The Case for Team Han Jipyeong
And why I will happily stay a clown for Netflix’s upcoming Start-Up finale
Netflix’s Start-Up, starring Bae Suzy and Nam Joohyuk, is coming to a close this weekend, and, after binging all 14 previous episodes in three days, I have found myself firmly establishing a loyalty toward one of the key characters.
Start-Up follows Seo Dalmi (Bae Suzy), a financially struggling college drop out, as she decides to become a CEO in order to compete with her sister, Won Injae (Kang Hanna). During her lonely childhood, she receives a letter from a boy she’s never met and starts a year-long pen pal relationship with him. 15 years later, she tries to look for him in order to hold up a lie she told Injae.
Han Jipyeong (Kim Seonho) is a talented investor at SH Venture Capital, and he is the true writer of those letters despite using Nam Dosan’s (Nam Joohyuk) name as his own. He finds the “real” Nam Dosan, a math genius and programmer, to pretend to be the one who wrote the letters in order to help Dalmi’s plan and keep his secret.
Even as I explained the plot, Han Jipyeong seems like he would be the male lead of the series. He’s not; Nam Dosan is. Han Jipyeong is, at the very least, the second male lead with a tragic backstory and wonderfully complex writing.
The character Han Jipyeong has found a large amount of support on the internet in an unofficial fanbase lovingly dubbed “the clowns”.
Whether their love comes from a loyalty to the actor who plays him, or they were drawn to Han Jipyeong as a character, their love is strong. Their love is possibly delusional depending on the outcome of the drama, but it is unwavering nonetheless.
As this is the first drama of Kim Seonho’s that I have seen, I am a proud clown as a result of the writing.
For the first half of the drama, Han Jipyeong was written as a complex and interesting character in ways the two leads were not. He was the voice of reason. He grew from his struggles and became a mature and successful, but evidently lonely, man.
His character was written in such a way that had me questioning if he even was the second male lead for 10 whole episodes. Logically, I knew he wasn’t, especially if you take into account the typical K-drama format, but a large part of me hoped that this wouldn’t be a typical K-drama.
Usually, I’m not one to suffer from “second male lead syndrome”. In fact, I have never once felt this way about a second male lead in my entire K-drama viewing career. So why was I suddenly so obsessed with the idea that Seo Dalmi should end up with Han Jipyeong?
Was this intentional? You would think that by the 14th episode I would know where things are headed.
There are two scenarios I think are the possible truth to the situation.
First, Jipyeong could be the one Dalmi chooses in the end, and all of this stress could have been intentional in order to have the viewer experience the same feelings of confusion and doubt as Dalmi.
By writing Han Jipyeong like a male lead in the beginning, the writer made sure that the viewers would emotionally attach to him quickly and strongly. Then, with the sudden addition of Nam Dosan, we feel doubt. As viewers, assuming we are all avid fans of K-dramas and the typical format they follow, we know that, logically, Nam Dosan is the male lead. Nam Joohyuk is the top billed male actor and appears on all the promotional material with Bae Suzy.
After this doubt we hit a couple episodes, 10 and 11, full of confusion and with lack of Han Jipyeong in the way we had seen him previously. During this time I was really unimpressed with the writing, and felt like Dalmi’s relationship with Dosan was absolutely boring but inevitable. If this scenario is the correct one, this is actually a really effective strategy.
In these episodes, I may have been slightly bored and upset, but I was very focused on the relationship between Dalmi and Dosan. I even started to like him a little bit more. By the end of the 11th episode, I had almost entered a state of acceptance.
At this point I had discovered Twitter threads and subreddit posts about the matter, so my previous opinions were validated enough for me to hold on to them.
During these episodes, Dalmi was struggling emotionally quite a bit. She was trying to figure out what, and who, she wanted. For just a few seconds, she focused completely on Nam Dosan as he was without the letters. I argue that, maybe, she felt bored and upset before moving to an almost state of acceptance just like me.
As the next couple of episodes progressed, I fell right back into my love for Han Jipyeong but this time with less certainty.
If the writer is being this intentional about the feelings created by these episodes, I think Han Jipyeong has a bigger chance than we thought.
Provided we see Han Jipyeong come out victorious in the end, every theme in the drama would come full circle.
Not choosing Dosan solidifies the idea that one person’s dream cannot be another person, which has been the theme played with in the past few episodes.
It also would solidify a “love is patient” attitude that I personally think benefits every character in the drama.
If not, there is the second scenario.
It is a possibility that the writer had no idea people would be so taken by Han Jipyeong, therefore his cut in screen time and the two Dalmi/Dosan focused episodes were a strategy to get the viewers to forget about him and change their allegiance.
This scenario confirms all of our fears that Nam Dosan really is the true male lead in every way.
Let’s say the first scenario is the truth.
Even the possibility that the writer created a sense of confusion and turmoil in the viewer by treating Han Jipyeong in this way is exciting to me. It is incredibly easy to fall into the predictable trap that K-dramas so quickly fall into, but there is no denying that regardless of who Dalmi picks in the end, this drama has been anything but predictable.
Through it all, Start-Up has had me criticizing the writing and praising it simultaneously. After watching 14 episodes, I am still unsure how it will end up. The truth is, the finale will be the deciding factor of my opinion of the drama. At this point, it is really hard to say whether we clowns will be satisfied with the ending. The good news is: we only have a few more days to find out.
