The Dream Life of Mr. Kim is Netflix’s latest weekend drama, but it seems quite different from what we’ve been getting for the last 12 months or so. For one, it focuses on a much older man, possibly past the age for a midlife crisis, but struggling with life right before retirement. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on here, but it almost feels like a show that depicts what happens if you spend your whole life resenting other people out of jealousy. The show focuses on Mr. Kim Nak-Su, a general manager at a company named ACT, and his desire to become the company’s top performing employee; only, this has made him competitive, moody, and always comparing, not just himself but everybody around him. I’m not sure where the show is going to go from here, but the thing that’s certain is that we’re going to see Nak-Su grow as a person and learn to be a good human being with the help of his wife and son at the age of 50-something. Guess we’ll have to wait and see how that translates into a show, but with that said, let’s jump into the first two episodes of The Dream Life of Mr. Kim.
Spoiler Alert
Does Anybody Even Like Nak-Su?
The first time we see Nak-Su is in a flashback to his childhood, where he lost the classroom elections, though he still won second place and became class vice-president. He runs home all excited, only to have his older brother step all over his pride, claiming that coming in second is not even worth getting worked up about. Comparison is clearly the thief of Nak-Su’s joy, and he grows up being a chronically insecure man, fixated on status and signifiers of status. Episode 1 sees him lusting over his boss’ office, obsessing over his juniors’ possessions, ranging from fancy leather bags to sports cars, and clearly being insecure about the man he’s competing with for an executive role, Jin-Woo. He’s stuck on the property he owns, the bond he shares with his team members, and even the respect he receives from their direct superior, Jeong-Tae. He’s also at least 15 years younger than Nak-Su, so make of that what you will.
He is a casual tyrant at the workplace, both expecting his team members to work flawlessly and supervising them needlessly. He doesn’t seem to encourage his juniors to grow, but rather to act in ways that inflate his own ego. When one of his team members, Ik-Hyeon, asks to take a half-day off that he’d requested weeks ago, Nak-Su acts tremendously inconvenienced, even though he’d finished all his work already. When another team member, Sung-Gu, tries to explain that he’s been taking real estate lessons, Nak-Su doesn’t even pay attention.
When Nak-Su goes out for drinks and dinner with a bunch of his old friends, even they make fun of him for being heartless and self-obsessed. One of their mutual friends, whom Nak-Su makes fun of by calling him “jobless,” shows up late, and he tries to make fun of him until he reveals that he now owns an entire building and collects 30 million won in rent a year. Nak-Su’s jaw drops to the floor, and he’s instantly envious. Everybody else already knew about this development, and they make fun of him for only reading the group chat when it’s about him. The rest of the dinner is a general roast of Nak-Su, and they all talk about how the young and handsome Jin-Woo is sure to get the executive job before him.
Back home, Nak-Su is just as much of a terror, belittling his wife and writing off his son’s ambitions and interests and imposing his own goals on him. Every word out of his mouth is about what a great husband and father he is, how lucky they are to have him, and how much he does for them. He yells at his wife for wasting 600,000 won on a Roomba, while he’d spent 2.5 million won on a fancy leather bag just that day. At one point, he tries to boast about how buying the apartment, which has since soared in value, was all his idea, but his wife, Ha-Jin, and son, Su-Gyeom, are quick to remind him that Ha-Jin had to literally fight to get him to invest in property. But their family life is all about cushioning his ego, and they try to convince him he’s still great.
Does Tae-Hwan Do Well at Golf?
When it comes to business dealings, the most important decisions aren’t taken at board meetings but at informal gatherings, like over a game of golf. When Nak-Su goes to pick up Jeong-Tae, he’s amazed to find Jin-Woo lives in the same extremely fancy neighborhood as him, where flats go for billions of won. He spends the rest of the day obsessing over this until it’s time for him to show off his golf skills, and he amazes everyone by scoring a hole-in-one, setting off a round of outrageous celebrations. He splurges at this point, paying 1.5 million won for a golden souvenir ball, single-handedly paying for a 2.3 million won dinner at a barbecue joint, and burning through tons of cash by paying off the golf course staff, all because he hadn’t taken hole-in-one insurance. In the meanwhile, we see his wife worrying back home about retirement savings and how much they’ll need to live fulfilling lives into their old age; she even attends retirement planning classes. But Nak-Su’s boss, Jeong-Tae, is extremely pleased after the energy of the hole-in-one got the other companies’ heads to agree to join hands when it comes to bidding for government contracts, which will bring the company increased profits in the long term.
Who Does Su-Gyeom Meet at University?
Nak-Su’s terribly disappointed that Su-Gyeom ended up settling for a smaller, less prestigious university than he’d envisioned for him. But Su-Gyeom likes the place; all his friends are there, and the campus is very pretty. Even better, he ends up running into an old friend of his from middle school one day, Han-Na, now a student at the University of Michigan but back in Korea on an exchange program. She writes down an address on his hand, and he ends up at a party that night.
The party is for the launch of a brand started by a young whiz kid named Jeong-Hwan, “Jealousy, My Strength.” Provocative title aside, there’s not much substance to what the company stands for, with all the emphasis apparently on building the brand, whatever that means. This is something Su-Gyeom points out, but that leads to him being belittled for not being a Gangnam boy, aka a rich kid. Jeong-Hwan levels a bunch of classist insults against him, and Su-Gyeom leaves in a huff.
In the meantime, his dad’s signed him up for ACT’s student marketing program, even though Su-Gyeom has no intention of working for his father’s company. Eventually, he attends the interview, and he feels humiliated when all the interviewers roundly mock him for being nothing like his dad. He still manages to get through, but by now, Han-Na’s got him an in with Jeong-Hwan, and he gets offered a role as “Chief Destruction Officer” at his company.
What’s the Story with Tae-Hwan?
Tae-Hwan is a meek corporate man who never quite managed to make it as far as Nak-Su. They both joined the company together 25 years ago, but Nak-Su took to it much more readily. Now, Tae-Hwan is on the verge of being transferred to a backwater, where he’ll be expected to do most of his work underground, triggering strong claustrophobia in him. He comes begging to his old friend to intervene, but Nak-Su claims it’s out of his hands. In the past, he’d even asked a female team member, Song-Hui, if he could delay her promotion so he could help his friend out.
In the present, though, Nak-Su is forced to tell Tae-Hwan he’s on his own. Apparently, Jeong-Tae had personally singled out Tae-Hwan as one of the weakest performing members of the department. As Nak-Su walks out of the meeting where he’s told this, his phone starts to ring, and he learns that Tae-Hwan tried to take his own life in the parking lot. Jeong-Tae tells Nak-Su that he should be the one to handle Tae-Hwan, because they’re old friends. This flashes Nak-Su back to their interview day, where they first met as rivals, but Tae-Hwan probably got the job because Nak-Su said there was humanity in him. In the present day, Jeong-Tae tells Nak-Su to concentrate on his own future by telling Tae-Hwan to keep things under wraps. But Tae-Hwan doesn’t hide his disappointment in his friend, and even knows just how much Nak-Su is judging him.
Ultimately, Tae-Hwan gets a phone call while he’s still in the hospital, informing him that he’s being given a better transfer, and also 5 million won as compensation. His wife’s next to him as he takes this call, and when she finds out it was about work, she wonders if he’s going to spend the rest of his life like this and begins to cry. But at the same time, Tae-Hwan needs to be replaced, and Nak-Su’s the guy, because his work as a manager has not been great. I suppose he’s going to be sent off for the underground job soon enough, especially after everything that happens at the end of the episode.
What Happens at the Chinese Restaurant?
Nak-Su starts off family dinner on the wrong foot, making a reservation at the wrong Chinese restaurant and then getting mad at the staff instead of admitting his fault, embarrassing his family. Once dinner actually starts, things aren’t much better. Su-Gyeom brings up the job offer from “Jealousy, My Strength,” and Nak-Su is immediately dismissive and arrogant, complaining about him throwing away the opportunities that he is being given. This, combined with his earlier behavior with the staff at the restaurant, makes Su-Gyeom walk out on the family dinner, saying he’s embarrassed to have a man like him for his father. He points out that it doesn’t matter what Nak-Su’s achieved, because he should pay attention to how his son is looking at him.
Ha-Jin follows her son out, too. She’d been excited to announce that she was going to be giving the real estate exam and had even signed up for classes. When she says that what happened to Tae-Hwan felt like a wake-up call to her, Nak-Su’s ego is wounded, and he starts telling her to look for jobs better suited to the wife of an executive. These suggestions that she get into doll-making or bouquet arrangements hurt her, and it becomes obvious to her that her husband doesn’t value her as a human being. When Nak-Su is left alone at the table, he finally has a moment of reflection and even ends up apologizing to the employee he yelled at before.
At the end of The Dream Life of Mr. Kim episode 2, Nak-Su decides to spend the night in the office instead of going home. At the same time, the employee he yelled at shows him extra kindness, even giving him an umbrella for the rain. When Jin-Woo sees him in the morning, he commends his dedication in the face of the crisis. What crisis, you ask? Seong-Gu had earlier brought an issue to Nak-Su’s attention, about how an area they’d been advertising gigabit internet in didn’t yet have the infrastructure for it yet. Nak-Su had told him to bury it at the time, but now there’s been an exposé about how bad the situation really is. The guy’s clearly in trouble, and the episode ends with Jeong-Tae yelling for him to see him in his office, and Nak-Su slouching his way there, defeated. Is this the end of his career with ACT? We’ll have to wait for the next episode to see how their meeting goes.
