Start-Up (South Korean TV series)

You see, Seo-Dal Mi was the fictional character with the trope zero to hero. She was the underdog with little connection and even simply a high school graduate. She wanted to become a successful business woman as she drew experience from her father, a man who wanted to create “yelp”-like apps who later died due to a brain injury following an accident. There’s another character that contrasts Seo-Dal Mi, Nam Do-San, a mathematical prodigy who suffers from depression and impostor syndrome.

Nam Do-san is one of those characters that has the failed genius trope. He was the kind of guy who wanted to change the world with his way but lacked social and marketing skills. While he has good ideas, he was mostly more fitting to be a CTO than a CEO. While at first, he was the CEO, after meeting Seo-Dal Mi, CTO was more a fitting role for him. He eventually recovered from his impostor syndrome and regrets of his past. Do san character is going to teach you that sometimes when you're a kid and was put in a pedestal, it can be a burden rather than a blessing. From Seo-Dal mi he also eventually learned to redefine his meaning of success and his path to happiness.

I rewatched this South Korean drama because it offers some valuable insight. This drama also came when South Korea was at its peak of technological innovations. Somehow these days, all the dramas that I’ve seen are mostly talking about the end of the world, some biological warfare type of things and back to the era of flexing riches than drama that can be quite inspiring like this one.

Rather than watching the drama where I skipped the boring part, these days I watch this Startup slowly as I want to get to know more of the characters and their motivation. There are terms that I probably missed about a year ago because I was skipping some parts while watching it.

At the same time, in China there’s one Chinese drama that I keep rewatching titled 亲爱的，热爱的 or known as Go Go Squid!. The drama, while laced with romance, talks about CTF (capture the flag) competition aimed for cybersecurity enthusiasts. While the drama doesn't really talk much about the CTF itself, it was the main character that was quite inspiring and they made it seem like being a pro CTF player was a big deal. Talking about being inspired, I definitely do.

Do you have any tech-inspired movie/k-drama that you watched? While I tend to stay away from heavy science-fiction drama and series, I enjoy tech based drama and series like Silicon Valley, Hacker, MR Robot, you get the gist.

I don’t know why South Koreans don’t make dramas like Startup, Memories of the Alhambra, Rugal or even I am not a robot anymore. Maybe just maybe just like the news said that they’ve peaked just as discussed in this article The Future of K-Power: What South Korea Must Do After Peaking.