Tomorrow

Welcome back to *Hallyu Reviews*! We hope you enjoyed Sabrina’s review of **"What's Wrong with Secretary Kim?"** last week. If you missed it, be sure to go back and have a read!

This week, Shamra takes a look at “Tomorrow.”
**SPOILERS AHEAD!!**

Ever just had a feeling like you didn’t want something lovey-dovey and the thought of a cutesy romantic series just made you cringe? Well, that was me, I didn’t want to watch any romantic series where the cute couple falls in love and lives happily ever after, because I just wasn’t feeling happy ever after. So instead, I picked a series, “Tomorrow,” away from love, dealing with death, suicide, and survival. The description on Netflix described “Tomorrow” as a half-human/half-spirit person helping grim reapers. Yep, no romance sounds perfect! Didn’t hurt that the main lead is Rowoon (Kim Seok-Woo) who is also in “School 2017”, “Extraordinary You”, and “The King’s Affection.” (I’ve seen all of those) He’s a certifiable cutie and a great actor, he did a great job portraying different sets of emotions in this series.

It starts as Choi Jun Woong (Rowoon) tries to save a man from committing suicide on the Dongjak bridge at the Han River. He is met with force by two grim reapers, Koo Ryeon (Kim Hee-seon) and Lim Ryung-gu (Yung Ji-on). They are the two members of the Risk Management Team. As he tries to save the man, he falls into the Han River and is given two choices from the Jade Emperor also referred to as the Director: 6 months coma with a guaranteed job when he wakes up, if he works with the Jumadeung Team, or a 3-year coma if he does not. Which one would you pick? He picks the job and is in a coma for 6 months; it doesn’t hurt that he has some encouragement from The Director. He can choose from the Editing Team, The Tech Support Team, The Risk Management Team, or the International Sales Team, the only stipulation is that the team has to agree to allow him to work.

Koo Ryeon is the team leader of the Risk Management Team, Lim Ryung-gu is her assistant. It’s just a temporary department right now put in place by the Director. Their job is to help intervene in a human’s decision to take their own life and convince them to change their perspective. Park Joong-gil is played by Lee Soo-hyuk, who was recently on Instagram with GDragon from Bigbang. <3. He oversees the Escort Team, a grim reaper who collects souls after people have died. The Director says that in Korea an average of 40 people kill themselves each day. I don’t know if that statistic is true but according to World Population Review, South Korea ranked 4th in the world for Suicide in 2019, with 28.6 for every 100K people.

The show stresses the concept of the red thread connection, reincarnation, and the importance of people being reborn into Korea with money, honor, and health. And how people cannot be reincarnated if they commit suicide.

Koo Ryeon is badass! I love her. She is extremely passionate about her responsibilities and her role as a grim reaper “who saves people”, but she does it in such a manner that you know not to mess with her. She wants to help people but doesn’t always go about it in the best methods. Her fashion, however, is seriously always on point! She seems to have a strange relationship with the Director who pulled her out of hell to manage the RM team. The Director keeps telling her she has someone she needs to save to get what she wants, but you don’t know what she wants at this point. Koo Ryeon used to work under Park Joong-gil as a reaper. He seems mad that she left the team; there is some resentment there. He does not hold Koo or her team in high regard. Choi Jun is such a sweetie. He naturally wants to help people and is determined to help by using encouragement and positivity. Lim is a young reaper, but he leaves work every day at 8 pm looking for something. The RM team uses a phone device and gets pictures of people and percentages when they are highly likely to commit suicide. There are a total of 13 cases of suicide that the team goes through. As they work through these cases they learn about each other’s backgrounds, personalities, and goals, and even become friends. And low and behold it was actually a romance after all…

Episode 5 starts unusual – up until now the same way it starts is the same way it ends, it cycles through the episodes. But the start of episode 5 is with two small people walking in period clothes through a shop. You see a boy apply a pink shade of shadow to the girl’s eyes and tell her that he loves her. You see the marriage ceremony where she sneaks glimpses of him through the palanquin. Then it goes back into the modern-day series with the timer and Woo Jin’s story. Episode 8 – Koo Ryeon asks Joong-gil why he doesn’t sleep in a flashback. He admits that he has nightmares of sadness and rage, so he’s afraid of falling asleep. You witness him with a sword and blood being splattered. He is killing people, but you don’t know why. In the middle of the episode, you see Joong-gil asleep and more of his flashback, where he says he will kill anyone who mutters those insults. He runs into someone and instantly awakens…

I just love the Director, she is the person of insight in this series. At the end of Episode 8, Joong-gil goes to see her and she tells him that “Most people who make the wrong choice regret it for a long time but eventually they forget. But sometimes, there are those who are forever haunted by their regrets. They can never forget. Not even in their dreams." Then he turns to leave and searches for Koo Ryeon. At the start of episode 10, there is a flashback to Koo Ryeon’s past with more details. She is being threatened by a man and Joong-gil saves her. I can’t wait to find out what happened in this backstory! Joong-gil goes to get his record book and he discovers that except for his previous life, his book is locked, the same as Koo Ryeon’s. The only person who has access to it is the Director. April 28th, Koo Ryeon is off and is drinking by herself. Choi Jun gets told to leave, but he comes back to check on her, he also checks her level, she is at a 100, and apparently, today is the day she died. Choi Jun Woong goes to ask the Director what happens and tells her that he knows she killed herself and that Joong-gil is a part of it somehow, so she snaps her fingers and shows the history between the two. Finally, we get their backstory! So they knew each other as young kids. She was cured from a snake bite and then cured him from the same snake bite. He is of nobility and requests her hand in marriage. Then you see the scene of him putting the rouge on her eyes and telling her that he loves her, teaching her how to shoot a bow and arrow with more precision. You even see their wedding ceremony. Joong-gil is now a defender for the country and is called away on service. While he is away their town is attacked. After trying to save her best friend, Gop-dan, they, along with several other ladies, are taken as hostages. Joong-gil gets back home and discovers that his wife is gone and he starts looking for her. At the camp, Ryeon recognizes the weeds as poison and feeds them to the enemy, instructing the girls to run away. Joong-gil gets there shortly afterward. Soon the ladies make it up and just like in the previous flashback, they are denied entrance until Joong-gil defends them and shoots an arrow at the guard. The first thing he does is thank her for staying alive. OMO! It is so sweet. He loves her so much. His mom however is awful! What a witch!! She gives Ryeon a blade and encourages her to take her own life for the honor of the family. One day in the village she is being stoned, Gop-dan goes to protect her from the blows and gets hit to the point of death. She tries to commit suicide then as well. Joong-gil, the chief officer, begs her not to think of him being left behind without her. Then he overhears villagers talking about bedding her, and rightfully so, he kills them. This is the flashback Joong-gil sees in his nightmares. She cannot handle him losing himself because of her and all these town rumors and what it is doing to him, so she commits suicide. After his history lesson, Choi Jun tells the Director that their fates are too cruel and asks if she can help them. Of course, she cannot, but she suggests that fate can change of its own accord. Choi Jun Woong discovers a way to help prevent Koo Ryeon from going to Hell and goes to Lim about it. They need Mr. Park to rediscover his memories. He goes back into his nightmares and relieves the moments he needed to see and experience from his nightmares. Jun Woong says the threads are broken, but the feelings remain, and for this couple that is so true. Okay so apparently Joong-gil took the whole blame for Koo Ryeon and prevents her from going to Hell. That is love, even though he lies to her and tells her it is pride. “In the end, we are the only ones who can save ourselves.”

Choi Jun Woong goes home! 6 months are up, and he finally gets to go home. His mom is there waiting for him when he wakes up. He gets an office job as promised to him by snapping his fingers. At his job he realizes that there is a worker who is being treated unfairly so he invites him to the Ryu Cho-hui concert that he won tickets for randomly. On the roof, he runs into Mr. Lim and Ms. Koo after saving the office worker and becoming friends. They tell him that they cannot wait to see him in 50 years, Mr. Lim corrects to 49 years and 2 months and Mr. Park offers to make him a new member right now when he pops in randomly.

CASES

· Noh Eun-bi – bullied as a school child. Grows up to be a TV writer and her boss wants her to interview the writer of a webtoon about school bullying. The writer of the webtoon happens to be Kim Hye-Won, the same bully she went to school with and the person who bullied her as a child. Koo and Choi go into her memories to find out what happened to her as a child to determine how to encourage her to fight her enemy. One of the main things Kim did to torment Noh was she would force her to laugh every time she heard a pen click. It is something Noh suffers from still. In the end, it takes a team effort to save her, and Kim Hye-Won and her little gang of bullies get everything they deserve.

· Namgung Jae-soo – Choi’s friend who is failing the police academy. He misses his best friend. Choi tells the story of how Jae-soo ate fried chicken when he was younger and how he suffered when his dad’s business went under. Choi thinks chicken will help ease his friend’s depression. Choi learns going close to his real body in the hospital will cause his body to cease to exist, and he can lose his memory and die. Joong-gil saves him. Jae-soo gets drunk and imagines he is with Choi again. Choi and Koo go back in time to make fried chicken in hopes to save him. While back in time they realize that his dad was struggling to make ends meet and his mom was in the hospital, so his dad had plans to commit suicide to get the insurance money. Jumadeung Chicken magically appears, and Choi makes chicken for both Jae-soo in the past and the present. Swoon-worthy moment – Going back to the past allowed Choi Jun Woong to get a picture with his dad before he left on the business trip that will kill him, so now he has a family picture with his whole family.

· Kang Woo-jin - a musician who has been surrounded by death his whole life. His mom dies while giving birth to him, so his dad hates him and blames him for the loss of his wife, and later commits suicide. His Uncle and Aunt who take care of him and their daughter die in a tragic accident. Because of this, he shuts people out, not wanting to get close to anyone. He meets Na-young, a ballerina who is no longer able to dance, when she is at her lowest point and they fall in love. He blames himself for the car accident that takes Na-young’s life. Ryeon must use some of her magic to get him to see Na-young and believe that they are tied with the red thread and will meet again after he tries jumping from the stairs. It puts her in terrible pain, due to the punishment she received for showing living people her powers in the previous episodes.

· Lee Young-chun – Y'all this episode had me bawling! I didn’t think it would, but even now it’s taken me a minute to write this part. He is a 91-year-old war vet. He is due to die tomorrow, so the team is trying to get him to hold on for literally one more day. He sees the reapers and they don’t lie about who they are. They straight up tell them they are grim reapers and that he will die tomorrow. I thought that was forbidden. He goes through and does the nicest things he can for people who have helped him along the way and shows what a great person he is inside. It was so sweet to witness. He talks of helping a friend on the battlefield and saving him and how his last wish was to see his friend after many years. Ryeon takes him to a building that overlooks all of Korea and thanks him for his service, telling him without his sacrifice none of this would be possible. Ryeon asks Joong-gil to escort him when he passes and asks if The Director can make his final passage a comfortable and pleasant one. Y’all this is the tearjerker, if you have ever seen someone die - and I have - it was so realistic. He sees Joong-gil come in and Joong-gil tells him of the time he witnessed him on the battlefield that long night. He pays his respects for his courage and all you see are several reapers lining the streets with The Director. Oh, but what’s this? A moment of sweetness between Joong-gil and Ryeon? What is going on here? They seem to hate each other – or not. Y’all spoiler alert – he dies… and I bawled. But it was when he told Jun Woong, who was crying - “What were you crying for, why are you crying when I am going somewhere nice?” - that I ugly cried. Like, like straight-up lost it because it just reminded me so much of what my Granddaddy said before he passed. I finished the episode and then it took me a minute to come back to this series.

· Jun Woong makes the mistake of saying everything is quiet and so…chaos ensues. The electronics have a virus, and they cannot tell who the risk is. They determine it is at a major makeup company and the person was born in April, but they cannot use any powers. The 3 friends go into a job interview, and it is obvious from the interview that the CEO is favorable toward attractive females. Lim goes into the CEO’s office to find out who was born in April. Four employees were born in April and, of course, all of them have something they seem to be working through. One is a struggling mom, one is an abused assistant, one is a seemingly overweight employee, and one is anorexic. Ryeon narrows it down to the victim being Shin Ye-Na, the anorexic, after watching her eat dinner one night and witnessing a scratch on her hand. The CEO hosts a company dinner and Ye-Na starts hallucinating and hearing voices about her weight. She goes home where she has set up this Nitrogen device to kill her. Jun Woong finds her just in time. She tells him about how she was bullied for being overweight in her younger years, and he tells her about his sister’s struggle with weight in school and encourages her to see and love her body for herself, not for someone else. Then, in true finishing fashion, Koo Ryeon kicks the CEO’s butt – literally. Jun Woong asks Ye-Na about the Nitrogen tanks in her room, and he discovers that someone messaged her about dying without pain, a broker.

· Jun Woong was told to leave the situation alone with the broker, but he didn't listen. Instead, he sends out a message about how sad and depressed he is via the web. He meets several people in a chat room who pledge to take their lives together. He goes to the meeting spot and meets 3 other people who are planning to commit suicide with him. He manages to convince 2 of the 3 to live and the other person ends up being the broker who was a split personality on the website. Lim Ryung Goo installed a tracking device on his phone so they could locate him when he was missing, which comes in handy because the team must search for him. As the broker turns on the Nitrogen and holds Jun Woong to his death, Mr. Lim kicks down the door. Then he scolds Jun Woong for acting recklessly and intervening in human affairs. The broker becomes the new case, so they must now act to save his life. Jun Woong must choose to save him by calling 911 or letting him die because he has already killed so many people. In the end, he says he quits. Joong-gil appears and shows the broker the Hell he is destined for. He then begs to be saved, so Jun-Woong calls the police. He survives, but has no voice due to the poison. The police magically get footage of all of his crimes. During the chase, he falls down the stairs and loses his hearing and ability to walk. The Director bestowed the ability to punish criminals, after saving them, on the team manager of the risk management team, or Koo Ryeon.

· Kim Kong – the suicidal doggie. Jun Woong sees his sister trying to rescue the dog from committing suicide and being hit by an oncoming truck to save him, so he rushes to cover over her to prevent her from getting hit, as well. He is a well-loved puppy who has been abandoned because he is terminally ill. His owner is Kim Hun, who loves him very much. He takes him for walks and plays with him. He wants to do the surgery on Kong, but Kong runs away from him. It’s funny because Kong gets mad every time Jun Woong talks ill of his owner. Jun Woong talks to Kong about being a burden and how he understands how it feels to be sick and unable to do anything to help out. It’s such a touching episode and gives more information about Jun Woong’s feelings. Kong does pass away though, so if you are sensitive to animals, just be mindful that this episode is a tearjerker too. It shows some growth and development with Jun Woong. At the end of this episode, Jun Woong has a heart-to-heart with The Director and he asks why Mr. Lim and Ms. Koo are there. She says because they both have some regrets. Then, you see Lim Ryung-gu following some lady, so I think we will get more of his story next. I’m so excited.

· Twins – sexual assault – words hurt and words heal. Yun-hui is a female twin who is sexually assaulted. Yun-jae, her twin brother, is also high on the suicide case risk. He takes the blame for his sister’s assault. After several beers, she asked her brother to walk her home and he refused, so then she got picked up and assaulted on her way home. He sends her several text messages that she doesn’t respond to, but doesn’t go looking for her or attempt to call her. When her brother goes to see her in the hospital, he makes the mistake of saying “Bastards like that went after you because you were there all alone” and naturally she tells him that it was his fault she was alone. She asked for him to walk with her and he refused. She has a panic attack/flashback. The assailant got 2 years in jail with probation, but is free until the appeal. His parents bought him a new apartment because is a medical student with a bright future. Meanwhile, Yun-hui reads awful comments about herself online and shuts the world out. She doesn’t want to file an appeal. She gets furious when she finds out about her brother’s protests and leaves the hospital, telling him that he is worse than the assailant; they should just die together. We find out that Ryeon committed suicide and has a red thread tied around her wrist because when Yun-hui tries to commit suicide by slicing her wrists, she explains to her how it will feel. She also tells her that she is the victim and that she is not responsible for his actions. Jun-Woong convinces Yun-jae to tell him he’s sorry and to stand by her side. He admits he was scared. In the end, the assailant gets 15 years, but in an unfortunate bus accident, Joong-gil collects his soul, proving what a badass he can be. At the end of the episode there is a flashback from Mr. Lim’s past when he was a young boy. That’s when I realized that all of the people on the RM team are affected by suicide in some way, and that the person he was previously following is his reincarnated mother.

· In episodes 11/12 it is easy to see why Lim was so previously affected by the sexual assault case. There is a flashback of his memory of his mother. It wasn’t until he was older that he learned that his mother was raped and subsequently hung herself. He then kills the governor and the three thugs, as well as himself, overdosing on opioids. It is Koo Ryeon who escorts him to the afterlife. She also escorted his mother. His regret is he never told his mother that all the memories he had of his childhood are filled with her love. He is aware that the red thread between him and his mother is no longer there because of the suicide, but he wants to try watching her from afar. People retain memories of their past life and Lim Ryung-gu says he wants to join the Risk Management team in case his mother ever tries to take her own life again; he can try to prevent it. One month later, she is their case, Lim Yu-Hwa. This episode was hard to watch because some witch customer causes her to suffer a miscarriage and she can’t mentally handle it. Each night she dreams that the baby is real and that is when she is fine, but all other times, she suffers the harsh reality that the baby is gone, so she has decided she prefers to live in her dream world. She blames herself for losing the baby, so while her husband is out of town, she takes medicine to commit suicide. Koo Ryeon goes into her dreams to help her wake up and realize that her baby is gone. Jun Woong calls Mr. Lim and he too goes into the dream world to save his mother. In the end, Lim tells her that if she dies, Honeybee cannot come back to her, so she needs to let her go and she will come back stronger. He also tells her that he can write letters to her in the sand and they will be sent to her in Heaven where she can read them. Then he breaks the rules and returns her memories to her so he can tell her how much he loves her. It was such a tear-jerking moment.

· Yoo Bok-hui and Lee Jeong-mun - a case for both the Risk Management team and the Escort team to work together. Yoo Bok-hui’s grandson is studying the Japanese Colonial Period and she discovers from a picture that her friend, Yun-i, was forced to be a comfort woman. Bok-hui was cleaning the Statute of Peace because it was vandalized with graffiti. [Author’s note: The Statue of Peace was erected in 2011 in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, Korea. It is “dedicated to ‘comfort women’, a euphemism for women who were sexually exploited by the Japanese military during the Second World War.”] The reapers tell her about Jeong-mun, another girl in the picture, and how she wants to meet her before she dies. Bok-hui blames herself for sending Yun-I to that place when they were young. We hear the story of Yun-i and how strong and sweet she was throughout the traumatic ordeal. Yun-I hears word that the soldiers are going to kill all the girls, so they all run away into the woods one night. Yun-i, knowing Japanese, acts as a diversion for the other girls to escape. Unfortunately, when the girls get home, they are shunned and looked down on until the truth is revealed. In the end, the new reaper for the team is Yun-i and Bok-hui got to meet her after all. Y’all tear-jerker!

· On the anniversary of her death, Koo Ryeon goes to check on her friend, Gop-dan, who is reincarnated as Ryu Cho-Hui, a singer and actor. She suddenly shows up on the negative energy alert. She is being set up and blackmailed by some nasty paparazzi and even her friends are involved in it. Seol In-u, a ballad singer, is behind everything because he wants to date her and she keeps refusing his advances. While practicing her song on stage, she passes out and Choi Jun Woong rescues her. This is when Ryeon sees the red thread that attaches them. Cho-Hui is caught in a scandal and is in the process of running away when she sees a car. Koo Ryeon stops the car, but Joong-gil orders her to stop. He is upset because he feels lied to regarding Koo Ryeon’s past and finds out that she committed suicide. Koo Ryeon loses her stuff - she goes crazy and starts fighting everyone who has ever said anything bad about Cho-Hui. There is an order out to arrest Koo Ryeon by Mr. Ha, the ruler of Hell. Mr. Choi and Mr. Lim are both transferred to different jurisdictions within the company. Choi Jun Woong tells her that he didn’t want to go to the Editing team, but that she works so hard to save everyone else, and yet can’t see that she needs to be saved herself. “If you don’t feel happy yourself, what’s the point of saving others?” Mr. Ha appears to take her to Hell but Mr. Park appears to buy her some time to escape so that she can still save her friend. She saves her friend and punishes all of the cyber haters. Later we see everyone hanging out at Cho-Hui’s apartment having dinner.

Final verdict: WATCH

Sooo good! So many mixed emotions though - it will have you laughing and crying and then wondering what the world?! Do not watch if you cannot handle an onslaught of difficult topics because it is full of them. Would I watch it again? Yes! It was so good. I recommend it, but again, not for the faint of heart.

So there it is, our review of “Tomorrow” What did you think?! Thank you for joining us on this journey.

Have a favorite K-drama you think we should review, comment down below!! We look forward to seeing you back again next week!

Up next, “Our Blues”

Our Blues

What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim?

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