Start-Up: A Fictional Silicon Valey in South Korea

Perhaps you can say this series is the short, non-comedic, and romanticized version of Silicon Valley. Startup is a South Korean series revolving around the startup scene in South Korea around 2020. It’s not a South Korean if it doesn’t revolve around romance and people that are somehow connected from their past. Startup was no different. However, it was quite a motivational series as well as inspiring to look at how back in 2020, AI was already the talk of the town.

Starring Bae Suzy, Nam Joo-Hyuk and Kim Seon-Ho, this drama was fun to watch. The characters were quite complex and they undergo character development as they interact with one another. Bae Suzy was playing the role of ambitious woman Seo Dal-mi who is a college dropout and highschool graduate but dreams of becoming a successful entrepreneur. Her past life was not far from Startup scene. Before separating, Dal-mi had a sister called Seo In-Jae who later changed her name to Wo In-Jae following the divorce and her mom remarried to a tech mogul.

At the time, Dal-mi’s father was also working on a website listing until an accident took his life away. Things got complicated when in the past after the divorce, her grandmother proposed an orphan, Han Ji Pyeong played by Kim Seon-Ho to write letters for Dal-Mi. He used a fake name Nam Do-San, a child savant and math genius who appeared in the newspaper when Ji Pyeong and Dal-Mi’s grandma was writing the letter.

Fast forward, Ji Pyeong became a successful team leader at a VC called SH and has never met Dal-mi’s grandmother again. Meanwhile Dal-Mi was working odd jobs just to keep her and her grandmother’s family thriving. It is in contrast to her sister, who now is called Wo In-Jae is a successful businesswoman and has all the safety net she could ever dreamed of. One day, both sister and Ji Pyeong met during a talk in SandBox, a place where startups gather and reach their dream. In an attempt to outdo her sister, she mentioned that she’s doing well and is already meeting the penpal of hers, who was Nam Do San.

Upon learning that Dal Mi wanted to find Nam Do San, the grandma reached out to Ji Pyeong and eventually asked him to find Nam Do San. They managed to find Nam Do San but it was not as they expected. The adult Nam Do San (Nam Joo-Hyuk) is now running a startup focusing on Machine Learning called Samsan Tech with two of his friends. He is not as successful as before and is living in a musty basement. He was far from the definition of success.

Eventually, all of them are connected through the Sand Boxes hackathon and Dal-Mi becomes the CEO of Samsan Tech during the events. They received massive success while at the same time, they still hid the fact that the letters were lies and it wasn’t written by Do San but Ji Pyeong.

While mixing startup scenes and romance, it felt like all the story was quite good to be true as the characters were all connected through their past. But that is a very typical story of South Korea and quite forgivable. Yet the message of this series was something worthy to be highlighted. That is to chase your dreams and work on your passion. It was shown that during pitches, they were all emphasizing the reason why a technology is made and how it would solve a problem. It doesn’t matter how simple it looked but if the person who created it believed in it, the product would have the chance to thrive.

It was goosebumps when they show how they work non-stop just to make things work. Working with almost little to none money, if it wasn’t because of their aspirations and passion, it wouldn’t likely work. The actors were doing a good job in convincing us that they were really working on something they care about.

I have to say though that not a lot of Korean Series stands out when it comes to cinematography. But often,it’s the story and the actors. There are only a few series that I think are worthy and special when it comes to their cinematography. Even in this series, it’s the actors who won the awards and overall, this drama won the Seoul Seoul International Drama Awards.This drama though has a lot of advertisement placements and thankfully, it didn’t look that awkward unlike most of Drama ads placement.