When a loving mother is stricken by unfathomable grief, she finds herself pushed to the brink with her world crumbling around her. Poignant and atmospheric, Wonderful World portrays an emotionally-charged tale with sympathetic characters, leaving subtle threads of mystery that will be woven together in due time.
EPISODES 1-2
Our story opens in medias res on a snowy day, with KWON SEON-YUL (Cha Eun-woo) behind the wheel, and a stricken EUN SOO-HYUN (Kim Nam-joo) standing in the car’s path. Vignettes of their memories together flash by, yet in spite of those wistful days, Seon-yul steps on the accelerator, his expression hard. We hear a crash, though we don’t witness it, and Soo-hyun narrates, “Everything started with the incident that summer.”
We rewind back in time to Soo-hyun’s blissful days, when she’s enjoying a career high with her best friend and manager HAN YOO-RI (Im Se-mi) by her side. At home, Soo-hyun is showered with love by her devoted husband KANG SOO-HO (Kim Kang-woo) and their precious son Geon-woo, who’d come to them like a blessing after four miscarriages.
Unfortunately, Soo-hyun’s happiness doesn’t last. When Geon-woo comes down with a fever, Soo-hyun cancels her schedules and rushes home in a panic, since Soo-ho isn’t picking up her calls. To her relief, she finds Geon-woo all recovered, but she accidentally catches Soo-ho taking his anxiety meds. It turns out he’s been relying on them ever since quitting his job, when his journalistic ethics had pushed him towards whistleblowing and away from his unsupportive colleagues.
In the meantime, Geon-woo slips out of the house, and by the time Soo-hyun finally finds him that night, he’s become the victim of a hit-and-run. Geon-woo remains in critical condition even after his surgery, and eventually, he flatlines as Soo-hyun is holding his hand. To avoid being caught, the driver had fled with the injured Geon-woo and abandoned him elsewhere, and that delay is what ended up killing him.
Mired in guilt and grief, Soo-hyun is dealt a second blow when the driver is declared not guilty. He’s handed a suspended sentence, which essentially lets him off scot-free, but while Soo-ho rails against the verdict, Soo-hyun’s expression remains stony.
Outside, Soo-hyun approaches the driver with Geon-woo’s funeral photo and asks him to apologize to her son. Instead, the awful man sneers at her, blaming Geon-woo for running into his car and ruining his business deals. His utter lack of remorse angers Soo-hyun, and her sorrowful tears dry up into a steely glare. Getting behind the wheel, Soo-hyun steps down hard on the accelerator, punishing the assailant in the exact same way he killed her son.
Gone is the affable and assured Soo-hyun of before; in her place is a dazed and detached mother who cannot see beyond the loss of her son. To her loved ones’ dismay, Soo-hyun refuses leniency, resulting in a sentence of seven years. In prison, she withdraws even further into herself, refusing all of Soo-ho’s visitations. Soo-hyun is so dissociated that she barely reacts when she works a sewing machine’s needle right into her own hand, almost as if she’s deliberately punishing herself. As she’s rushed to hospital, her gurney coincidentally passes by Seon-yul, who just so happens to be volunteering at the prison choir that day.
All this while, Soo-ho has been investigating Geon-woo’s case with a relentless, single-minded focus. He’s traced the driver’s light sentencing to his powerful backer KIM JOON (Park Hyuk-kwon), who just so happens to be the corrupt politician Soo-ho had once tried to expose. Furthermore, he’s also discovered that the driver is deeply involved in Joon’s construction corruption and money laundering, and he takes that information to a direct confrontation in Joon’s office.
Joon may have risen even further up the ranks over the years, but Soo-ho isn’t the least bit cowed by Joon’s threats — at this point, Joon stands to lose everything, while he has nothing left to lose. That is, until Joon shows him footage of their front gate, purportedly from the day of the accident. “You ought to know best how to protect your wife,” Joon warns, leaving Soo-ho with a troubled expression.
Meanwhile, Soo-hyun has been keeping her walls up high, but her perceptive cellmate JANG HYUNG-JA (Kang Ae-shim) notices her silent agony. Seeing herself in Soo-hyun, Hyung-ja helps her with her chores and defends her from the prison gossip. She’s the one whose shoulder Soo-hyun cries on after finally accepting Soo-ho’s visitation, only to tell him not to visit her anymore. Soo-hyun has heard of his offer to be an overseas correspondent, and she can’t bear to keep him tied down to her tarnished reputation. Still, Soo-hyun can’t pretend that pushing him away doesn’t hurt.
Years pass with Soo-hyun in prison and Soo-ho presumably overseas, until we reach the year 2020. Hyung-ja has just received a doctor’s prognosis that she doesn’t have much time left, spurring her to open up to Soo-hyun about her story. She’d committed arson against her cheating husband and his mistress, except the fire had spread to the neighboring house and killed a young boy’s parents. Since then, she’d been writing to the sole survivor in penance, and she requests for Soo-hyun to convey her last letters to him.
Three years later, we’re all caught up to the present. We reunite with Seon-yul, who’s currently eking out a meager living at a junkyard. By night, he’s a gopher for Joon’s party, sneaking into buildings and scrounging up evidence against Joon’s political enemies. The show seems to be hinting that he’s the boy in Hyung-ja’s tale, but he does share the same surname as the unrepentant driver, which would tie in with the show’s opening scene.
Elsewhere, Soo-hyun is released from prison, and to her astonishment, Soo-ho walks up to greet her — but then the perspective shifts, and suddenly it’s another man, headed towards someone that isn’t Soo-hyun. Alone, she visits Geon-woo’s grave, and her grief keeps her by the burial mound until she dozes off.
Hours later, she’s awoken by a sudden rainshower, yet she remains dry. There’s an umbrella over her head, and it’s held by Seon-yul, who had also visited a grave. Shrouded in her usual reticence, Soo-hyun walks away, but Seon-yul follows her after noting the gravestone. “If Geon-woo saw you like this, I think his heart would hurt,” Seon-yul says, extending his umbrella to her once again.
Ooh, color me intrigued. The first episode flowed through some pretty predictable beats, bolstered mostly by our leads’ acting skills, but the second episode introduced some interesting narrative choices that I didn’t see coming. Seon-yul wielding a wrench at work is something we already knew from the teasers, but him being a morally dubious errand boy for Joon throws that wrench into the works. Did he simply grasp a lucrative opportunity, or is he playing the long con?
I’m glad we have Joon as our big bad, not just because Park Hyuk-kwon is a delight (I’ll never forget Gil Tae-mi and Gil Sun-mi), but also because he actually feels like a threat rather than a typical mustache-twirling villain. Everything we’ve seen of Joon so far points to him being highly calculative with all his bases covered, which makes me wonder whether Geon-woo’s tragedy was truly an accident, or a deliberate move to retaliate against the reporter who almost smeared his name. If it’s the latter, I can’t see what Joon would stand to gain from such a risky move, but perhaps he has more chess pieces lurking in the shadows.
On that note, I am so invested in Soo-ho’s character; Kim Kang-woo carries himself with a gravitas that makes Soo-ho’s steadfast devotion to Soo-hyun all the more heart-rending. From the way he gazes at her with unwavering love in his eyes, to the way he unhesitatingly risked his job to defend her on a live news broadcast — Soo-ho comes across as so deeply sincere and faithful that I’m almost afraid to find out what secrets he may be hiding. (Please don’t let him become yet another cheating husband, we’ve had more than enough of those lately.)
As for Soo-hyun, my heart hurts for her plight and the poignant pathos Kim Nam-joo imbues into her role. It was painful to watch Soo-hyun turn her guilt inwards and blame herself for not closing the front gate properly, as well as her eventual realization that she had, in fact, done so. That lady loitering outside Soo-hyun’s house on the day of the accident was mighty suspicious, and I’m rooting for Soo-hyun to uncover the truth and absolve herself.