Strong Girl Nam-soon is a wacky superhero tale with an irresistibly sunny titular heroine, nefarious villains lurking in the background, three generations of super-strong women, and one good-natured but determined cop. Once our heroes find their way to each other, they’ve certainly got their work cut out for them — but there should be plenty of fun and excitement along the way.
EPISODES 1-2
Our story kicks off in 2013 with a missing girl and a pair of distraught parents. The father is KANG BONG-GO (Lee Seung-joon), banker-turned-photographer; the mother is HWANG GEUM-JOO (Kim Jung-eun), genius businesswoman dripping in self-made wealth. Every woman in Geum-joo’s family is born with superhuman strength (the guys, not so much), so years past when her fling with Bong-go escalated to steamy activities, Geum-joo had made it clear that having a daughter wasn’t optional.
They had twins — one girl, one boy — and their daughter KANG NAM-SOON (child version played by Seo Yi-soo) is the girl who’s currently missing. Turns out while on a photography trip in Mongolia with her father, Nam-soon disappeared. Bong-go filed for divorce out of guilt, and both parents spend the next ten years exhausting every resource to find her.
We, however, needn’t fear for Nam-soon’s fate. She’s been taken in by kindly Mongolian shepherds and spends her days riding horseback, tossing wrestling champions around like rag dolls, and watching Korean TV. Though she doesn’t remember much about her biological family, PSY’s “Gangnam Style” helps her recall her name and gives her a place (Gangnam) to seek out when she’s older (and played by Lee Yumi). Even then, she’s reluctant to abandon her adoptive parents. In the end, they have to push her to leave, assuring her they’ll be here if she needs them.
Meanwhile, Geum-joo holds an annual international strength contest in hopes that Nam-soon will participate. To her joy, the 2024 winner, RI HWA-JA (Choi Hee-jin), ticks all the right boxes, down to the scar on her foot. Bong-go isn’t convinced, but Geum-joo wastes no time showering her presumed daughter with every luxury money can buy. In truth, however, Hwa-ja is a con artist looking to help herself to Geum-joo’s vaults.
Nam-soon’s arrival in Korea is nothing short of dramatic. First, her plane comes in for a rough landing — that is, it fails to slow down, and Nam-soon has to jump out and stop it with her bare hands. This sends a surge of power to both Geum-joo and Geum-joo’s mother, GIL JOONG-GAN (Kim Hae-sook), and tips Geum-joo off that Hwa-ja isn’t who she claims to be.
Next, thanks to a tip that a drug mule is aboard the flight, Nam-soon and her fellow passengers go through inspection, during which police officer KANG HEE-SHIK (Ong Sung-woo) confiscates a few personal items (her beloved late horse’s mane and ankle bone, and a solid gold princess wand she had when she got lost as a child) for testing. Moved by her plea that all she wants is to find her mother, Hee-shik promises not only to return the items ASAP but also to help her locate her family.
Finally, Nam-soon secures a cushy apartment… only to find out the next morning that the “landlady” was a scammer who turned around and robbed her blind. Penniless, homeless, and with no one to turn to, Nam-soon nonetheless makes the best of her situation. After all, the park at Han River is dotted with tents, so who’s to say she can’t pitch her own, right?
Except, she builds a Mongolian-style yurt out of “borrowed” materials (a few wooden boards here, some public banners there, and one tree that was going to be uprooted anyway), and then another for a homeless couple who wander in — and let’s just say the park officials and local police aren’t as impressed as her new friends are.
This turns into a stroke of luck, because they all end up at the police station and Hee-shik finally gets to return Nam-soon’s belongings (the scammer stole her phone, too, so he’s had no way of contacting her). When he tries to explain that she can’t just live in her yurt, she asks if kicking homeless people out of their resting spots is more important to an officer of the law than catching scammers. That makes such an impression on him that he later repeats it to his own superior.
In fact, everything about Nam-soon makes an impression on him. She’s got an indomitable cheerfulness, and she talks like an old lady (because that’s who taught her Korean back in Mongolia). Instead of being put off by the way she practically orders him around, he finds it refreshing. Thus, he loans her his personal cell phone and offers to help her get a new passport so she can find a job. But first, she needs a photo, and Hee-shik unknowingly sends her to her own father’s photography studio.
In the background of Nam-soon’s search, there’s a huge drug-related plot afoot. The contraband on Nam-soon’s flight slipped right past Hee-shik and his colleagues, and it’s a new super drug — super strong, super hard to detect, and applied to the brain through the ear, not inhaled. When Hee-shik isn’t looking for or helping Nam-soon, he’s running around trying to catch those involved in making and distributing the drug.
And he’s not the only one. In hopes of building up karma for Nam-soon’s safe return, Geum-joo applied herself to fighting local crime. Now she feels a sense of duty to keep going, especially when the police are so focused on getting to the roots of the drug racket that they fail to protect a woman of Geum-joo’s acquaintance who got entangled in the scheme and winds up dead.
Having recently gained membership at the elite Heritage Club, Geum-joo makes a grand first appearance in a daring purple dress paired with sneakers and raises a toast to a more equitable world. The other members laugh at such idealism, but Geum-joo isn’t here to argue about whether it’s possible to change the world for the better — she plans to prove it. A man catches her trying to sneak into a back room, but instead of reporting her, he hands her a business card. If she really wants to change the world, he says, that’s the place to do it.
Having not seen the original Strong Woman show, I really didn’t know what to expect from this one, but I’m having a blast so far. I can’t wait for all three generations of superhero women to team up with our righteous cop and take on the injustices surrounding them. Geum-joo and Hee-shik in particular have already been unintentionally tag-teaming, and I imagine they’ll be even more dynamic (and successful) as intentional partners.
Plus, there’s the question of Nam-soon’s powers, which seem nearly limitless at this point. In addition to super strength, she’s got super vision, super speed, and seemed at times to be able to hear her parents all the way in Mongolia. Her childlike naivety might be frustrating in other contexts, but Lee Yumi imbues her with enough charm that I’m as endeared as Hee-shik is, and I look forward to seeing her realize her full potential.