We simply know that King the Land’s Gu Won is an iconic character in the making. We realize a male lead is good when he sets another impossible standard that can probably never be met by non-fictional men. His attentiveness, his care, and the confident way in which he is so unabashedly himself really brings everything together. You may have heard of lucky girl syndrome, but we believe that there is also a thing called lucky couple syndrome, and that is why a tale is so dreamy. Seldom do we come across an episode that we like rewatching, and episode 5 and episode 6 of King the Land rank right up there, and here is a recap of the latter episode.
Spoilers Alert
How Does Gu Won Save Sa Rang?
Bringing the helicopter to Sa Rang meant a lot more struggle for Gu Won than we had anticipated. He had to get his sister’s approval for it, and it was just not possible since she was naturally against everything he wanted. Therefore, Gu Won just stops asking and takes the plane with him, despite Sang Sik’s protests. He finds Sa Rang, but it is surprising that the helicopter does not take him back. The pilot cited strong winds as the reason, but it still feels silly that instead of one, there are now two people who need help. Gu Won is stuck with Sa Rang, who is more than happy to see him. Luckily, the two of them are rescued by the farmer, who had gone looking for Sa Rang when his wife told him that she had not come back. He takes them back home, and this is a familiar scene for Sa Rang and Gu Won: being stuck in unfavorable places while coming close to each other. The next morning, Sa Rang sweeps the place as a show of goodwill towards the farmer, and she and Gu Won get a little playful with each other. In fact, Gu Won is pretty much mesmerized by the way she is fooling around with him. It looks like he hates her smile but loves it now that he can tell that it is genuine. He is even throwing some smiles of his own, and it is a beautiful sight. When Sa Rang gives the ginseng she has found in the forest to the farmer, he is so happy that he agrees to send the ginseng to the King Hotel. According to the farmer, it takes three generations of good deeds to find ginseng in the forest, and Sa Rang must have that in her kitty.
Sang Sik has come to pick up Gu Won and Sa Rang, and he tells her about what Gu Won had to go through to get the helicopter. Sa Rang realizes the extent of his care only now. In the car, Gu Won clearly wants to sit with Sa Rang, but she misreads his intentions every time and sits with Sang Sik. When Gu Won gets in the driver’s seat to be next to Sa Rang, she moves to the backseat, not understanding his intentions. However, we believe that for a second there, she got the hint. At the next gas station, Gu Won tells Sang Sik to take the week off, and he leaves him there. Finally, he gets what he wants, and Sa Rang is seated next to him.
Since the farmer told Sa Rang to give the ginseng to her grandmother, Gu Won drove her there. Sa Rang thanks him for his help, and naturally, she assumes that Gu Won has left for Seoul. However, he is waiting for her and is peeking through the door to get a look at her. Luckily for him, Sa Rang’s grandmother catches him, and upon finding that he is a colleague of Sa Rang’s, she makes him peel onions. As expected, he does a terrible job of it, and we cannot believe that when he touched his eyes with his onion hands, he did not feel the sting grow. We can accept the fiction that men like Gu Won exist, but this is where we draw the line. The writers missed an exhibition of cuteness here. However, we get plenty of that when Sa Rang takes him to the local market and buys him fish cakes, and they play the big carp game together. For the life of us, we could not imagine that Gu Won would act cute and actually be cute while doing it. We were as taken in as Sa Rang was, and though she bargained for a thousand won, we would have gladly signed over our entire inheritance to him. Sadly, the carp that they win breaks in an accident, and Gu Won is close to tears. We hope they do some kintsugi with it and boost their romance in future episodes of King the Land.
For now, the grandmother is sufficiently impressed with Gu Won’s politeness, though she thinks that he is unemployed and is living off his father. In the interest of having fun, Sarang doesn’t correct her either. When they leave, the grandmother looks fondly at the flowers he has brought for her, and maybe she has also sensed how much Gu Won likes her granddaughter.
Why Is Sa Rang Angry With Gu Won?
When Gu Won drops off Sa Rang at her house, there is no question anymore that he is there for her. On her birthday, he had brushed everything off as something he was doing because he had time and resources. But what he has done here makes it clear that he likes and cares for Sa Rang. Therefore, he takes the chance to ask her out on a date. To put it more bluntly, he puts the ball in Sa Rang’s court, and it is now up to her to ask him out the moment she is ready. When Sa Rang understands his intentions, she cannot help but smile since she has grown to see him as more than the arrogant and cold man that she used to think he was.
When Gu Won goes home with the soup and kimchi given by Sa Rang’s grandmother, his father has them for dinner. The Chairman asks him why he took such drastic steps for one employee, and that is when Gu Won asks whether he had ever protected his employees. He is definitely referring to his mother, and for the first time, the Chairman does not get defensive but says that he had to make some difficult choices. Though he doesn’t say what those are, he expresses a desire to spend more time with his son.
Soon enough, there is a party at the King Hotel for the daughter of the First Hotel’s owner. Yu Ri looks like she is very young, probably in her late teens, and she is completely smitten by Gu Won, who only has eyes for Sa Rang. However, when Sa Rang sees how close Gu Won is to Yu Ri, she gets jealous and insecure. It doesn’t help that Yu Ri says that they are both destined to marry anyway, though Gu Won tells her to go after someone who likes her. Now, here is why we said that Gu Won set the standard high: because he noticed that Sa Rang was upset. God bless the writer who wrote Gu Won. At the end of episode 6 of King the Land, back at home, Sa Rang is dancing away her anger with her girlfriends, and they are drenched in booze and food when the bell rings, and it is Gu Won at the door. We love that he came to meet Sa Rang instead of wallowing in his ego and waiting for her to call first, and we cannot wait to see how their story progresses in the coming episodes of King the Land.
Final Thoughts
Now that their love story is picking up steam, it is time for the politics to start. Hwa Ran will try to take advantage of Sa Rang as Gu Won’s weakness, and he will have to pull up his socks to protect her. As Sang Sik says, he needs the power to fight his wars, and now he has a legitimate reason for it. Every moment of King the Land has been awesome so far, but we know that the mush will have to be in check if the other stuff must play out.
