I love it. With three hour-plus-long episodes in one weekend, murder/reincarnation/time-slip hijinks, and a scheming chaebol family, Reborn Rich throws a lot at us this premiere week. But rather than a convoluted mass of information, we’re fed a tantalizing mystery that leaves me hungry for more.
EPISODES 1-3 WEECAP
In a slick, cinematic opening, a man visits a fancy foreign bank to make a deposit of $600 million. But how did he amass such wealth at his young age — through hard work or luck? To answer that, we jump back in time one week.
Our soon-to-be multimillionaire is YOON HYUN-WOO (Song Joong-ki), and he works for the infamous Soonyang Conglomerate owned by the family of the late Chairman JIN YANG-CHEOL (Lee Sung-min). They’ve got their hands in pretty much everything that makes big money, and they’re basically untouchable when it comes to committing white-collar crimes and walking away with measly penalties.
Hyun-woo has earned and kept the family’s trust by strictly adhering to three personal rules: 1) never refuse an order from a Soonyang family member, 2) never ask questions, and 3) never make his own judgments. But while a starstruck new recruit (cameo by Jinyoung) idolizes him as the family’s “right-hand man,” other employees sneer that he’s more like a disposable glove worn to keep your actual hands clean. Ouch.
As such, he gets to deal with things like fixing toilets and being on-call at all times — even in the shower. And when the up-and-coming Soonyang successor JIN SUNG-JOON (Kim Nam-hee) renounces his inheritance the day he’s supposed to be announced as the new chairman, it falls to Hyun-woo to chase after him and bring him back within 30 minutes.
This is no easy task, and not just because of traffic. Sung-joon has deep insecurities tracing back to an incident with a broken vase in 1987, where his late grandfather told him he was too emotionally driven to take up the family business. There might be an element of truth to that, because when Hyun-woo arrives to collect him, he’s swinging a golf club at fish tanks and potted plants because his staff tried to serve him lunch.
Unfortunate timing means Hyun-woo takes that golf club straight to the head. He pauses just a moment to pull himself together and then manages to talk Sung-joon into accepting the chairman position just in time. Ego reinstated for now, Sung-joon announces big plans to make Soonyang a company that serves the nation, and judging by the reaction, the rest of the family is not pleased. But that’s not their only worry at the moment.
First is the fact that Sung-joon’s pre-ceremony walkout drove his father, eldest Soonyang son JIN YOUNG-KI (Yoon Jae-moon), to collapse. He’s stabilized, but the circumstances prompt a visit from family black sheep JIN YOON-KI (Kim Young-jae) and his wife LEE HAE-IN (Jung Hye-young).
The two were ostracized because the rest of the family opposed their marriage and career choices. However, Hae-in holds 3% shares in Soonyang Group, and uses them as a bargaining chip to demand answers about a mysterious accident involving her son.
The second problem is an audit headed up by Prosecutor SEO MIN-YOUNG (Shin Hyun-bin). She has a reputation for jumping at any and every chance to challenge the Soonyang family, and she and Hyun-woo engage in verbal sparring as she clears out documents and computers.
…which all turn out to be decoys. The real files are all hidden in a secret room accessed via a fake refrigerator.
While putting everything back where it belongs, Hyun-woo comes across files on a paper company that’s being used to siphon millions of dollars into an overseas slush fund. The senior finance manager pressures him to bury it, but a heart-to-heart with Sung-joon smites his conscience and he reports it anyway. Sung-joon, in response, fires the finance manager and promotes Hyun-woo in his place. His first task in his new role? To go retrieve that slush fund.
And that’s how Hyun-woo ends up in Turkey making a $600 million deposit. The problem is that his conversation with Sung-joon was recorded and turned over to Min-young. And the even bigger problem is that he’s waylaid and carted to the edge of a cliff by none other than that bright-eyed new recruit. The recruit does at least look apologetic, but he quotes Hyun-woo’s three rules (never refuse, question, or think for yourself) back at him and leaves as hired thugs shoot Hyun-woo in the head, sending him tumbling to his death.
But then he wakes up in 1987 in the body of a child. And not just any child — he is now JIN DO-JOON (young version played by Kim Kang-hoon), youngest son of Yoon-ki and Hae-in. A person who, according to his extensive knowledge of the Soonyang family, shouldn’t exist.
Understandably, Do-joon (as he’ll now be called) struggles to process it all, especially when he comes face-to-face with people — like Chairman Jin Yang-cheol and his own mother — who were deceased in the present day but are very much still alive in 1987.
Do-joon has “arrived” just in time for Chairman Jin’s 60th birthday, and walks straight into Sung-joon’s confidence-crushing vase incident. That is, Do-joon sees Sung-joon pilfering some of Chairman Jin’s valuables, and Sung-joon stumbles into the vase when he realizes he’s been caught. Still, Do-joon doesn’t recognize what he’s witnessing until Chairman Jin launches into his I’m very disappointed in you, Sung-joon speech. Then the full reality of his new circumstances crashes over him.
Interestingly, Hyun-woo still appears to exist in this timeline. And once Do-joon grows up, he looks much the same as he did when he was Hyun-woo. Time will tell if there’s an in-universe reason for that, or if we just didn’t want to lose out on having Song Joong-ki on our screens as much as possible (which, fair).
In any case, Do-joon decides that he must be here for a reason. Namely, to figure out who had him killed. And since he has to live much of his (well, Do-joon’s) life all over again, he puts that time to good use. He’s retained all his previous life’s memories, so he uses his persuasion skills to guide the adults around him in making pivotal decisions (like convincing his father — who works in the American film industry — to have Home Alone released at Christmas or to invest in the production of Titanic).
But, of course, the big fish he’s got his eye on is Chairman Jin. Do-joon starts with offering advice on which presidential candidate to back, and works up to recommending a business deal that not only prevents Chairman Jin from getting muscled out by bigger players but also saves his life by convincing him to take an earlier flight — sparing him from a tragic plane crash.
Chairman Jin may be a power-hungry tyrant, but he’s no fool. It doesn’t take him long to acknowledge that this kid knows things he shouldn’t, be it by intuition, luck, or actual foresight. They strike a deal: Do-joon will earn a law degree from Seoul National University (the one thing Soonyang money can’t buy), and in return Do-joon’s family are re-invited to Soonyang gatherings and Do-joon gets ownership of land in Bundang. Which, of course, later becomes a major development area.
By the time Do-joon is 20 and ready to enter law school, the land has earned him $24 million, which Chairman Jin presents in cash for shock value (it’s very effective). Do-joon turns right around and converts it all from Korean won into American dollars, pinging Chairman Jin’s radar, but the rest of Do-joon’s actions indicate he’s just your everyday rich college kid. This, of course, is by design.
At law school, however, Do-joon meets someone unexpected: Min-young, studying to become the prosecutor he met as Hyun-woo. He uses her love for Seo Taiji (and his knowledge of the singer’s future solo comeback) to finagle a “date” that’s actually a chance for him to join Sung-joon’s elitist social club (and, okay, yes, also to verbally spar with her some more once she realizes what he’s invited her to).
While all of this is going on, Do-joon starts making his first big moves against Chairman Jin now that he’s earned his trust. While attending a New York film festival with his father, he meets investment agent OH SE-HYUN (Park Hyuk-kwon). After sprinkling a little future knowledge to get Se-hyun’s attention, Do-joon enlists him to help cast the winning bid on a company Chairman Jin has been desperately trying to acquire.
Chairman Jin seethes that someone snatched the acquisition right out from under his nose, and eldest son Young-ki worries that Sung-joon’s (and his) inheritance may be in jeopardy. The game is on.
Color me intrigued. I have so many questions about the time-travel (if that’s what it was) element, because if there are two versions of Hyun-woo/Do-joon’s consciousness alive at the same time in the same time stream, that seems to me to break a lot of typical time travel “rules.” Not to mention, did Do-joon exist before (was he scrubbed from public knowledge due to that mysterious accident his mom mentioned?), or is his very existence something that changed when Hyun-woo was sent back to 1987?
I was initially worried my eyes would start glazing over when the show launched into all the politicking and business dealing, but I found it surprisingly easy to keep up with the really important pieces. Reborn Rich does a great job with using visual cues to keep things interesting and digestible — like going black-and-white for a while as Do-joon slowly became aware that he was in the past, or using real-life news footage to confirm the accuracy of his “predictions.” Even learning a bit of the security team’s number codes for family members helped introduce the major characters and their relation to each other in an orderly way.
On another note, Jinyoung’s cameo was such an impactful way to drive Hyun-woo’s betrayal and abandonment home. Hyun-woo gave the Soonyang family his literal everything, and they took it all and used it against him, right down to his own words delivered through one of the only people who looked at him with genuine respect.
It’s interesting — and rather sad — that the only time Hyun-woo can actually be himself is when he literally becomes someone else. As Do-joon, he’s confident and outspoken, no longer living by his three rules but instead throwing them completely out the window. And yet, he’s still not living for himself. He can’t take advantage of the incredible opportunity to see his mother alive again, and everything he does is calculated according to the impact it will have on the Soonyang family. So in my opinion, the big question will be not only can he identify the person behind his murder and take Soonyang down, but can he ever break free from their influence over his life?