Strong Girl Nam-soon Review 2023 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
In the ring, a big strong growling dude is surprised when a 12-year-old girl named Tsetseg (Yukki Luna) is his opponent. But he stops laughing when she picks him up by his belt buckle and flings him across the ring.
In Seoul, South Korea in 2013, we see a reporter interviewing a photographer named Gang Bong-go (Lee Seung-joon). We find out that the strong girl in Mongolia is actually his daughter Nam-soon. It seems that she’s been missing since she was about 5, when she got lost on a Mongolian trip with her father. All of the women in her family have superhuman strength, a trait that goes back at least 500 years.
We see that demonstrated by her mother, Hwang Geum-joo (Kim Jung-eun), who is the CEO of a high-end Gangham pawn shop called Gold Blue. She is so desperate to find Nam-soon that she’s going to start a strength contest with a 500 million won prize, hoping that Nam-soon will participate. But when two men walk in trying to pawn an ancient polearm then try to rob her safe, she shows just how strong she is.
Bong-go recounts to the reporter how he and Geum-joo met, how successful she was in any business she started, and how she wanted to make sure she had a girl to carry on the bloodline. That produced Nam-soon and her twin brother Nam-in (Han Sang-jo).
Back in Mongolia, Nam-soon watches Psy’s “Gangham Style” video and realizes that her home is in Korea. Other visions she gets are of her parents and her Korean name. She tells her parents that she’s going to one day go home, but she wants to make sure her parents are situated first. Ten years go by; a now adult Nam-soon (Lee Yoo-mi) finally decides it’s time, but first mourns her horse, the one that she was on when she was a kid when her Mongolian parents found her. She flings the horse’s bell and it lands all the way in Korea, hitting a police detective named Gang Hee-sik (Ong Seong-wu) in the head.
The cop is investigating a drug ring, and as a part of that, he chases one of Geum-joo’s customers, who desperately came to Blue Gold to borrow money. Geum-joo followed her on a slick-looking motorcycle, suspicious of why she needed the money, and meted out her own justice on the drug dealers.
During the tenth annual strength competition, an unusually strong young woman gets noticed by Geum-joo, who invites her for lunch. She finds out the girl’s name is Ri Hwa-ja (Choi Hee-jin), an orphan who was born in Korea but found herself in Mongolia as a child. Geum-joo is convinced that this girl is Nam-soon, but Bong-go isn’t so sure. In a meeting with Nam-in and her mother Gil Joong-gan (Kim Hae-sook), however, Geum-joo insists that they’ve found Nam-soon, and soon lavishes the girl with new clothes and a makeover, among other things.
The plane Nam-soo is taking to Korea comes in for a landing too fast; Nam-soo takes it upon herself to jump out and use her super speed to catch up to the plane and slow it down herself. While that’s going on, a cosmic connection is made between her, Geum-joo and Joong-gan.
There’s certainly a good story brewing in the first episode of Strong Girl Nam-soon, written by Baek Mi-kyung as a sequel to the 2017 series Strong Girl Bong-soon. There’s a lot going on, even in the first episode: Nam-soon coming from Mongolia and getting tied up with the detective, Hee-sik; Hwa-ja pretending to be Nam-soon for as long as she can; Geum-joo trying to figure out just who is her daughter, and more.
How all of those storylines play out will be the key to how much people will enjoy this series. As usual with K-dramas like this, there’s a sprawling cast and a bunch of story threads to keep track of. But the overarching story of Nam-soon finding her birth family and using her strength to help Hee-sik will be fun to watch.
Is the show as funny as it thinks it is? No; there are too many moments where the funny stuff is preceded by sound effects and or music cues that scream “THIS IS FUNNY!” rather than let the funny elements stand on their own. Sure, that’s SOP with South Asian comedy series, but here there doesn’t need to be over-the-top gags preceded by music cues in order to get people to chuckle. The story by itself is likely going to be heartwarming in parts, action-filled in others, and naturally funny in others. That would be the best way to balance out the humor and the drama without needing to lay out to audience where the funny moments are.
