Kevin C. Wong

Crash Landing On You (2019) [+]

Crash Landing On You is a South Korean romance drama that ran sixteen 70-minute episodes.

South Korean business mogul Yoon Se-ri (Son Ye-jin) while doing a paragliding publicity shoot is caught in a tornado and dumped on the wrong side of the DMZ. Captain Ri Jeong-hyoek (Hyun Bin) finds her and believes her story. He decides to hide her and help her get back to South Korea.

The first half is in North Korea where Se-ri gets to see life in a typical small village and it's quite a culture shock -- little electricity, no hot running water, very little meat in their diet. Besides being noticed by State Security Department officer Cho Cheol-gang (Oh Man-seok) who senses something suspicious about her (and later he becomes intent on murdering Jeong-hyoek to cover his criminal activities) Se-ri has both a romantic rival when Seo Dan (Seo Ji-hye) arrives intent on marrying Jeong-hyoek and Se-ri also has a potential love interest in Gu Seung-jun (Kim Jung-hyun), a South Korean con man who almost married Se-ri.

Anyway eventuall Se-ri realizes that Jeong-hyoek loves her and she loves him. But they can't ever be together once she returns to South Korea. Of course when she does return Jeong-hyoek follows her because Cho Cheol-gang is also in South Korea plotting revenge by murdering her. The second half of the series Se-ri is now the one with power and Jeong-hyoek is the handsome outsider who poses as her new bodyguard. Meanwhile the four members of Jeong-hyoek's squad follow him to bring him back and they end up having adventures of their own as South Korea is quite different than what they imagined (except for the one guy who is addicted to K-Dramas)...

Once again it takes three or four episodes to really get going and then it's pretty good. Romance is great and the contrast between North and South is pretty cool. The ending is not the best but at least a mostly happy ending for the main couple. I quite enjoyed the series.