The Dream Life of Mr. Kim Review 2025 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
We were already getting the sense Kim’s promotion isn’t as sure as he believes it is, and when he arrives at work, we learn very quickly that it is an environment full of petty hierarchies and personal grievances. Nak-su feels he deserves the promotion to managing director. But he also covets the expensive leather briefcase of current director Baek Jeong-tae (Yoo Seung-mok) to increasingly obsessed levels, and feels increasingly worried about his professional standing. A younger colleague could be favored for the promotion, and Heo Tae-hwan (Lee Seo-hwan), Kim’s team member, is being forced out for lack of performance. Nak-su and Tae-hwan started at the same time. Kim tries to distance himself from his friend. Wouldn’t want their fates intertwined.
For all the work stress he constantly ruminates over, Nak-su tries to present a united front to his wife Ha-jin (Myung) and son Su-gyeom (Cha Kang-yoon). At home, he wants credit for his role as breadwinner, but this is also a demand that diminishes Ha-jin’s contributions. And while Nak-su presses Su-gyeom to apply for his company’s internship program, Su-gyeom doesn’t want to become just another mid-level salaryman like his father. When he runs into his childhood crush Han-na (Lee Jin-yi) at university, she introduces him to Lee Jeong-hwan (Kim Su-gyeom). The kid is arrogant, with a fast-moving haircut, and probably vying for Han-na’s affections. But he drives a Porsche and embodies a kind of startup hustle Su-gyeom admires.
Surviving for two decades in the corporate grind, securing comfortable lodging, and sending a kid to college. “That’s greatness,” Nak-su tells Su-gyeom. But as his professional and personal worlds begin to quaver and blend together – the stresses of one informing the other until Mr. Kim is spending more time mumbling to himself than noticing his wife or sucking up to his direct boss – Dream Life begins to skewer what such a phrase could even mean. Success in life might not hinge on a big promotion or the use of that hard-earned college fund. It could mean a new definition of fulfillment on an entirely personal level.
In this series, we can think two ways about that “Dream Life” in the title. First, there is what Kim Nak-su has definitively accomplished. His wife, son, a comfortable apartment in Seoul, and 27 years of stellar corporate service. Taken together, it is a dream life – representative of what you’re supposed to do in a society. But as his circumstances shift, we also become witness to Nak-su’s more fraught, personal dream life. His unchecked internal monologue, where he’s always comparing himself to work colleagues and friends’ bank accounts, which is also our way into how Ryu Seung-ryong is playing this guy. His mumbled jabs at himself are funny, and they’re even funnier when work people catch him doing it. These aren’t quite depicted as fantasy moments, but they do suggest Kim’s existential crisis as it begins to overtake his reality. By the end of the first episode of The Dream Life of Mr. Kim, we felt like we understood the main character inside and out. The picture of success he presents to the world, and the conflicted inner life that’s getting harder and harder to keep quiet.
We’re not giving anything away by saying Kim’s facing significant change in his life. And as his supposed dream life starts to falter, we started comparing the screwed-up faces he makes, his obsessive behavior, and bouts with inner mania to another recent entry in the middle manager-meets-personal-hell category, Tim Robinson’s The Chair Company. How far will Nak-su take his obsessions before they threaten his position at work? How much of his inner life will fold inside-out, and reveal him to his wife and family in ways he never thought possible? We’re rooting for Mr. Kim – he’s not exactly likeable, but we feel like we know him. The question becomes which one of his dream lives has the best chance to sustain itself.
