police officer who 'is portrayed to represent power and “justice” in society. The balance of power between Kim and the police officer was greatly uneven, favoring the police.

That imbalance in power, as well as Kim Hyun-Soo's vulnerability and helplessness, immediately captured my heart and attention, and I felt that something deep in my heart was touched.

From that moment on, I was hooked and wanted to see see what would be the result of the confrontation between this vulnerable individual and the legal system.

The Moment That Catches Me in Tears

The second particularly touching moment in the K-drama that caught me in tears was this. 

The second male lead in this drama is Shin Joong-Han (Cha Seung-Won), who plays the defense lawyer of Kim Hyun-Soo. He is a "third-rate lawyer" who takes on all kinds of cases. At first, he sees Kim Hyun-Soo detained at the police station and takes the initiative to "solicit business" by offering to defend him.

Later, the case becomes very hot in the media as the woman was killed in a very gruesome way: she was stabbed thirteen times in a row. 

The big splash in the media draws the attention of a famous law firm, Bumhan Law Firm. Park Mi-Kyeong (Seo Jae-Hee), the firm representative, offers to defend Kim Hyun-Soo pro bono. Apparently, Park Mi-Kyeong takes the case because it has a lot of public attention. She thinks she can become more famous if she handles it well. 

The parents of Kim Hyun-Soo are very poor, so they gratefully accept this offer, and the third-rate lawyer Shin Joong-Han is fired.

After Park Mi-Kyeong takes over the case, she finds it difficult to overturn the prosecutor's charges because there is so much evidence, more than 170 kinds, all against the defendant. It seems like a nail in the coffin.

However, the prosecution has some difficulties convicting him as they do not have direct evidence, and Kim Hyun-Soo has always maintained that he is innocent. 

In this case, Park Mi-Kyeong manages to get a bargain with the prosecutor: she will convince Kim Hyun-Soo to plead guilty, while the prosecutor will only charge him with manslaughter and suggest a 10-year sentence. 

Park Mi-Kyeong thinks that this is a very good bargain, because if Hyun-Soo behaves well in prison, his sentence can be reduced, and he may actually get out after only three or four years.

So she talks to Kim Hyun-Soo, and he is convinced and agrees to plead guilty. 

When the trial starts again, everyone expects that Kim Hyun-Soo will plead guilty, and then the case will end with a ten-year sentence.

The moment comes when the judge asks Kim Hyun-Soo if he killed the woman. Everyone is expecting him to say yes, and even he has decided to say yes. But at the last moment, while everyone is holding their breaths and waiting, he just cannot bring himself to tell a lie. After much inner struggle, he ends up saying: No, I didn’t kill her.

I did not expect that he would say this, I was caught off guard and instantly burst into tears.

I think this is because of the power of "truth".

No matter how vulnerable, how insignificant, how helpless he is in front of the judge, the prosecutor, and his high-flying lawyer, he instinctively says he didn’t kill her. There is no calculation, because his “calculation” was actually to admit to the killing which he did not commit. 

It is just a tiny bit of instinct, and a very primitive one. Just because he can’t bring himself to tell a lie, he tells the truth against everyone’s expectations, even against his own ‘calculation’. 

At that moment, the power contained in that "truth" is really particularly touching and powerful.

And the episode ends right there, with a strong message that carries the power of "truth" , instantly bringing me to tears.

Open Ending

Of course, after Kim Hyun-Soo rejects the plea deal, his lawyer is furious, because it makes her lose face.

So she throws his case to a rookie lawyer, who brings back Shin Joong-Han, and the two of them continue to defend Kim Hyun-Soo together.

They apply the jury system to decide whether he is guilty of murder. Finally, after many more proceedings, four of the nine jurors find him guilty while five find him not guilty.

However, the jury system in Korea seems to be different from the European and American systems. So although there is a jury, it is still the judge who decides. The judge rules that Kim Hyun-Soo is guilty of murder and sentences him to life.

By this time, Kim Hyun-Soo has lost all confidence in the judicial system and gives up even appealing the verdict, saying that he will just accept his fate.

But his lawyer, Shin Joong-Han, does not give up. Although the case is closed and he is not paid, he continues the investigation at his own expense. He even pays off the police to get the evidence and finally catches the real murderer.

Then what? Kim Hyun-Soo is released and is a free man again. So, in theory, this should be a happy ending, as justice has finally prevailed. 

However, people who have watched the drama will not think so.

Why? This is very much related to Kim Hyun-Soo's excellent acting.  Of course, the plot is also set up such that the audience can see that, when he first appears, he is a carefree college student, with no dark clouds in his mind and heart, just wanting to have some harmless little fun.

However, after he is wrongly accused and sent to prison where he experiences all kinds of unimaginable events and cruelty in prison, he is no longer the same person. 

In a matter of months, he goes from a carefree college student to a living dead man with no hope for anything.

In the final scene, he lights up a cigarette. By the way, he learns to smoke and take drugs in prison. He smokes the cigarette and then throws the cigarette down from the high building. His eyes follow it and look down as if he wants to follow the cigarette in a supposed suicide.

However, the camera does not show him jumping to his death. After his cigarette falls, the audience hears something like the sound of an ambulance, but one cannot really tell what that sound is. And then there is a few seconds of nothing on the screen. Everything is blacked out. 

So, the drama doesn’t tell the audience whether he jumps. It is an open ending, and the audience can imagine for themselves what is next. 

A Profound Reflection on ‘Law and Humanity’

But in any case, this is a very painful ending, even if the real killer is finally caught. In these few months, Kim Hyun-Soo’s life, as the viewers can see, is completely destroyed.

So, although the story is very simple, the entire drama makes us reflect profoundly on the role of law in society. 

Can the legal system really guarantee that it will do justice and not wrong the innocent? That does not really seem to be the case, according to this K-drama. Just like what Lawyer Shin says to Kim Hyun-Soo, the police need a criminal and the prosecutor needs a prisoner. In fact, the prosecutor and the police do not necessarily do justice, but rather they need to catch a criminal in order to show their function.

In this drama, after Kim Hyun-Soo is sentenced to life, the police officer who arrests him is honored; the prosecutor who presides over his case is promoted; and only Kim Hyun-Soo, the small guy, is unlucky. 

In addition, his sister is forced to change schools, and his parents even have to sell their house because their prejudiced neighbors gang up against them. 

So, can the legal system really provide justice? This TV drama raises such a profound question for us to reflect on.

In fact, I have been reflecting on this issue for many years ago. When people's hearts turn bad, laws can become a tool for suppression and persecution.

For example, in “One Ordinary Day," the prosecutor and the police officer want to pursue “fame" by solving a big case that is very sensational in public opinion. With this in mind, their own fame becomes more important than the truth and the facts, and the law loses its ability to do justice and discover the truth.

As for a small guy like Kim Hyun-Soo, just because he speaks the truth about not killing that girl, he is treacherous in the eyes of those who are anxious to convict him. They can’t forgive him and even make him go almost insane. That’s why in the end, at one of the trials, he actually says, "I don't know if I have killed her.”

Why does this happen? Because he doesn't check to see if that girl is really dead, or if she is still alive when he finds her lying in bed. He runs away without checking on her carefully or calling an ambulance. That is why the prosecutor and the police tell him that he is responsible for her death.

I became very angry when I saw this. They are veterans in the legal community, but they take advantage of Kim Hyun-Soo’s sense of guilt for not calling the ambulance in order to psychologically abuse him and confuse him.  It is no wonder that in the end, he says: I do not know if I killed her or not.

When the audience sees this, they will feel that this is such an unfair battle between the veterans and an ignorant but innocent young man like Kim Hyun-Soo.

And this is how the legal system actually works. So, this K-drama shows all of this in front of the audience in a profound way.

Can the Prison System Really Punish the Wicked and Rehabilitate the Bad?

One Ordinary Day also raises a very profound question: Can the prison system really punish the wicked, and turn bad people into good ones?

For this, I have something to say from my own life experiences as I have been in prison myself. I have been in a detention center three times in Beijing and one year in the Beijing Female Forced Labor Camp for practicing Falun Gong, a peaceful self-improvement practice that has been persecuted in China since 1999. I have met countless so-called “criminals” in the detention center and the labor camp. 

First of all, whether it is in the detention center or the labor camp, people who go there basically become worse. 

Why? They themselves all said the following: We had only one criminal skill before, but after coming here, we learned from one another and taught one another. As a result, we have gained more skills to become all-powerful criminals.

Also, none of those in the detention center or the labor camp I met really thought that they were guilty.

For example, robbers and thieves would say, "I just robbed or stole a few hundred dollars, and they put me in jail. Which one of those corrupt high-ranking officials had not pocketed millions or billions of dollars illegally? Compared to them, what I’ve done is nothing.”

The drug addicts didn't feel guilty either. They said, “We spent our own money to consume some drugs. Whom have we harmed? Nobody!”

The prostitutes also didn’t feel that they were guilty. They said, “We sold our own bodies. Whom have we harmed? We have not stolen or embezzled any other people’s money…”

So, in the detention center and labor camp, no one believed or was convinced that he or she was guilty. They all felt that those powerful people who suppressed others in society were much worse. 

On the other hand, the cruelty inside the detention center and labor camp made people torture and oppress one another to get an upper hand. In such an environment, people can only become worse and worse. 

In “One Ordinary Day”, things are the same. Bad guys bully and beat up others. Therefore, even for someone as young and as vulnerable as Kim Hyun-Soo, after seeing that his cellmate was forced to hang himself, he starts to practice boxing and also learns how to beat people to death. 

hI encountered such a true event in Chongwen District Detention Center in Beijing in 2000.

A girl in her 20s from Sichuan province, which is where my hometown is located, was arrested for prostitution. One day when a police officer interrogated her, he asked her how much money she had earned from prostitution and how much she still had. She said truthfully that she had a few thousand left. The police then told her to write a note to her roommate asking her to send her money to the detention center for him. He would then not sentence her to a women's re-education camp. 

In China, the women's re-education camp system was specially set up to punish and “re-educate” prostitutes. 

According to the rules of the detention center, the detainees were not allowed to contact the outside world. But the cop asked her to write a note to her roommate in order to get her money. The roommate actually sent the money.

What happened then? The day the police got the money, he immediately announced that she was still given a six-month term in the women's re-education camp. 

Several thousand yuan was all she had for selling her body, but the police officer cheated her out of it all at once. How would she feel?

I remember she almost cried her eyes out. She was cheated like that by a police officer at her most difficult and desperate time. Maybe she even wanted to kill the cop. 

I thought to myself: Six months later, after she is released, what kind of mentality will she have toward society and the police officers? Can she be expected to be "educated and rehabilitated”?

Therefore, the legal system, at a time when people are so corrupt, can really no longer do justice.

I think that "One Ordinary Day" is also intended to reflect such a profound conclusion about the legal system of our world today.

Of course, it only expresses such a viewpoint and does not propose a solution to the problem.

Who Are Good People? Who Are Bad People?

Another thought-provoking question raised in this drama is: Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys?

For example, take the prison gangster named Do Ji-Tae in "One Ordinary Day". On the one hand, he must have gone to prison because he had committed a crime. On the other hand, in prison when Kim Hyun-Soo is bullied, Do Ji-Tae is the only one who still administered some justice and helped Kim Hyun-Soo. The prison guards are not concerned about the bullying or keeping order in the prison at all.

At the same time, although Do Ji-Tae is in prison, he has quite an impressive network outside, and even the prison guards have to come to him for tough things that they cannot handle outside the prison. In front of Do Ji-Tae, the police officers behave as if he is the one in charge. 

On the contrary, the prosecutor and the police, as well as the big-name lawyer Kim Hyun-Soo, who are all supposed to uphold the law and represent justice, only make people feel disgusted and are not good people at all. Ironically, they are sought after in society.

So, when people's hearts are tainted or poisoned, the laws and the legal system are corrupted too and will become meaningless. People can only use their own moral intuition to judge who is good and who is bad.

“Exceptions" in Prison

I mentioned earlier that people can only become worse in prison. In fact, it is not entirely the case, there are also exceptions. 

For example, when I was in the detention center, I observed that the relationships between ordinary prisoners were very tense, and they were all in a very bad mood. They picked fights for any tiny matter. 

However, Falun Gong practitioners were like a family. Not only did they take care of each other, they also treated everyone else well, including the inmates who were in the lowest position in the detention center and whom everyone else looked down upon.

After a period of time, many people were moved and wanted to learn from Falun Gong practitioners.

I met such a person in the labor camp. She was sent there for theft. The police found Falun Gong articles in her luggage and thought that she was also a Falun Gong practitioner. So, they used electric batons on her. She quietly endured everything and didn’t say a word. 

A few days later, the police asked her, "So you're not a Falun Gong practitioner? The other day when we used electric batons on you, why didn’t you tell us that you are not a Falun Gong practitioner? If you did, you wouldn’t have been punished.”

This is how things are in the labor camp. The police rely on non-Falun Gong practitioners, ordinary criminals, to monitor, torture, and "convert" Falun Gong practitioners. Therefore, they treat those people differently and much better.

And the woman who was electrocuted said calmly to the police, ”Here’s the truth: many of the things in my luggage were given by Falun Gong practitioners, and I didn't know that there were articles inside. Actually, I am illiterate, so I don't know how to read at all. But I think Falun Gong practitioners are very good and I want to learn from them. So I don't blame you for treating me as a Falun Gong practitioner.”

That is to say, she felt quite honored to be mistaken as a Falun Gong practitioner. In fact, she would rather be electrocuted than say that she was not a Falun Gong practitioner.

This experience and observation made me believe that only true faith can change people and people’s hearts, while the law really cannot. 

Why Are Korean Dramas So Popular?

Finally, I would like to say that the characterization of “One Ordinary Day" is very successful. In addition to Kim Soo-Hyun's powerful and engaging acting I mentioned earlier, the second male lead, lawyer Shin Joong-Han is another real and charming character.

The end of the drama is also very meaningful. It shows that "third-rate lawyer" Shin Joong-Han notices a young girl huddled in the corner shivering like Kim Hyun-Soo at the police station. When he goes to greet her, she looks up and turns out to be Kim Yoo-Jung, who played as a child star in the K-drama "The Moon Embracing the Sun". When she looks up with tears in her eyes, Shin Joong-Han grins at her and asks, “Have you found a lawyer?”

The whole drama ends here. But the audience may not help but imagine that the girl played by Kim Yoo-Jung could be another Kim Hyun-Soo, then watch the same story start all over again ......

All in all, “One Ordinary Day" is a very good TV drama. Korean dramas have become very popular globally, because they really deserve it.

The more famous "Squid Game" from last year, as well as the film "Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds” in 2017, including this “One Ordinary Day", all carry profound philosophical thinking, and a serious critique of social reality. They are insightful and at the same time entertaining. The actors, actresses, and all those others who are involved in the productions are so dedicated and talented that they can create one good drama after another. While they bring entertainment to everyone, they also raise many questions and issues for people to reflect on.

1/15/2022*

Truth saves lives. Please support! 👇  真相能救命，敬請支持！👇

 🌺Donate 捐款贊助： https://donorbox.org/support-inconvenient-truths-by-jennifer-zeng

 🌺Membership 註冊會員：https://bit.ly/3biCEk5

 🌺Bitcoin 捐款：bc1qlkkvwyvw96x3xx6jgzkhlnnv0nv3d9vm078vfd

 ㊙️Website 網站：https://www.jenniferzengblog.com/

 ㊙️English YouTube Channel 英文油管頻道：https://www.youtube.com/c/InconvenientTruthsbyJenniferZeng

 ㊙️Chinese YouTube Channel 中文油管頻道：https://www.youtube.com/c/JenniferZeng

 ㊙️LBRY.tv: https://lbry.tv/@InconvenientTruths:c

 ㊙️Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/InconvenientTruthsbyJenniferZeng

🍀Twitter 推特：https://twitter.com/jenniferatntd

 🍀FB Page臉書: https://www.facebook.com/jenniferzeng97

 🍀SafeChat帳戶: https://safechat.com/user/1341871762892058624

 🍀Gab: https://gab.com/JenniferZeng

 🍀MeWe: https://mewe.com/i/jenniferzeng

 👉Jennifer’s Bio 曾錚簡歷：https://www.jenniferzengblog.com/about/